“a friend” is a small INIT (or “system extension”) that types something to you every now and then, in an attempt to make a friend. It’s not very bright; it types no matter what you are doing, and pays no attention to what’s going on. (So typing back to it will not result in any special behavior.)
If it can’t load itself properly, “a friend” beeps once at startup and aborts loading.
How?
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Just drop “a friend” into your Extensions folder and reboot. It requires the Sound Manager, and does minimal checking to that end. After an initial delay, it will began typing messages to you. The initial delay is set to about 30 seconds, and the
time between messages is about 13 seconds.
If you are handy with ResEdit, you can change the strings and the times. The strings are in 'STR#' resource 128. You can add or delete strings, but make sure there is at least one string, and not more than sixteen. If you add more than that, only the first sixteen are used. The times are located in 'PREF' resource 128. There is a template resource that will be used when you open the 'PREF' resource. All times are in ticks (60ths of a second). You can also change the 'snd ' resources, if you want.
“a friend” works by adding keyDown events to the event queue. So whatever happens when it starts to type is whatever happens when you type on the keyboard. For instance, in an open Finder window in System 7, “a friend” could very well rename half of your files.
Why?
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I wrote “a friend” to practice writing INITs. That’s it. The only use of “a friend” that I can think of is as a practical joke: set the initial time to something very large,
say an hour or two, change the messages to something insulting, and put it in someone else’s computer.
Who?
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If you have anything to say about “a friend” you can send me e-mail at the following addresses:
kourakos@ncsc.org
awk@pro-charlotte.cts.com
Obviously, this is freeware.
If you want to use the source code for something, go right ahead, just give “Alex Kourakos” credit somewhere.
Etc.
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If you like annoying practical joke INITs, I suggest downloading a copy of “sniff™,” by Timothy Miller. It’s available on America Online, and sumex.stanford.edu, among other places. It causes the computer to sniff and cough every now and then. It was inspiration to write “a friend”.
If “a friend” does something nasty to your Mac (I can’t imagine what) I’m not responsible. It works fine on my computer.
If you have any Mac practical joke ideas, I’d like to hear about them. This was the simplest one I could think of.
This is not an example of the best program I’m capable of writing.
