Existing users, 
User Name unSane
Member Since 2002-09-19
Total number of Feedback Posts: 16
Total number of comments: 11
Last 10 Feedback Posts by unSane [ Search for All ]
The Body Journal 1.0b1 (Mac OS X)
Very polished for a beta. Dare I say it, an instantly essential application. Clean and simple interface hides the fact that it is actually a very deep app that allows you to not only track your medical history but also look up information, research drugs, monitor your fitness or bad habits. Also functions as a repository for documents and info that tend otherwise to get stuffed into drawers and shoeboxes. Top notch. [alert admin]
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Friday, June 03 2005 @ 11:34 AM PDT
Final Draft 7 0.0.54 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
... the FD site is unclear what, if anything, it fixes, beyond adding the ability to print to PDF or something. It promises bug-fixes but is completely unspecific. Various views have been 're-implemented' which I find rather scary. More importantly, you *can't* update an existing 7.x.y.z installation. You have to uninstall 7 then install 7.1. So there's no way of roadtesting it without nuking your current installation. Given their history of bug-ridden updates, no user of FD in their right mind should even contemplate this. It may be that 7.1 is an unmitigated triumph but I am going to wait for someone else to confirm it... (On a technical note, various FD crash logs I have looked at reveal one of FD's big problems: it relies on the long-defunct 'Paige' text system, which disappeared around 1996 and is no longer supported. I can understand why they have resisted updating this because it would mean completely rewriting the app... however, they are going to have to bite the bullet if they want to survive). Here's the 7.1 read-me... FINAL DRAFT 7.1 – Release Notes – A handful of issues that either caused a crash or inhibited functionality of Final Draft 7 have now been resolved. In addition, these enhancements have been added: 1) Save As PDF This has been redesigned so that Final Draft scripts saved as PDF files are much smaller in size. The PDF files are also searchable (via Adobe Acrobat Reader), like other text-based PDF files. 2) Save Title Page with PDF There is an option to include the title page when saving a script as a PDF file. Default is enabled. 3) Normal View This view has been re-implemented. 4) Speed View This view has been re-implemented. 5) The View menu This menu has been re-designed for clarity and ease of use. 6) Tagger The scene length calculations generated by Final Draft and Final Draft Tagger are now in sync. 7) Auto-Save The default is now set to enabled and the user is prompted with checkboxes for Auto-Save preferences. Autosave frequency is now more editable; the user can enter any number of minutes. 8) Auto-Backup The default number of stored backup scripts has been increased from 10 to 50. 9) Format Assistant This feature’s on, off and popup settings have been redesigned to give the user greater control over when Format Assistant appears. 10) File > Save Secure Copy This command has been removed from the File Menu and placed on the list of alternative “File/Save As” file types. 11) User Interface (UI) Various dialogue boxes have been improved for clarity and ease of use. [alert admin]
Monday, April 11 2005 @ 07:00 AM PDT
Final Draft 7 0.0.54 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
so I've started writing a Cocoa screenwriting app. Since I'm also a full-time writer I can't give a timeline for a beta release but some time this year I hope. I have all the basic functionality in place but it's a mess. The version 1.0 release will have no bells and whistles but it WILL be sufficient to write a spec script to industry standards, and it will have all the free goodies that Cocoa apps get by default. The project is called Greenlight. I hope to get some experienced developers in once the proof-of-concept is there. [alert admin]
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Tuesday, March 15 2005 @ 12:17 PM PST
Apple Pages 1.0 (Mac OS X)
OK, first the credentials. I am a professional writer and I pull down six figures from writing and nothing but writing. My main apps are Final Draft (boo), MS Word (boo), OmniOutliner (hooray), Novamind (hooray), Cicus Ponies Notebook (hooray), Textwrangler (hooray) and now Pages (double hooray). Pages rocks. Since I got it I haven't launched MS Word once. What a fricken relief. I'm giving it four stars because it stilll has a ways to go but for 1.0 software it's pretty devastating. I miss having an outliner available but you can fake it up with the indent/numbering features and in any case OmniOutliner spanks hard and exports very nicely to Pages. The styles are incredibly intuitive and easy to use and all the layout tools are terrific. Bugs that bug me: if you define a style that uses a symbol font (eg Dingbats) you can't read the name of the style. Turning off the template dialog at open makes it incredibly hard to make a new document based on a template. But it's all minor stuff. SO MUCH BETTER than Mellel for my purposes at least. And all the MS Office stuff I've opened has looked great. [alert admin]
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Tuesday, February 08 2005 @ 08:19 PM PST
Final Draft 7.0.0.43 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
Loses authorization with time change
So I'm on a plane back from LA furiously trying to complete a script for the next morning. I change the time zone from PST to EST since that's where I'm headed. Instantly FD pops up saying that my copy is no longer authorized, and quits on me. This after I'd already re-authorized it once before under similar circumstances. Of course in a plane there's no way to reauthorize and I do not travel with the FD CD in my bag. And in any case I have no authorizations left. So the only recommendation I can come up with is UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES change the time zone while FD is running. [alert admin]
Sunday, November 21 2004 @ 10:20 AM PST
Photo to Movie 3.1.9 (Mac OS X)
I had 2 hours to produce a slideshow of locations with music for an actress for a movie I am directing. Did it with time to spare, exported the movie, fired up iDVD, burned a professional quality disc including captions, moves and sound fades. Absolutely terrific. Zero learning curve, hooray. Would have paid twice as much. [alert admin]
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Thursday, October 21 2004 @ 07:32 PM PDT
Final Draft 7 0.0.52 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
While it would be hopelessly optimistic to think that 7.0.0.52 has solved all of the problems, it is the first release of Final Draft 7 which is actually usable in a professional context. In particular, the utterly unforgiveable screen redraw issues and fake selections seem to have been fixed. Or at least I haven't encountered them yet. Nevertheless, backup LOTS when using this because I'm pretty certain that, like all versions of Final Draft since 4, it WILL either crash on save, leaving you with an empty stub, or corrupt your files, eventually. Nothing in any of the readme's suggests that there has been even an attempt to fix these longstanding issues. [alert admin]
Wednesday, September 01 2004 @ 01:13 PM PDT
Spamfire 1.5.1 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
A good idea in principle, however... 
... it's unstable on my machine running 10.3.4 (unexpected quits after running the filter). Moreover, although the downloaded filters are great, many of the spam-blocking tools are of limited or even negative value. Finally, the help pages simply weren't installed correctly and were no, erm, help whatsoever. Very few spam mails originate from a bona fide domain, so blocking domains is really pointless and may end up blocking mail you want to receive. Bouncing spam is mostly pointless and just adds to the overall spam traffic (if you've ever had your email addy used by a spammer you'll know how irritating the bounces are -- to you the non-spamnmer). The whole 'revenge' idea is satisfying but flawed. You really do NOT want to engage in private feuds with spammers. Report them, great. But you are setting yourself up for trouble if you use the WebBugs feature. Overall it didn't seem to identify any more or less spam than Mail itself, properly configured (and I get THOUSANDS of spam messages a day). The single best spam trap is simply to quarantine all messages that do not come from a previous recipient or someone in your address book. Junk everything that looks like spam, and anything that isn't classified as spam but comes from an unknown address, put in a 'Possible Spam' folder. Go through this periodically (it won't have much spam in it) and mark the junk as junk to keep your heuristics fed and watered. That's it. [alert admin]
Tuesday, June 01 2004 @ 12:54 PM PDT
Mellel 1.7.5 (Mac OS X)
Okay, maybe it's just me but...
I just don't like Mellel. I want to, I really do, but I don't. it is certainly professionally written and feature rich, and good value for money, but I do not like the way it does things. The way that styles are used and applied is counterintuitive to me, and for a professional writer it has a yawning omission: outlining. Outlining is not something that gets bolted on to a WP app: it has to be built in from the ground up. Mellel has a vague stab at it with its strange 'document flow' idea but it really doesn't work for me, especially the ass-backwards way you have to enter text into text boxes. MS Word has many faults, God knows, but it has always had a great outliner which integrates seamlessly with the WP. Text styles change to reflect the outline hierarchy. MS Word's sections are also much more powerful than anything Mellel has to offer. Like everyone else in the world I balk at paying the sticker price for MS Office, especially when Mellel seems so much cleaner and better integrated into the whole OS X gestalt, but for the heavy duty real-world mission critical stuff i do Mellel currently doesn't cut it. [alert admin]
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Monday, May 31 2004 @ 03:19 AM PDT
Final Draft 7.0.0.40 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
... that the bugs are the kind that literally one or two minutes of beta-testing would expose, and should be trivial to fix (screen redraw issues, cursor planted on wrong line, erroneous selection). This directly contradicts Final Drafts assertions that the software is properly beta-tested (they say by both a panel of testers and a third party assurance company). Regular users of Final Draft may find this sentence from a Final Draft support person amusing: "Final Draft 7 is no different from our previous releases and indeed, most software: We give our users the best program we can make at the time and, not unlike a screenplay, thereafter work to refine and improve it." [alert admin]
Tuesday, May 25 2004 @ 11:53 AM PDT
Last 10 Comments by unSane [ Search for All ]
I agree with you about FD4. That was a sleek and reliable product. Maybe I still have the installers someplace. However porting it to OS X is basically impossible, or at least it would be quicker to just write a new app (which is what I'm doing right now). The reason for this is that the text-handling is done by a system called Paige which went out of business a decade ago, and lots of…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Tuesday, April 19 2005 @ 12:34 PM PDT
reply emailed
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Tuesday, March 22 2005 @ 12:17 PM PST
The app is coming along. I have all the text editing stuff -- styles and elements and so on -- working fine. I am going to take the time to convert it to use Coredata, which means it will be for 10.4 only, because this will give me a load of great functionality for free. I don't have any timescale for a beta release but I will post it to VT as soon as a…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Tuesday, March 22 2005 @ 12:15 PM PST
Watch this space... there is a possibility a serious contender may emerge within the next year or so. I am starting to hear some interesting things.
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Friday, July 16 2004 @ 08:59 PM PDT
Outliner and other stuff (to unSane)
Thanks for the note. I look forward to trying it. Divorcing styles from hierarchy may or may not be a cool idea... I'll have to see... however it would probably be nice to have some kind of option. Cheers.
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Tuesday, June 01 2004 @ 12:58 PM PDT
Final Draft has fixed many of the bugs
I've reported this to an admin because you are a reseller of the product and I do not believe it currently deserves anything close to five stars.
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Friday, May 21 2004 @ 01:34 PM PDT
It was so buggy that you had to downgrade again, but you gave it FOUR STARS?? How bad would something have to be to get two?
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Friday, May 14 2004 @ 12:03 PM PDT
Notice the name? It's not called REAL Tournament for a very good reason. UT has always been an insanely fast game. UT2k3 slowed things down and suffered because of it. Stick with the program and soon you'll discover that every other game out there feels too slow. Of course if you can't take the pace you could always go play Counterstrike I guess. Or draughts.
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Thursday, February 19 2004 @ 12:19 PM PST
If you are playing ONSLAUGHT, the vehicles demand a lot of computing power to do the Karma math for how they behave. Check your framerates in Deathmatch (where there are no vehicles) and see what happens. If they improve it's a sign that you need a faster CPU to run this successfully.
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Thursday, February 19 2004 @ 12:17 PM PST
Marketing or Development choice?
The textures were reduced to get the demo down to a ~200 MB download.
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, February 19 2004 @ 12:15 PM PST
