Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Sound Recording for OS X

MacInTouch Home Page: "We've also been trying to identify a simple and reliable Mac recording application. SoundEdit was a great option for Mac OS 9, but it's not available for Mac OS X. We discovered that Rogue Amoeba's inexpensive Audio Hijack combines a great interface with strong features for recording live audio, quite apart from its other special capabilities.

Audio Recorder is a super-simple, freeware option we're currently exploring. Amadeus II, which is also inexpensive, has proved to be reliable and capable in our experience, with advanced capabilities for audio analysis and processing, but we find its interface a bit confusing. Audiocorder might be another good option. There's more discussion on the topic in our Audio Recording report. -MacInTouch"

Dave Dahlberg notes an expansio"

Waiting for OS X 10.3.7

MacInTouch Home Page
I just wanted to let you know that 10.3.7 fixes two of the major current problems users complain about. One is the file name truncation issue. I did not personally test this but it is mentioned in the latest pdf file accompanying 10.3.7S206.

The other is the problem with DNS lookup and sites not found. Of this I have direct experience. With Pacifist I extracted and installed the binary of the files that are related to the lookup process: mDNS, libresolv.9.dylib and mDNSresponder. Since then I did not have a single instance of 'site not found' at first attempt.

I've seen both bugs, neither consistently. Both are very annoying. I can wait for 10.3.7, but no-one should update to 10.3.6. (BTW, the truncation bug is worse with 10.3.6, but apparently it's longstanding.)

NovaMind Mind Mapping for OS X

NovaMind Mind Mapping Features

Imports Mind Manager mind maps, more or less -- if save with .xml extension.

Rebranding Quick Notes - Faughnan's Tech

Faughnan's Tech

Rebranding time. I first started using Blogger when my brother Brian was lost -- as a way to communicate readily to friends and family. After Google bought Blogger I started a blog for which I hurriedly assigned a somewhat silly url: http://googlefaughnan.blogspot.com/. I called it Quick Notes, or something like that. It included purely technical notes with commentary on technology and science.

A bit later I started blogging in the classic sense -- around news, events, etc. That got the URL http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com and the name Faughnan's Notes.

The two have evolved, even as other blogs of mine have waxed and waned. For now, two main blogs seems about right.

Faughnan's Notes continues with the same name. Most of the science and technology commentary has moved to that forum.

Quick Notes has become more purely tech, and really more of a notebook for my own use. It's not just quick jottings about things -- it's really notes for my benefit about OS X and tech in general. Hence I've renamed it Faughan's Tech -- without changing the URL (I hate breaking links).

My Firefox Extension List

Mozilla Update :: Extensions - Add Features to Mozilla Software

1. DOM Inspector
2. Sage
3. Copy Plain Text
4. BlogThis!
5. A9 Toolbar
6. BugMeNot
7. ieview
8. Magpie
9. Named anchors
10. Tabbrowser preferences
11. FoxyTunes

-- I'll update this post as I discover new extensions. I'm looking for an extension that will list all tabs across all Firefox windows.

The problem with tabbed browsing: where's my window?

Mozilla Firefox - Tabbed Browsing

Safari and Firefox have the same problem with tabbed browsing. There's no view that of all open tabs across all containers. So one can flip from container frame to frame and searching tabs within each.

They need a drop down that lists all windows. Ideally the view would be an expanded hierarchy, as in:

container: Name of first tab within the container
- second tab name
- third tab name
container 2
- second tab name
- third tab name
container 3
- second tab name
- third tab name

Maybe this could be a Firefox extension?

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Preserving analog video tapes

Slashdot | Preserving VHS Recordings For Another 20 Years?

This May 2003 Slashdot thread was cited in a more recent thread on the death of VHS. Interesting comments about digitizing analog material. I'm waiting for my G5 iMac to take this one. I frankly hate to throw out our very reliable and robust analog SONY camcorder.