• The Next Penelope: Race To Odysseus Mac Os X
• The Next Penelope: Race To Odysseus Mac Oscar
• The Next Penelope: Race To Odysseus Mac Osrs

Charles Moore's Mailbag

Scholars have described the siblings as standing before the tomb of their father in mourning. However, the larger size of the female figure and her protective embrace have led some to believe that this might be the representation of a mother and son—perhaps Penelope and Telemachos (son of Odysseus)—rather than brother and sister. The Next Penelope Set in a futuristic Odyssey, 'The Next Penelope' is a fast paced action racing game with loud colors, an original story and a challenging risk-reward system. Weapons can be mixed and used at any time, but all these abilities cost vital energy! Set in a futuristic Odyssey, 'The Next Penelope' is a fast paced action racing game with loud colors, an original story and a challenging risk-reward system. The Next Penelope macgamestore.com Mac Game Store.

Charles Moore - 2008.01.02 -Tip Jar

Fixing Dialup Problems in Leopard

From Jim Schimpf:

Hi,

My sister has dial up, and on going to Leopard she had the oppositeproblem, her email (Apple mail) worked fine, but web browsing was very,very, very sluggish. Going to Slashdot would never completely loadafter waiting 10 minutes.

Anyway, we found that the MTU fromher ISP was specified at 1500, and that did not make Leopard happy. Wefound that if we set the MTU to 1400 (found the suggestion in a newsgroup), it fixed the problem. The only other issue is you have to dothis every time you connect in.

We did an automator script for her that pops up, asks for adminpassword, then does the command above. I'll gladly send it to you, butsince you are on dial up I didn't want to impose. You can try the aboveline in a terminal window after you connect up to your ISP and see ifthat makes any difference.

- Jim Schimpf

Hi Jim,

I'll check out the command and see if that helps.

Charles

Eudora as the 'Correct' Email Client

From Tony:

Mr. Moore,

re: Eudora Brokenwith Dialup in Leopard, but Where to Go Next?

Thank you very much for your explorations with Eudora 6.2.4 andLeopard. I have a law office built on Mac, and Eudora is the correctemail client. Although always a rapid adopter, I approach Leopard withtrepidation in part because of concerns about getting stuck withoutEudora.

Further thoughts about how and whether to jump ship will be readgratefully.

Tony

Hi Tony,

I love your reference to Eudora being the 'correct'email client. So true! Nothing else is even in the same proverbialballpark IMHO.

I should say that I am less and less convinced thatEudora is the genesis of the trouble I'm having with email in Leopard.The problem is more likely some weirdness in Leopard that creates anincompatibility (or marginal compatibility) with my dialup ISP, so Ihate to dissuade you from trying Leopard, and the whole thing mightwork just fine with your Internet hookup.

That said, classic Eudora is now orphaned, so we canbe sure that sooner or later it will hit the compatibility wall asstandards and operating systems evolve.

I'm very much hoping that the Odysseus project tobuild a real Eudora successor will bear fruit.

Charles

A Fan of Mozilla Eudora

From LHS:

Hi Charles,

Merry Christmas and (soon) Happy New year!

I wrote to you once in the past to share a frustration regardingsomething said about Opera by another publisher (Tidbits.com) - if youremember. Anyway, many thanks for your many articles.

I share your admiration forEudora. Still, I have not used Eudora for many many years becauseof its shortcomings when it comes to multilingualism - a.k.a. Unicode.There are many things that Eudora had that seemed so obvious, that Icould not understand how other mail clients could fail to implementthose features. Such as how it handles multiple identities. Anotherforce of Eudora is - I believe (though I am not certain - since I hadto switch) - that it is a pretty good tool for writing email in.

In the end, I chose Thunderbird for itsmultilingualism and because I find it the best tool to write email in.Not perfect - but what it is lacking is, in my view, down to lack ofcare for the details - at least on the Mac platform.

Thunderbird has two editors: An HTML editor and a plain text editor.The HTML editor is the best - for me, as the plain text editorbasically is SimpleText or TextEdit without any styling/formattingoptions - if I remember. While the HTML editor lets you add somestructure and style to your letters, which will carry on to the plaintext messages that I usually send out. So all in all, I write with theHTML editor, using Courier New as my default font, and have itconverted to plain text when I send it.

This way I can e.g. easily create indents - and other suchASCII-artsy stuff. Well - I don't know what others think, but I likethis way.

I can also add headers [this is one],

And it it will partly carry over to the plain text version. In myview, many email programs are very bad writing tools. And I am veryhappy for those things I get of Thunderbird (and Mozilla Eudora). I canfor instance make text bold or italic, and thenEudora/Thunderbird will convert it ASCII-mark-up for me ... (Well, Idon't use that feature too much, but it is there when I need it...)

Okay - I digress. I wanted to say that I think you could have saidmore positive things about «Mozilla Eudora». ;-)For instance, you say in your article that you «don't like'3-box' user interface».

However, Mozilla Eudora doesn't force you to use the 3-paneinterface of Thunderbird. You can use a 2-pane layout. It is in thePenelope preferences of Mozilla Eudora.

Also, they have tried to implement some of the Eudora smartness inthe Message List. For instance, you can click on the name of a sender,and then all message of that sender in that list will be displayedtogether.

As I have not used Eudora for so many years, I am not a Eudoraexpert at all, and never was. But I feel that Eudora already offerssome nice improvement compared with the Thunderbird version. And so Ihave made Mozilla Eudora my preferred emailer. Call it my 2 cents ofsupport for the Mozilla Eudora project.

This said, I too have subscribed to the announcement list for theOdysseus project. It might well be that I end up as their customer. Butthey will then have to offer a decent writing experience. They musthave an alright editor! (There are many okay mailers out there:PowerMail, GyazMail, and perhaps others, but they all fail to give methe a good writing experience.)

All the best,
Leif Halvard Silli
Oslo, Norway

Hi Leif,

Yes, I remember your previous correspondence. Good tohear from you again. Hope you had a great Christmas, and Happy New Yearto you as well.

I can't dispute your point about Unicode. For folkslike yourself for whom multilingual support is an important matter, ifit doesn't have it, it doesn't have it, and you have to lookelsewhere.

I agree that Eudora/Penelope is an improvement onThunderbird, and I will continue to monitor its development hopefully,but it isn't a very lively hope.

I would say that Thunderbird/Eudora 8's biggestshortcoming for my needs is its totally lame and crippled management ofmultiple email accounts. I have 22 accounts configured in Eudora 6.2.4with different SMTP servers configured for various accounts, and it allworks near-flawlessly.

I'm aware of the two-pane Penelope option, but what Iwant is Eudora's 'no-pane' interface, with just open mailbox andmessage windows visible, many simultaneously if I prefer. The onlyother email client I know of that works this way is Nisus Email, which had a lot ofpromise when it was introduced, but Nisus Software apparently lostinterest, perhaps because it is tough to sell an email client whenthere are good, free alternatives, and it hasn't been upgraded foryears, has no SSL support, and so on.

Classic Eudora is a decent writing environment, withinline spell-checking and some basic text tools, but for anything butshort replies, I do my composing in Tex-Edit Plus and then copy and paste intoEudora. One of the cool things about Nisus Email, by the way, is thatit lets you work in the word processor or text editor of your choiceand send mail from within that application directly.

HTML support in an email client is not a priority forme, and being stuck with a slow dialup Internet connection, I prefer touse all plain text anyway.

Meanwhile, I'm glad you are finding Eudora 8 asatisfactory tool for your email requirements. I'm certainly supportiveof the effort to keep Eudora alive, although it will have to become alot more versatile, flexible, and manually controllable for me toembrace it. I expect that the amount of classic Eudora's feature setthat can be grafted on to the Thunderbird engine is somewhat limited,which is the problem.

Charles

Griffin iMate Battery

From Ken Watanabe:

Charles,

I quick note to reader Stephen whowrote:

'I've been trying for a very long time to keep my oldApple Extended Keyboard II workingwith my Quicksilver through a Griffin iMate. But every Tiger updatewould make it quirkier, and it's not officially supported any moreabove 10.3.9.'

My favorite keyboard is an ADB Apple Extended Keyboard II. I havetwo of them, and they are both in great shape. I use it with a GriffiniMate also, and it seems to work 100% fine with Mac OS X 10.4.11.I didn't even install the iMate driver. My possible tip for Stephan isthat the iMate has a small battery inside. I'm not sure what it does,but perhaps the 'quirkiness' Stephen has experienced is from thatbattery getting weak.

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the tip.

I also have an iMate, although I haven't used it for along time.

I do have an old MacAlly New Wave 'board that I'mpartial to and a few old ADB mice, so it comes in handy sometimes.

I wasn't aware of the potential battery issue.

Charles

Cooler Running Laptops with Scripting

From John Muir:

Hello Charles,

I have one of those firstgeneration 12' PowerBook G4s which can run particularly hot ifgiven the chance. Mine will easily hover around 50ºC while doingnothing much in particular if left to its own devices. So I've beenusing the same power management tricks as you for a while instead. Myearly 2003 system has no Automatic mode for its CPU, demanding insteada manual switch from Highest to Reduced. For most things Reduced is agood choice, but I soon tired of fiddling around in System Preferenceseach time I wanted to switch between the two.

Instead I use a keyboard shortcut.

Red Sweater Software have a utility called FastScripts, which letsyou run scripts using systemwide keyboard shortcuts if you like.There's a free FastScripts Lite version of the program if you're happywith ten or less. It works in both Tiger and Leopard in my experience,and right now I have five scripts hooked up to my PowerBook's functionkeys. I press Function+F1 to engage Reduced CPU mode and Function+F2for Highest. I also use the next three keys to switch between ColorSyncprofiles.

The only downside to my solution is that the two scripts I wrote forchanging between CPU speeds need to have admin privileges: which meansthey contain a username and password. Here they are without those:

Reduced Mode Script:

do shell script 'pmset reduce 1' user name'yourusername' password 'yourpassword' with administratorprivileges

Highest Mode Script:

do shell script 'pmset reduce 0' user name'yourusername' password 'yourpassword' with administratorprivileges

Pasting those into Script Editor, substituting a real username andpassword, and saving as AppleScripts provides a quick way to changemodes. I find FastScripts to be the most convenient way to handleseveral of them which I have in frequent use.

Note that those sample scripts are one single line long each. ScriptEditor throws up an error if you try them with the linebreaks they'vepicked up in email form.

And as for winters: I'm up at 56ºN here in Scotland, and ournights start between three and four o'clock right now. If it weren'tfor having the other side of the Atlantic nearby to even things out abit, it would be a frozen place indeed. Fingers crossed that the GulfStream doesn't find reason to wander elsewhere any time soon!

John Muir

The Next Penelope: Race To Odysseus Mac Os X

Hi John,

Thanks for the tip about FastScripts. I'm a bigAppleScript fan and use them extensively in Tex-Edit Plus. My entireF-key row is assigned to toggle AppleScripts, except for F12 throughF15, which handle Eject/Dashboard, Spaces in Leopard, and displaybacklight intensity.

My 1.33 GHz G4PowerBook runs about 45-50° in Reduced mode with Leopard. It'sfine for most things, and I can always kick it to Automatic if I needthe extra power. I'm used to working with slow speed G4s with myPismos anyway.;-b

My biggest workflow bottleneck is the Internet.

It gets dark around 4:30 PM here in Nova Scotia thesedays. I'm at 45°N. The Gulf Stream runs past about 100 miles southof me on its way to you.

Charles

The Next Penelope: Race To Odysseus Mac Oscar

Another Text Processor for Mac OS X

From Dale O'Gorman:

Dear Mr. Moore.

Have you ever considered reviewing software such as TexShop, which functionsas a front end for TeX on Mac OS X? As both a Linux and MacOS X power user, I have found TeX to be an incredibly powerfultool for manipulating and editing text and producing beautiful andconsistent output. It seems a shame that such software does not oftenget reviewed, as it is the most portable and platform agnostic formatavailable.

If you would like, I would be pleased to review the software for LEMat some point in the future.

However I defer to your good judgment in this.

And the fact the software is open source (and free) is a bonus.

Best Regards,
Dale O'Gorman

Hi Dale,

I'll definitely look into it. I'm not especiallyerudite on the Linux/Unix end of things and wasn't previously aware ofthe TexShop program, but it sounds great.

Charles

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Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The RoadWarrior column was a regular feature on MacOpinion, he isnews editor at Applelinks.com and a columnist at MacPrices.net. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

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Home > CLA > CLASSICS > CLASSICS_FACULTY_PUBS > 12

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-1984

Abstract

To the Greeks of the fifth century, the heroes and heroines of myth, the villains and villainesses--even the sorcerers and monsters--were figures from history, or at least historical legend. Surely the sophisticated Athenian of the fifth century did not believe in a literal interpretation of Scylla and Charybdis any more than we do, nor that Odysseus actually underwent every single setback and adventure retailed in the Odyssey. But, just as surely, he believed that there had been an Odysseus, just as implicitly as we believe in George Washington or Richard the Lion-Hearted. Unlike us, however, he also had an intimate knowledge of the characters of his myth-history. Whereas not many Americans today could tell you more than three salient facts about the lives of Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, or (God forbid!) Charlemagne, virtually every fifth-century Greek would be utterly familiar with most, or at least many, of the details (and variants on each detail) of the lives of Herades, Agamemnon, and hundreds of others less renowned. Their emotional ties to these heroes were strong, too--partly in the same way as people of all eras feel attached to their best-loved storybook heroes and villains; but an extra dimension is added to their attachment by the fact that, before the Sophistic revolution in thought, traditional Greek education consisted to a great extent of moral admonitions to model one's life on those of the great heroes of myth, on the grounds that Virtue consists, for a boy, in being 'like Achilles' or 'like Orestes' (as Telemachus is told, early on, in the Odyssey) and, for a girl, in being 'like Penelope' or 'unlike Clytemnestra.'

Recommended Citation

McDermott, Emily A. 'Euripides and the Decline of Character: A Soap Opera Connection' Classical Outlook, Vol. 61 Iss. 4 (1984)

Publisher

Classical Outlook

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