Copyright ⌐ Vincent Tan, 1994-1995. All Rights Reserved.
Note: this file is best read with SimpleText, not TeachText.
Why Misc?
This file contains miscellaneous stuff that is not really part of Jigsaw. You don't have to read this file - the other files contain all the documentation for Jigsaw.
About the pictures:
The pictures contained in this package are Copyright ⌐ Vincent Tan 1995. Sorry, but you are not allowed to distribute them separately.
Flamingos.jpg was taken in San Diego's Seaworld by my brother Victor in December 1992 during his visit to the USA in that year. The story was that he was wandering around Seaworld and happened to walk past the flamingos. It struck him that they would make a great picture so he snapped it. I have to agree with him; it is a great picture.
Golden Gate bridge.jpg was taken from the foot of the Golden Gate bridge by my brother Victor in May 1994 during his visit to the USA in that year. He tells me that it was a long, arduous walk down to the beach to get this picture. You can't take a photo of the bridge from this angle from a tourbus! An astute person may also realise that this picture doesn't have any fog in it, and you have my word that Photoshop wasn't used to achieve that. ;-)
Victoria Bay.jpg was taken by me during my visit to Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada in July 1994. It's a very picturesque town and hosted the Commonwealth Games that year. I walked around the bay with a friend and I finally succumbed to the temptation to take a photo of the bay and here it is. It has good contrast of its elements and should make an interesting puzzle picture.
Other software:
If you're curious about any other software I've written, then seek out:
Ñ Control Strip Menu 1.0.1, which is a freeware hierachial menu utility for Apple's Control Strip control panel. (If you have a desktop Mac and System 7.5, you can still use this utility if you patch your copy of Control Strip with a freely available patcher program.) So what's so great about it? Well, for one, it's free. But I think the best part is that it doesn't patch the system at all! You should (in theory) never get a conflict from it!
Ñ AddJFIFcomment, which is a freeware utility that lets you attach a comment to a JFIF/JPEG file.
Ñ You may or may not have heard about SpeedyFinder7, which was my brother Victor's neat utility. If you liked it or want to improve life on your Mac, go try out the Aladdin Desktop Tools. Way cool. Worth every cent. Totally biased opinion. :-)
Politics:
here is something to think about:
Ñ "software patents are evil". The argument here is that by patenting software, companies (or lawyers) who own them can ask for amounts of money from software companies or developers. Because almost all programs use technologies that could in some way be found to contain patents, you end up with the situation that any software producer can end up in a messy legal battle if so threatened by the patent holder. The practical upshot is that the large companies now cross-license patents from each other. This in turn has several effects: 1) software costs more because of the legal expenses involved in these licensing deals, 2) innovative software development is or can be stifled by legal threats, 3) an industry has arisen consisting of companies who derive income from collecting royalty or license fees. In fact, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the number of patents held by such a company and the number of innovative software titles it produces. After all, why innovate when you can leech? Does this sound frightening? I'll let you decide.
Note: I'm not against copyright because you need copyright to protect the producer's works, but what you don't need is a legal gun (ie a patent infringement) pointed at you.
Music:
here are some of my favourite music titles (in no particular order):
Ñ Roy Orbison's "Running Scared", "Crying", "In Dreams", "Blue Bayou", "Mystery Girl", "Careless Heart". Listen to them alone, at night, and in a dark room. Guaranteed to make you shiver.
Ñ Aaron Neville's "Louisiana 1927" from the "Warm Your Heart" album.
Ñ The Neville Brothers' "Yellow Moon" album, especially "Yellow Moon", "A Change is Gonna Come", and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken". "Can you imagine life without the Neville brothers?"
Ñ Vangelis: the Blade Runner soundtrack (the 1994 release), the "Themes" album, "The City" album. To be honest, most of his stuff is great (in my humble opinion).
Ñ U2: "SO cruel" from Achtung Baby, "Babyface" and "Lemon" from Zooropa. Should love be cruel? Makes you wonder...
Ñ Jackie Wilson's "Lonely Teardrops" - what a classic! A great song that needs a great voice to sing it. I once heard Michael McDonald (of Doobie Brothers fame) sing a version of this and it just blew you away! Of course, Jackie's version is fantastic too. :-)
