Existing users, 
User Name Makosuke
Member Since 2000-07-20
Total number of Feedback Posts: 15
Total number of comments: 2
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Makosuke [ Search for All ]
Delicious Library 2.1 (Mac OS X)
I've been using Delicious Library since version 1.0, and while 2.0 was an all-around solid update, I always felt I needed to temper my praise for it due to the horizontal details pane. In today's world of widescreen monitors, that was pretty much the most boneheaded UI decision I have ever seen, especially since it worked before. Well, it is now FIXED! That speaks well of the developer--willing to listen to complains and re-do a major UI feature in a .x update. From the user's standpoint, it's now both fast AND usable. The other substantial fix in 2.1 is that Japanese product searches work, which for those of us adding older imported books is a Very Good Thing. It also seems to have fixed the issue where books with a size included were not sized proportionately relative to each other, but I haven't tested thoroughly. Finally, 2.1 seems noticeably faster to me, though it could be placebo effect. The only thing resembling an issue I have now is that I appear to have ended up with a couple of duplicate items after the 2.0 to 2.1 update, though it's possible they existed before. This caused me to think "gee, a "find possible duplicates" feature would be nice, but it's far from necessary. All in all, this is software done right--feels good, looks good, works good, and it's fun. Usually I'd be looking for excuses not to deal with filing and cataloging, but this is one situation where it's so much fun I'm <i>looking for</i> excuses to do it. And, hey, knowing which friend has which DVD is certainly useful. [alert admin]
Friday, June 12 2009 @ 01:38 PM PDT
EasyFind 3.9 (Mac OS X)
I've been trying to find a simple, free app that can find dot files for me--had a couple of stray Spotlight folders I knew were hiding in a huge mess of files copied from disks, but I couldn't seem to find. Spotlight with "invisible" files turned on wouldn't do it, nor would any of the shareware tools I found. This, however, is perfect. Sure, there are a lot of things it doesn't do, but it does do just what I was looking for--search EVERYTHING by file name, and fast. It's earned a spot in my toolbox. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 0 of 1 users found this helpful
Monday, May 21 2007 @ 01:58 PM PDT
Jer's Novel Writer 0.6.0.7 (Mac OS X)
This app offers a really quality set of tools for the writer, and in my case as a rank amateur what it offers is pretty much exactly the help I need and nothing more--I can make notes, keep centralized info about characters and other story parts, organize the piece by section, and the margin notes are flat-out awesome. It also doesn't go overboard with the "CONTENT ONLY! NO FORMATTING!" model of some other writing apps; sometimes, you just want to put in some bold or italic text, and I'd rather not have my app tell me that's not an option because it's not "pure" or something. There's basically only one defficiency that I can see, and it's an acceptable one: The database is awesome, but there's no way to directly cross-reference it to the body text. So you can make notes to your heart's content about a character, but you can't link that note to, say, a section that character shows up in. I really only have one potential complaint: It uses (necessarily) a proprietary file format, and if I'm working on something important and time consuming, that makes me nervous. Obviously I want to back up like crazy, especially with beta software, but there's something to be said for, say, .rtf, which is very simple structurally and can be read by a lot of apps. Text could be extracted from a .jrwr file in the case of a total disaster--I checked--but the margin notes and database are not in a format that is at all transparent. Being a monolithic file with a fair amount of sectioned info, it makes me a bit uncomfortable, since relatively minor corruption could eat the whole mess for breakfast. Still, awesome app, and I'm going to give it a shot in "production". Here's looking forward to a universal, and final, version. [alert admin]
Read Comments (1) | More Info | 4 of 4 users found this helpful
Sunday, August 13 2006 @ 02:44 PM PDT
UnicodeChecker 1.9 (Mac OS X)
Awesome Multilingual Web Coding Backup 
I pretty much use this app for one thing only, but that one thing is so utterly indespensible that it'd be worth money if it weren't generously free: Converting non-English text to HTML entities via the services menu. When inserting small blocks of Japanese characters into English web pages, being able to select the text in TextWrangler and just select convert from the Services menu has saved me so much time I don't even want to think about it. It even provides a nice little transparent overlay telling you what it's just done. The wide variety of other features I've poked at on occasion, and the spotlight integration is cool, but basically this app provides the most valuable Service on my computer, and has never caused an issue or not functioned as expected (even version 1.6 at the time Tiger shipped worked perfectly with it). [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 3 of 3 users found this helpful
Saturday, November 12 2005 @ 02:07 PM PST
Logitech Control Center 1.5.0 (Mac OS X)
I have a MX500, and I've been using this on Tiger since it was released. (I was using version 1.3.0 under Panther.) So far the only definite problem it's having is that every time I restart (full restart, not log out and back in), the mouse speed goes breserk--so fast I can barely click a button. Going into the Keyboard and Mouse panel and adjusting the speed at all will set it to what I'd expect, and everything is fine from then on. Deleting all related prefs did not help. I have, however been having trouble with Tiger freezing completely every 2-5 days, and this is one of my suspects (there are others, though). Wonder if anyone else has had a similar problem...? [alert admin]
Read Comments (3) | More Info
Sunday, May 22 2005 @ 03:03 PM PDT
()
This little chunk of code is one of the best things I've seen in years. What it does is stupid-simple: lets QuickTime play WMV files. What this means is HUGE: It takes control of WMV out of the hands of Microsoft's worthless Windows Media Player and gives you control of your media. You can now one-click easy import WMV clips into iMovie, or transcode Windows Media into another format with QuickTime Pro. And perhaps coolest of all, QT Player with this addition is a FAR more effective way to view Windows Media than Microsoft's own player--files that take the latest Mac version of the Mac player as much as 10 seconds to re-start after jumping ahead in (this on a G5) are playing nearly instantly in QT player with this. Add to that the warm feeling that comes from not using MS's player, and it only took me 5 minutes of testing to decide this is well worth the $10. The only downside I can see is that the Open dialogues appear to be slowed tremendously (perhaps by this checking for WMV compatability?). [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Wednesday, April 20 2005 @ 02:29 AM PDT
Azureus BitTorrent Client 2.0.8.4 (Mac OS X)
Being a Java based program, and not one apparently heavily tested on the Mac, Azureus definitely has a lot of quriks (mostly in funky screen redraws), but it's still far and away the best BT client on the Mac. Some of it's advantages: -Massively detailed control over everything (can be bewildering, but also useful) -Great download/seeding management, including full statistics between launches, different handling of finished downloads left to seed, and automated file management -Incredible detailed info on what's going on (exact parts being transferred, etc) -Handles non-English filenames relatively smoothly (the standard Mac BT client is completely incapable of downloading some files with non-English characters in the filename) -For a Java app, relatively speedy (generally under 5% processor use on my G5) -Under heavy development (has gone from unusable to great in a couple of months) I like the standard BT client for it's simplicity, but for any degree of control, or if you want to download anything with a non-English filename, Azureus is the only way to go. By the way, it's generally quite stable, but has a habit of crashing on quit. This hasn't caused any problems, though. [alert admin]
Thursday, March 18 2004 @ 04:11 PM PST
APC Powerchute 1.3.2 (Mac OS X)
I've got a brand new XS1000 UPS hooked it up to my G5 (10.3.2); was glad to see a panther compatible version of this software. It lacks any detailed information (like the PC version of Powerchute), but it does its job; here's a detailed rundown of what it does, since there was essentially no Mac info in the manual. As far as options, it's very basic, but has what you need: Adds a preference pane with your choice of either shutting down after X minutes without power (preserve battery) or with X minutes remaining on the battery (longer runtime). Requires an admin password to make changes, not surprisingly. If it does not detect a UPS, it'll pop up a window complaining (even over the login window, in fact). If a UPS then becomes available, it pops up another window saying so, so you'll know if your UPS is being monitored. I did some tests, and on a power outage, you'll immediately get a popup window saying that the power is out, and your Mac will shut down at about (whatever time). My Mac woke from sleep immediately when the UPS kicked in, even though the UPS was connected to a USB hub (this is good, of course). The Mac shuts down after the specificed period (not terribly gracefully--no saves occurred in open programs), and the UPS will power itself off about one minute after the shutdown process begins (this is NOT documented anywhere I saw), presumably after the Mac has finished shutting down (mine had been done for 40 seconds). If power comes back up before shutdown begins, the UPS switches back to AC and the software lets you know power is back, with no shutdown happening. The only quirk is that if power comes back on *after* the shutdown has begun, the UPS will still wait one minute and power itself off, even though it starts right back up a second later. Not sure if this is a software or hardware issue, though. My only potential complaint is that I've seen a bit of instability after installing this, though I'm not sure it's APC's fault (applications have a couple of times acted as if they're open, but weren't actually running--this prevents force quitting them and restarting them, and makes it impossible to logout without killing your loginwindow process). [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Thursday, March 18 2004 @ 01:31 PM PST
Opera 7.5p3 (Mac OS X)
Bounces a few times, but crashes before anything appears on my G5 2X2, 10.3.3. Tried deleting the preferences from version 6, but no love there. Oh, well, it is a preview. [alert admin]
Thursday, March 18 2004 @ 01:15 PM PST
Docktastic Pro 8.9.17.4 (Mac OS X)
That's not only pleasingly useless (while still technically providing some actual functionality), but it's also just a really, really weird idea. Who thinks up these things? I also like how you can coax the drifting things around with the mouse. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 0 of 1 users found this helpful
Wednesday, November 05 2003 @ 12:34 PM PST
Last 10 Comments by Makosuke [ Search for All ]
Yes, it's an odd coincidence, but they happen. And I concur that what you're describing sounds exactly like a hardware failure--most likely hard drive--not something caused by the update. Did you try running Disk Utility from the Leopard install disc and see if it shows the drive's SMART status as failing? If it does, then it's unquestionably a hardware issue. On the topic of coincidences, if you don't often restart your Mac the…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, December 15 2008 @ 03:05 PM PST
Difference between this and "nightly builds"? 
There's actually a fairly major difference between these 1.0.x releases and nightly builds. The difference is this, assuming FireFox follows standard procedure: When Firefox was released as a 1.0 version, the code for that version was split off from the code that is under continued development. The development branch of the code is what the nightlies are based on, and it will eventually be released as version 1.1 (or whatever new "big" version). The 1.0.x…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, May 12 2005 @ 05:23 PM PDT
