Neville Smythe — Mac Home Page
some photos from recent holidays:
Europe China Japan WA Tasmania Cairns Japan 2007 Japan 2008 China 2008
about me ...
I am a mathematician at the Australian National University, in Canberra Australia.
I have been involved with Macintosh computers since the beginning — in 1984 a colleague and I chose the Mac for development of a Calculus teaching package called ANUGraph, and I have been active in the Australian Apple University Consortium since its inception.
I am also a keen Go player: I have represented Australia three times at the World Amateur Go Championships (in the days before Australia had any 7-dan players luckily for me, as I am a mere 3 dan!) and was a co-founder of the Australian Go Association, of which I am currently National Secretary. I am also a director of the International Go federation, representing Oceania (New Zealand and Australia),
what's here of interest for you ...
From time to time I shall post here some software which may be of interest to the general public.
First up is Crossword Assistant. <- click here to go to the download page. NEW v2.2 now available! Universal binary plus new features.(OS X 10.4)
This is a Mac OS X application to aid in the solution of crossword puzzles. Ever get stuck on a particular clue, you have some of the letters but just can't see any word that fits? At that point it's not cheating to use a dictionary — but searching a dictionary when you don't have the first letter of the word is a chore. Crossword Assistant is the answer — and it's amazingly fast and easy to use. It also does anagrams. For cryptic crossword addicts, it even finds answers when you have part of the word as an anagram. This started life as a Hypercard stack (which I can make available to Mac OS 9 users if interested, but the OS X version is much nicer). I have Crossword Assistant open beside me whenever I do a crossword now and it rarely lets me down. The built-in dictionary of over 150,000 words is considerably larger than those supplied with most word-game computer applications which typically have 30,000 to 70,000 words. Registered users will get a supplementary word list bringing the total dictionary size to over 450,000 words and over 160,000 phrases, making it one of the largest English word lists available anywhere, a valuable resource in itself. Alternative dictionaries for word-games and other language dictionaries are available, and you can make your own dictionaries.
ScribbleScreen <- Click here to go to the download page
This is a presentation tool — you can draw over a PowerPoint presentation, but this let's you scribble over the top of any appications window. Freeware; requires 10.3 (well it might work in 10.2, haven't tested it).
nsSudoku <- Click here to go to the download page
Yes I succumbed — no programmer can resist it seems. I wanted a little app with a nice interface to print out grids for the local paper's 9x9 and 16x16 Sudoku for my wife to do by hand. And then I thought, well it might as well do the boring mechanical bit of computing the hints for each cell, and then ... But it won't completely cheat.
Inquiries are welcome about other software I have written over the years, including
ANUGraph This is a tool for studying functions of one variable, as they occur in Calculus courses, that is functions given by a formula or by fitting curves to data. It has been in use for many years in Australian secondary schools and universities, and by researchers. It does not deal with symbolic algebra or functions of more than one variable, so it may be felt that it has been superceded by powerful programs such as Maple or Mathematica. However it still has a place — it is much easier to use, can produce more accurate graphs under some circumstances, and has a number of features for demonstrating concepts such as differentiation and integration as limits which make it ideal for teaching elementary Calculus. It is also used by some researchers for its excellent print output. The current version (3.2) is also Apple Scriptable and Recordable, making it useful for batch processing of graphs and discrete data, and for handicapped users. Because ANUGraph relies heavily on the excellent numerics of previous Mac systems, and other reasons, it is unlikely it will be updated for Mac OS X, but it works fine in Classic mode. If interested, please contact me at ANU with my mathematician's hat on Neville.Smythe@anu.edu.au
Go Recorder Go Recorder was a Go game recording program for the Newton (sigh!). If there are Go playing Newton owners out there they are welcome to a copy if they drop me a line..