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User Name grant_brookes
Member Since 2006-01-25
Total number of Feedback Posts: 9
Total number of comments: 1
Last 10 Feedback Posts by grant_brookes [ Search for All ]
FileSalvage 5.1 (Mac OS X)
I was impressed with Norton's Unerase. Despite the widespread panning of Norton Utilities for OS X, Unerase always did what I needed. Now, having finally outgrown Nortons with an upgrade to OS X 10.4, I'm even more impressed with FileSalvage. It found stuff that Data Rescue II never could. And it displayed results that made sense. The ability (in Expert Mode) to specify the file type you're looking for -- be it audio, image or whatever -- means it's quicker. It doesn't spend time looking for deleted files you don't want to undelete anyway. It doesn't give you a huge list of randomly named files to wade through. And it allows you to preview many files, to check they're the right ones, before recovering them. So cool! [alert admin]
Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 05:34 AM PDT
DateService 1.1 (Mac OS X)
I've just tried this out with TextEdit, and it works just as advertised. Thanks very much for emailing it to me, Greg (tried to email you back, but got blocked by an overzealous spam filter -- repeatedly, despite getting several IP addresses unblocked). Particularly useful is its accessibility in the 'Save' dialog box (so I can append dates to file names as I save them). I guess it would be a whole 'nother layer of complexity to get a service to insert the date/time as a live field that updates automatically, as in NeoOffice 2.1? [alert admin]
Monday, July 16 2007 @ 01:29 AM PDT
Kodak EasyShare 6.0 (Mac OS X)
Conflict between Kodak EasyShare v6.0 and QuickTime 7.1.5
I've often read on this site of other people's of problems after applying Software Update, but never had one myself. So this is a first. After updating to QuickTime 7.1.5, my Kodak EasyShare application would quit whenever I tried to transfer, play or edit a video file. It would do this without generating a Crash Report, or any log file that I could find, which initially made it difficult to pinpoint where the problem was. I initially thought it was related to a new OS X user account I created, coincidentally around the same time the QT update came out. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled the EasyShare software, to no avail. It was only when I reverted to QT 7.1.3 (using the instructions on this site: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2007031310092798) that the problem went away. To double check that the original problem was not due to an incomplete installation of QuickTime 7.1.5, I did a "forced install" using Pacifist (http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070313101411459). Hey presto, the problem returned and the app would quit again every time. I don't know enough to figure out whether this problem is limited to my version of the operating system (OS X 10.3.9), or a quirk of my particular machine, though I doubt it. The moral of the story is: Don't upgrade to QuickTime 7.1.5 if you're running Kodak EasyShare. I'm not overly confident that Apple will make fixes in future to accommodate this relatively uncommon(?) competitor to iPhoto, and Kodak don't appear to devote great resources to their Mac ports, but we can always hope that the conflict might possibly be resolved in future releases from one or other party. [alert admin]
Sunday, March 18 2007 @ 03:00 AM PDT
Apple QuickTime 7.1.5 (Mac OS X)
Conflict between QuickTime 7.1.5 and Kodak EasyShare v6.0
I've often read on this site of other people's of problems after applying Software Update, but never had one myself. So this is a first. After updating to QuickTime 7.1.5, my Kodak EasyShare application would quit whenever I tried to transfer, play or edit a video file. It would do this without generating a Crash Report, or any log file that I could find, which initially made it difficult to pinpoint where the problem was. I initially thought it was related to a new OS X user account I created, coincidentally around the same time the QT update came out. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled the EasyShare software, to no avail. It was only when I reverted to QT 7.1.3 (using the instructions at: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2007031310092798) that the problem went away. To double check that the original problem was not due to an incomplete installation of QuickTime 7.1.5, I did a "forced install" using Pacifist (http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070313101411459). Hey presto, the problem returned and the app would quit again every time. I don't know enough to figure out whether this problem is limited to my version of the operating system (OS X 10.3.9), or a quirk of my particular machine, though I doubt it. The moral of the story is: Don't upgrade to QuickTime 7.1.5 if you're running Kodak EasyShare. I'm not overly confident that Apple will make fixes in future to accommodate this relatively uncommon(?) competitor to iPhoto, and Kodak don't appear to devote great resources to their Mac ports, but we can always hope that the conflict might possibly be resolved in future releases from one or other party. [alert admin]
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Sunday, March 18 2007 @ 02:55 AM PDT
HandBrake 0.7.1 (Mac OS X)
A wee ripper! (excuse the pun) 
OK, so whaddya do? You come across a DVD compilation of music videos, containing some old songs from your college days. The songs are performed by independent artists who were never released on CD, and never will be. Well, if you're me, you'd really like to get these songs onto your iPod. That means somehow extracting the audio from the disc, and getting it into mp3 or aiff format, to import into iTunes. I stick to open source applications and/or freeware when I can, but I did shell out the 60-odd Australian dollars for QuickTime Pro, which can export audio from any QT file into aiff. So the trick, up until now, has been to get DVD video into a QT-supported format. I did it once using the Streaming/Exporting Wizard in VLC Media Player. I found it very complicated, and slow, but stumbled onto a way that worked. But there was a mountain of settings to wade though, and -- silly me -- I didn't write down the right combination of settings. Since then, I've only been able to generate output files that can't be opened in QuickTime. Plan B was to use the export function that appears when you click the "Video" tab in Toast 7. But every time I tried to export the DVD-Video file into a QT-supported format, the application would either crash, or hang part-way through. Maybe it's my computer, which is getting a bit long in the tooth now, being an older model G4. Then out of the sky falls this wonderful application called HandBrake. It's easy to use, it's quick, and it works every time. It will turn DVD video into an MP4 file that I can open in QuickTime. I particularly like the way you can select the video you want to extract by chapter (unlike VLC media player). One of the reasons I like freeware is that you can try an application to see if it's worth paying for. I've made a donation to the developer of this one. Thank you, thank you, thank you! One idea, though. Ever thought of adding an option to extract the audio track only? It would save this old user a couple of minutes per song. [alert admin]
Saturday, February 10 2007 @ 05:57 PM PST
MacJanitor 1.3 (Mac OS X)
As one who held on, and held on to OS 9, the move up to OS X was a whole new world. ("Permissions"? What are permissions?). It was about a year before I learned of OS X's automated self-maintenance routines, which run at times of the day, week and month when my machine was off. You can imagine the performance boost after I cleared a year's worth of gunk by running MacJanitor for the first time. Or, if you don't have this application yet and therefore can't imagine, let me tell you... I don't use benchmarks or performance tests, so it's all subjective. But gee, my Mac just seems to fly now. And did I mention it was idiot-proof? For an OS X novice who uses his or her machine during the day only, this is exactly what you need. [alert admin]
Read Comments (1) | More Info | 3 of 3 users found this helpful
Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 05:09 PM PDT
Process Wizard 1.18 (Mac OS X)
Would be fantastic at twice the price!
My ageing G4 was groaning a little under the weighty of today's hungry apps. Real-time info from MenuMeters showed that the bottlenecks were in the CPU, which was running far too often at 100 percent utilisation. Then hey, presto! I download this little beauty and whenever I have one of those CPU-intensive applications running in front, I can downgrade (or kill) background process to speed things up. Process Wizard – it's like having a faster CPU! [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 04:42 PM PDT
Process Wizard 1.18 (Mac OS X)
Would be fantastic at twice the price!
My ageing G4 was groaning a little under the weighty of today's hungry apps. Real-time info from MenuMeters showed that the bottlenecks were in the CPU, which was running far too often at 100 percent utilisation. Then hey, presto! I download this little beauty and whenever I have one of those CPU-intensive applications running in front, I can downgrade (or kill) background process to speed things up. Process Wizard – it's like having a faster CPU! [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 04:42 PM PDT
Spring Cleaning 6.0.1 (Mac OS X)
Spring Cleaning 6.0.1 came bundled with Norton SystemWorks 3.0. Now I realise why they give it away for free. I have tried and tried to use SC's Orphaned Pref finder and MacUninstaller. Everyone talks about how slow it is, but you really can't underestimate how inaccurate it is either. Wanting to uninstall Roxio DVD compression software, SC came up with its list of "related files" to delete. They included four font files, a PageMaker resource file, the installer for Windows Media Player (!), a user cache for Adobe Acrobat, and a Core Audio resource file. Period. I give up. I will never use this utility again. (Interestingly enough, though, despite the warnings all over the net about the propensity for Norton SystemWorks to eat your hard drive, it's worked a treat for me SO LONG AS I boot into Emergency Mode from the CD). [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 03:07 PM PDT
Last 10 Comments by grant_brookes [ Search for All ]
Yeah, I had the same problem (running 10.3.9). Looked around, and found that while it says Senuti 0.50 is compatible with OS X 10.3 on this versiontracker page, the Senuti homepage (http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/) says that 10.4 or higher is required.
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Sunday, November 18 2007 @ 12:39 AM PST
