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Chess Meister | Mack the Moose | Music Invaders | NEX4 Simply • Beautiful |
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Mack the Moose 1.0
Written by John Roland Penner, April 2025 Mack the Moose (a playful twist on 'Mack the Knife') is a modern millenial descendent of the original Talking Moose for the Macintosh with some Rizz — bringing his wit and wisdom back to macOS — with a completely new Animation Engine, original Artwork by Canadian artist Barbara Klunder 🇨🇦 and an original collection of Quotations. The Moose will popup periodically to tell a joke or share a word of wisdom. The Moose will also Cookoo on the Hour, and Howl on the Fullmoon. If you enter a Latitude and Longitude in the settings, the Moose will join the birds in a Chorus at Sunrise and Sunset. There is also a built-in Tea Timer to help brew your perfect cuppa. The Talking Moose has been a part of Macintosh history since 1986. No Mac can truly be called complete without one! Mack the Moose runs on Apple Silicon based Macs, and Intel machines that run macOS 13.5 Ventura - macOS 15.x Sequoia. |
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peaBrain 9 UCI Chess Engine
Written by John Roland Penner, April 2025 peaBrain 9.0.3 is a UCI chess engine for macOS 15 Sequoia that runs on both x86 and Apple Silicon. peaBrain thinks deeper and faster using a Shannon type MiniMax search with Quiescence extensions, Alpha-Beta pruning, Iterative deepening, Hash tables, Multi-Threading, and Principal Variation Search. A hand-tuned evaluation function provides a more subtle evaluation, and an opening book includes over 10,000 moves from the ECO (Encyclopedia of Chess Openings). Runs at about 1800 ELO. Tested with HIARCS and Banksia GUIs on macOS 15 |
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Music Invaders 1.0Crafted by John Penner, April 2016 Music Invaders is a sheet music trainer that helps you learn how to read sheet music. Musicians and students can brush up on their reading abilities, and learn to read music. In Music Invaders, you have ten bases to protect - take care of them by playing the right notes as they come flying across the staff. Unlike other note trainers, a hovering alien will actually zap your bases if you dont play the right note. Play harder (on a MIDI device), and the notes shoot faster. Set your iPad on a music stand and learn to play. Set the complexity of play — Single notes, Thirds, and Triads. Beginners can limit the range of notes to the Treble or Bass clef. Tap the treble or bass clef to change keys. Blue lights indicate valid notes within a scale. With Auto-Rollover enabled, as you progress, the scale will advance through the circle of fifths every 10k. A small graph lets you track your progress as you work your way through every scale. For the best experience, we recommend using Music Invaders with a MIDI keyboard. Notes played via MIDI are velocity sensitive and fire faster as you play harder. |
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NEX4 1.0Crafted by John Roland Penner, May 2015 NEX4 is a simple and fun app for the iPad — Connect four of your pieces in a row — you get 100 points, and the pieces vapourize causing the pieces above it to collapse — creating unpredictable new combinations for you to maneuver. If you manage to connect more than four in a row — you are in for a Multi Collapse. The game ends when the board is filled, and the player who gained the most points is the winner. Simple to play with endless variety. Play NEX4 Today! |
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Chess Meister 1.0Crafted by John Roland Penner, November 2014 Chess Meister is an App for the iPad that provides a simple and beautiful interface where nothing comes between you and playing chess. Share the board with another player, and the pieces turn to face the player whose turn it is. Few controls, endless possibilities. Tap the blue button, and Chess Meister's peaBrain engine moves for you. Give the peaBrain a hard move — it'll think longer and harder. If you make a bad move, be prepared for the peabrain's rapid response. Use the unlimited undo-redo; or swipe left and right for the start and end of the game. Step through moves rapidly. Examine possibilities, develop your game and learn the names of the opening books. Chess Meister is a challenge for new chess players and a companion for two people who need to share a chess board — inlaid with Morpho butterfly squares and Brazilian hardwood — a classic rendered in a modern parallax interface. |
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pChess 2.0November 2012 A free chess programme for Macintosh OSX, with nice graphics and a built-in FEN Viewer. Uses a classic Shannon type MiniMax search with Quiescence extensions and Alpha-Beta pruning. It supports Fischer games, copy/paste of FEN positions, and SAN Notation. Cool Audio and Visual Brain features let you listen and see as it evaluates moves. Load and Save games, with unlimited Undo/Redo. The opening book includes over 10,000 moves from the ECO (Encyclopedia of Chess Openings). Runs at about 1500 ELO. Comes complete with FutureBasic 5 source code. v2.0 is Faster Deeper Stronger with Hash tables and Iterative deepening, peaBrain can think deeper faster. A tuned evaluation function provides a more subtle evaluation. Support for enPassant has been addded to loading and saving of FEN. Clicking a square now shows only legal moves. Fixed some UCI bugs. Download from: |
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