HyperCard Stacks

I started bicycle riding in ernest around 1985. Soon after I wrote this stack to compare gear ratios of my new racer with my older bikes. Later I added more bikes to my collection and added friends bikes to my stack. I added a second background that looked like a mountain bike when that became popular. The pedals are buttons. If you click them in an alternating fashion then the speedometer will read out miles per hour for the gears you have selected. The numbers on the right hand side of the screen are the gear inches of each gear combination. This is the same as the diameter of a non-geared wheel (remember those old time bikes?) that would go the same speed.


Download Gears.sit.


I often rode my bike over lunch while I worked for Wyatt Software. This is a stack that traces the first few miles of my regular 18 mile route. I was also riding regularly with the Portland Wheelmen and learned a lot of countryside from their maps. Here I was experimenting to see if I could make a better route map. I figured that you had to see past the horizon to really grok the route. A series of photographs wouldn't work. So I drew a half dozen route sketches that looked beyond the line of sight, kinda like the New Yorker's view of the country that shows the Hudson river as about half way to California. The arrows are buttons that advance through the stack. They also cue changes of direction and offer an occasional choice of route.


Download Guide.sit.


I often write stacks with my kids. This one came up after playing a game or two of war over lunch at the local pub. War is a simple minded game with no real choices. You just go through the motions and see what happens. I thought it would be fun to see the balance of power shift back and forth as game after game were played at high speed. The stack uses text fields to store each player's hands. These grow and shrink as a player's fortune waxes and wains. A few more cards in the stack deal the hands and collect statistics on the play. Real strength moves back and forth with the aces, not the total number of cards.


Download War.sit.