Archive for software
July 2, 2008 at 10:10 am · tag/s : blog, software
although i never really abandoned it, i have recently moved back to macjournal after working with devonthink for half a year. the new version macjournal 5 has some of the same features as devonthink, and is much cheaper and leaner. this is useful for me since i work exclusively on pre-intel macs with tiger and i have only 1gb of ram in my ibook. devonthink demands oodles of ram. hopefully macjournal 5 won’t prove equally demanding!
when the fabled devonthink 2 is released, if ever, i might have another go with it, but i think it is a little too ambitious for its own good, at least in the pro version which you have to use if you want to have more than one database. macjournal now also allows multiple database, (which it calls ‘documents’). this is great if you don’t need to access all of your data all of the time. mj5 also introduces smart folders (or journals) and status, flagging, tagging, priority and rating options for each entry. most importantly it allows you to import any sort of file and view or launch it from within mj. you can also open and edit a file or entry in a separate window and have different windows open at any one time. there is also a liveword count.
under the hood things are also much improved : you can just double click on one of your macjournal data files to open it, and the single huge unwieldy database is a thing of the past. unless they are encoded, files are just saved as rtf or rtfd and can be accessed externally from the macjournal application. without a doubt this would also improve .mac synching which was so horrible in macjournal 4. as i finally gave up on my .mac account at the beginning of the year i have no way of testing this but i will report on my tests using a webdav server and ben rister’s synk in an update to this post later, if anyone is interested.
of course being able to post directly to your blog as i am doing with this post, and downloading and editing all your existing posts from within mj is one of the crucial features which makes this software so useful. last but not least, the personalized support provided by the developer dan schimpf is also brilliant.
wishlist : although i haven’t got one (yet!) obviously iphone syncing is a must. also it would be nice to be able to link to journals and entries in different documents and have mj open them if necessary and to be able to change the status labels. smarter smart journals? a ‘today’ smart journal? tumblr support? (is coming dan says)
but it’s good to be back!
June 11, 2008 at 4:14 pm · tag/s : software, sound
i have been testing FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) as a compression method for a special itunes library of lossless audio and in case anyone is interested i have found a couple of bits of mac freeware that seem really good : xAct and Fluke.
xAct is an audio compressor which encodes and decodes FLAC and a number of other codecs. you drag the files, straight out of the CD if you like, into the programme’s icon and away it goes. once the tracks are encoded you fire up Fluke and it imports them into itunes for your listening pleasure, retaining the FLAC encoding of course.
the first CD i did was at 4 am jetlagged and discombobulated and if i can do it in that state anyone can. appropriately enough it was Entertainment! by the Gang of Four (1979) = 50 minutes of music = 317Mb and worth every bit and byte : i am no audiophile but the record sounds wonderful through my little KingRex CLASST+U amplifier which sucks the digits right out of my USB hole.
amazingly crisp, cold and hard - yet … warm and sweet.
better than on CD?
possibly!
February 6, 2008 at 9:58 am · tag/s : computers, melbourne, software, writing
and so we write and that is all we do. and there is nothing on the screen except our writing. in fact the only pixels that are switched on are the ones necessary to show the writing and as i type, more pixels switch on to show the new words and they’re green and that is kinda cute, and somehow it is much more relaxing to see just the words on the screen and none of the other distractions.*
and so write is all we do. that is the default position. and none of it is of any interest to any one else. at least not yet. or maybe it never will be. and maybe this doesn’t matter.
essentially i have bought a year to write. there is just a little bit of this and that, here and there. but minimal. so a miracle : i have time. to write, two more things are needed : a method and a rhythm. oh and rain helps. thank you. but it is not essential. and if the greek next door would shut the fuck up as well and people would stop slamming their doors and cuntface upstairs would stop dropping marbles on the floor that would help. but it is not essential. all i need is time, method and rhythm. and it seems i have them. now and now and now and now.
and now it is raining too. bucketing down as it happens. at last. and cuntface has gone out. and the rain is masking the sound of the greek next door.
it seems in this new life that i go to bed grumpy when the feature creature is away, except this morning i have woken up grumpy too and after an hour or two of grumping around i realize/decide that i have a headache and that a pain killer is appropriate, and some toasted grain bread from dench (have you tried their donuts?!) with peanut butter and some of that nice french cherry jam and a big pot of strong tea.
oh yeah.
and so i can write. and that is all i need to do. and the second cup of tea is nice and strong. that’s the advantage of a smaller cup : by the time you get to the second cup it is nice and strong.
ss officer to the jew : i will release you if you can guess which one of my eyes is made of glass.
jew : it is the left one.
ss officer : correct. how did you know?
jew : it looks more human than the other one.
renowned holocaust historian yehuda bauer told a version of this story in his speech to the german parliament on 27 january 1998. one of the roles of the historian he says, is to tell true stories. (i had been wondering about the use of fiction.) but he prefaces the glass eye story by saying that he doesn’t know if it is true or not. it is worth telling anyway, no? one wonders where it came from. is it at all possible that it is a joke? told by one jew to another? in the lager?
* ok. so i am a slut. after i wrote my daily 500 words today i discovered that jesse, the ceo of
hogbay software and the developer of
writeroom which i am testing and which gives me the clutter-free screen described above, will give
a free licence to people who post a review on their blog. so i thought why not post them? but since i didn’t write these words
in order to get the free licence and he may well have judged this post to be too crude and rude, and too vague to qualify as a review, i was well prepared to be unsuccessful. so i may be a slut but i am not a whore. :p anyway i did get the free licence. thanks jesse. if you want to
try writeroom gentle reader you can use it free for 30 days. if you want to keep using it after that you’ll have to
pay $25… oh. you’ll need a mac. is it even necessary to say that?
January 4, 2008 at 8:18 am · tag/s : computers, software
if i thought i still need my hideously overpriced and under featured dot mac account for file sharing, it appears that i don’t : quickshareit is the easiest simplest file sharing utility ever and it is free. drag a file onto the icon and quickshareit uploads the file and gives you a URL where it can be downloaded. drag a bunch of files and it zips them first. drag a bunch of images and it will create a gallery. file size up to about 100 mb. your files stay online for about 3o days. completely anonymous - you don’t even need to register or sign up. and … not an ad in sight. (not yet anyway…) for example here is a link to another favourite freeware mac app which does exactly what its name implies lockdesktop
