Existing users, 
User Name Graham Cox
Member Since 2004-01-12
Total number of Feedback Posts: 25
Total number of comments: 11
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Graham Cox [ Search for All ]
EazyDraw 1.6.2 (Mac OS X)
Following my earlier comment, i contacted the author regarding a tool for help with drawing maps. His response is the wall tool. Well, sadly, it's useless for maps. The line fill problem has also not been addressed. I do want this program to succeed, and I've found the author willing to listen, but so far the actual results are a disappointment. I believe the best way to address many of these feature requests is to create a plug-in tool API so that we can write our own. [alert admin]
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Thursday, June 17 2004 @ 04:52 PM PDT
MacAstronomica 2.0.5 (Mac OS X)
This looks good at first glance but so many features are disabled I have no way to make any useful assessment of it. The one bit that is claimed to be fully working - the Orrery - has a non-intuitive and non-standard interface (in my book, using an "Eject" button to mean close window is bad design - there are perfectly good controls built in to the OS for that, but here they've been deliberately circumvented! Also, "Play" doesn't, it single steps.). Unless the author gives more away in the demo/trial version, and fixes up the interface idiosyncracies, there's no incentive to pay the license fee. [alert admin]
Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:33 AM PDT
MacAstronomica 2.0.5 (Mac OS X)
This looks good at first glance but so many features are disabled I have no way to make any useful assessment of it. The one bit that is claimed to be fully working - the Orrery - has a non-intuitive and non-standard interface (in my book, using an "Eject" button to mean close window is bad design - there are perfectly good controls built in to the OS for that, but here they've been deliberately circumvented! Also, "Play" doesn't, it single steps.). Unless the author gives more away in the demo/trial version, and fixes up the interface idiosyncracies, there's no incentive to pay the license fee. [alert admin]
Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:32 AM PDT
Fetch Art for iTunes 1.1.1 (Mac OS X)
I get "No Art" found even for extremely common albums that I KNOW must be there. I'm not sure but it seems to be using the song name rather than the album name as a search string. Is it me? [alert admin]
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Thursday, May 20 2004 @ 03:56 AM PDT
LED Spectrum Analyser 2.0.5 (Mac OS X)
Is it just 10.2 users who are having problems? I have 10.3 and iTunes 4.5 and it works fine, but it seems 10.2 has problems. Why this should be I don't know - it doesn't make much sense since the features I added do not depend on 10.3 specific APIs as far as I know. If 10.2 users are willing to contact me by eMail I can build diagnostic versions that may help pinpoint the problem. Unfortunately debugging visualisers is difficult as iTunes won't run with a debugger present, so indirect methods (like log output) is required. Some idea of which configs do and don't work is also handy - if any 10.2 users have this working I'd like to hear from you as well. Fixing the problem should be easy, but understanding it might take a while. [alert admin]
Saturday, May 08 2004 @ 04:00 AM PDT
Pyrotechnium 1.1 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
Download problem seems to be caused by Stuffit Expander
I just tried unpacking the archive using Stuffit Expoander, and I get a badly-formed archive like some here have discovered. On OS X 10.3, the archive is unpacked using a utility called BOMArchiveHelper. This component seems to be a standard part of 10.3, and may not exist on 10.2 - there, Stuffit may be used by default and so it unpacks incorrectly. I no longer have a 10.2 install around to check this out on, but by manually dragging the archive onto SE, I found this problem occurred. I've uploaded a stuffit version here: http://www.homepage.mac.com/graham.cox/pyro/pyro1.1.sit I'll submit an update to version tracker so this becomes the official download link [alert admin]
Wednesday, April 21 2004 @ 07:55 PM PDT
Cacophony 1.3 (Mac OS X)
Needs ADSR and frequency shaping
As with Amadeus, this lacks arbitrary amplitude and pitch shaping, which means that the insert noise/waveform commands serve no purpose. You cannot craete basic sound effects from scratch with this program. My 1987 copy of Farallon's SoundEdit could do that easily and more - these modern efforts could do well to copy its feature set. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, April 07 2004 @ 06:08 AM PDT
Amadeus II 3.7.1 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
Needs ADSR and frequency shaping
what's the pont of including tools to generate blocks of waveforms/noise, if you cannot shape them in pitch and amplitude afterwards? It means this program is unable to be used for the most besic sound effect design - it can only really be used to edit existing files. Bring back Farallon's SoundEdit!!!! [alert admin]
Wednesday, April 07 2004 @ 05:58 AM PDT
Pyrotechnium 1.0 (Mac OS X)
...all working as it should be, and nothing wrong with the downloadable file. Suggest you try again RBanzai. [alert admin]
Tuesday, April 06 2004 @ 04:21 PM PDT
Pyrotechnium 1.0 (Mac OS X)
It's a bit harsh marking this down when for whatever reason you haven't even seen the app. Obviously there must be something wrong with your download, so either try again or find out what the problem is. Nobody posts faulty downloads on purpose. It's a simple .zip archive, containing an executable package and a read me file - just unzip it and double-click the app. If it's not there, then something went wrong with your download - you can't blame me for that. It would be fairer to leave it unstarred since the problem must be with you or an external failure. Unfortunately, it seems half the internet has just gone down, including Apple.com and mac.com, so right now I have no way to check the integrity of the download. Most of the US-based addresses in my bookmarks are unreachable - has Osama been up to his tricks? (3am Eastern Australian time, 7/4/04). Since mac.com is down, perhaps the download failed before it could complete. The archive should be 675K in size, expanding to about a meg. [alert admin]
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Tuesday, April 06 2004 @ 10:21 AM PDT
Last 10 Comments by Graham Cox [ Search for All ]
Ok, let's deal with your complaints one at a time. First, the 2.0.4 version is available from the homepage. If the link isn't showing up, make sure your browser isn't caching an old version. Secondly, yes it seems so easy to "isolate the problem". I wish it were that simple, I would have fixed it like a shot - it certainly doesn't do me any good to have software that doesn't do what it's intended to do.…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, June 10 2004 @ 01:08 AM PDT
The plugin doesn't show up on 10.2 (iTunes version irrelevant). I don't know why. Since nobody has contacted me regarding this, there is nothing I can currently do about it, since a) it works for me (10.3) and b) I don't have a 10.2 set up to try it on and c) there is no debugging available for iTunes plugins. You can use version 2.0.4 instead, that will work on 10.2. You can get this version…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, May 17 2004 @ 11:56 PM PDT
I'm not sure why this is considered a problem. For one thing, your processor can run flat out and it won't overheat. Secondly, try the iTunes default visualiser - it uses even more CPU. Finally, if you're using the visualiser, presumably you are not all that concerned with doing anything else with your computer - you just want to listen to some music and watch some pretty display, so what's the problem? I don't really…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, May 10 2004 @ 05:49 AM PDT
Downloaded twice, still nothing
I'd really like to help you get to the bottom of this problem, but the fact is, I simply don't see it happening here. The file is craeted using the archive command in OS X, and I uploaded it to my iDisk by dragging and dropping. No matter how I go about downloading it, it works for me. If you email me (address in the read me) I can send you a copy directly. If that…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Wednesday, April 21 2004 @ 07:43 PM PDT
It may, though it's not as easy as it looks. OS X screensavers have to be special Cocoa subclasses, but this code is a CFM C++ app which bears no relation to Cocoa. I may rewrite it to work that way, but it will be a while yet. Note, while running, this display will actually prevent a screensaver from kicking in, so you can run it "manually" as a screensaver. Of course that's not quite the…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Wednesday, April 21 2004 @ 04:09 PM PDT
Oops, I should have read on - you've already tried that. Hmmm, weird... It's hard to know what to suggest, it works for me. In fact I don't need to do anything special, Safari deals with that when I click the link - I just end up with the unzipped folder on the desktop. I've copied the .zip file to my public folder on my iDisk - you could try connecting to that and downloading it…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, April 19 2004 @ 05:51 PM PDT
Try not using Stuffit Expander. The archive is created using the "archive...items" command in the 10.3 Finder - all you need to do is double-click the .zip file and it should be expanded properly by a component of the OS. I've not tried using the file with Stuffit Expander so maybe it's not compatible with the archive command.
Original feedback item : Read More
Monday, April 19 2004 @ 04:26 PM PDT
There's got to be something wrong there. I'm running it here on a 600 MHz iBook and top reports only 50% CPU, with the odd peak above that, but mostly lower. Within the visualizer, drawing code is run every 16ms, which is eons of time between operations in CPU terms. All rendering is done using direct pixel blasting straight into the window's pixmap, with only a port flush of the whole block left to the…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Tuesday, March 30 2004 @ 10:30 PM PST
In fact doing it this way is trivial within the code - I can easily add it as an option. The reason I didn't before though is that it really doesn't look all that interesting - hardly much different from "flat colours". Still, if that's what you want...
Original feedback item : Read More
Saturday, March 27 2004 @ 03:05 AM PST
track info is not shown correctoly
iTunes supplies the track info, the plug-in only displays what it's given. Sorry if it's wrong but the supplied data isn't in Unicode.
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:28 PM PST
