Month: March 2007

Update to Word Processors

I checked out NeoOffice and while they claim it’s a lot faster on loading, it still feels like it loads slower than Word via Rosetta. Plus the interface is still ugly, and I’m not happy with how it does commenting (you need to mouseover the highlighted text). So that’s out of the running still.

For my personal writing, I checked out Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com) and it looks like a fine, but complicated app. One feature I do enjoy is the notecards, where you can storyboard out an idea and change the order of the cards–very similar to how you’d do it with real 3×5 cards.

In the end, it looks like I’m sticking with Word for a while. I forgot Omni Outliner came with my Macbook and an initial tour of its features and ease-of-use was impressive, so I’ll give it a shot outlining story I’m working on.

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Not happy with any OSX Word Processors

By and large, I have simple needs when it comes to word processing. All I really need is: Intel Native code that runs fast; commenting and footnoting (and maybe TOC), and a default save option that is a Word compatible file format–RTF is acceptable.

So far, all of my options are “pick any two.”

MS Word
– Not Intel native, so runs a tad pokey under Rosetta.
+ Does commenting
+ Native file format that can be read on the PC.

Apple Pages, part of the iWork suite
+ Intel Native and runs quite fast
+ Does commenting quite well
– Default save is in a proprietary format

Nisus Express
+ Intel Native and runs well
– No commenting
+ Default save is in RTF

NeoOffice
– While Intel Native, runs no faster than Word in Rosetta
– Does commenting, but the comments aren’t inline
+ Native file format is PC-compatible.

Right now, I’m sticking with Word as the lesser of two evils. I really liked how quick and easy Pages was, and may still use it for documents I’ll never need to send out–DVD Cases and the like. Nisus is coming out with a Pro version soon that may incorporate commenting. Office is coming out with an Intel version later this year, but it’s using the non-backwards-compatible file formats that Word 2007 use. So, while I’m likely to get that as well, having to do a save-as is going to be a pain in the ass. NeoOffice is coming out with a new version next week and I’ll have to see if it is any faster.

As a writer, I really need to gel with my word processor. OSX has a lot of features that make my life so much more productive, it’s just a shame I can’t get a word processor to do what I think are three simple items.

Fare thee well, CGM.

Computer Games Magazine and its sister publication Massive Magazine were ended yesterday. While the Internet is kicking a lot of print magazines ass, that’s not the case here. Long story short: CGMs parent company, The Globe, got hit with a summary judgement as a result of MySpace suing them for spamming their customers. Rumors are the judgement is between $40-120 million. As a result, The Globe shut down damn near everything, including CGM.

It’s a shame. In addition to writing for them I always enjoyed the magazine. Steve Bauman, the EIC, may well be the hardest working man in the print business. I believe CGM had more edit pages than PC Gamer and put the magazine out with just two people, and the other person, Cindy Yans, left to freelance so Steve and the freelancers were it.

The truly sad part of the tale is it is not due to failing subscribers, the internet, or anything Steve had any control over. Just a messed up parent corporation that he is paying the price for their stupidity. What’s worse that stupidity isn’t even justifiable. I could see it if they expanded into a market that was a bad idea, but they were just fucking spammers.

2 Gig of Ram

I upgraded my Macbook to 2 gig of ram this weekend. I’m amazed at the difference from 1g. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting a huge difference. My gaming rig I notice the 2g in games only; not so much in day-to-day stuff. But, with how much I have running on the Mac (Entourage, Word, Camino, Firefox, Adium, Quicksilver, and the real memory hog: Parallels Desktop running XP in a virtual) the computer is much more snappy. Before, it would kind of have that “I ate too much” feeling when I tried to do too much. Now, I barely notice a slowdown.

RSS= Really Shitty Sycnronization?

Ok, I thought this shit was easy, but hear my tale. A tale of three RSS readers: Itunes, Bloglines, and NewsFire. The feed in question: GeekBrief’s HD podcast feed.

Taking the URL (http://www.podshow.com/feeds/hd.xml) and pasting it into the various RSS readers yielded two results:

Bloglines: Saw all the available episodes and let me download them.
Itunes: Got nothing.
NewsFire: Got nothing.

How is this possible? I can see if the feed itself is just messed up, by why is Bloglines the only one that can see this?