Clarkwood Software Extras
This is the extras section of the Clarkwood Software web site.
Here you will find an eclectic selection of articles. Some relate directly to Clarkwood Software products. Others describe projects that some of the people of Clarkwood Software have done in the past. Some discuss miscellaneous technical problems or issues. You’ll also find links to older products.
- featured articles:
- merging transactions
- bob’s macquarium
- harsh business realities
Articles
The articles in this section are the most relevant and generally the most recent articles and essays that we have available. Other articles are in the Cultural & Historical Tidbits section and the Archived Articles section.
Featured Articles
The articles in this section are our highlighted featured articles.
There are subtle and surprising advantages when you effectively merge transactions in Flowing Pennies.
A decade and a half in the making, Bob’s Macquarium is finally finished. Created from the shell of an original Macintosh, it is now home to piscatorial pals Larry, Moe, and Shemp.
The economic side of Peek-a-Boo (and our other Clarkwood Software products) is an intertwined set of delicate balancing acts. This article is a frank exploration of the intersection of software design with business.
Clarkwood Software explores the phenomenon of how small, simple rules can expand into very sophisticated and interesting high-level behavior.
Most personal finance applications available rely heavily on accounts. There are good reasons for this, but when the fixation on accounts rises to obstruct the user interface, the price you pay is a loss of clarity, and the risk of succumbing to subtle fallacies.
There are several factors that we think make Peek-a-Boo special; this article explains some of the decisions behind Peek-a-Boo’s design philosophy and why Peek-a-Boo has been maintained, updated, and used for nearly one and a half decades.
Clarkwood Software explores the contrition we feel about virtual impoliteness and simulated environmental insensitivity. Stand with us against fake cruelty.
The more closely you observe something, the more you affect it. This presents a dilemma when trying to measure CPU usage to a high degree of accuracy.
The first time you run Peek-a-Boo, it will ask for an administrator name and password, or authentication. This article describes why authentication is necessary.
Right now Peek-a-Boo is the only product with screencasts available, but do check out this article for links to RealMedia and QuickTime movies of Peek-a-Boo in action.
Cultural & Historical Tidbits
Several Clarkwood Software personnel contributed to Micro-Mysticism, a four-bit microprocessor designed and implemented “from the gates up” for a class in our electrical engineering curriculum.
Two of the people behind Clarkwood Software collaborated on a Senior Project while attaining our electrical engineering degrees. PowerWeb is an architecture for using many Macintoshes over a local area network to speed up computationally intensive tasks.
“Nostalgically Retired” Products
Software Nostalgia
Here are links to older products. We call these our “nostalgically retired” products; they are no longer profitable or under active development. But feel free to explore them, if only for their historical value.
We worked hard on each of these, and each was at least partly a labor of love. In the end, the number of people buying these products dropped low enough that we had to make a cold, calculating, tough decision to put active development on hold.
- featured articles:
- merging transactions
- bob’s macquarium
- harsh business realities