Software

I’ve bought a Mac!

Yes, for the first time in my life, I have bought a Mac – to be precise, a MacBook with 2.2Ghz, 120gb hard disk and a paltry 1gb RAM. That will be the first thing to be resolved, I reckon, but I might wait til next pay day for that treat.

My initial thoughts are good, it seems quick and I got it up and running with no problems at all. It’s a lovely size, which makes it ideal for lugging about, which was my intention really when buying it. Installing software seems easy enough, and so far I have added:

  • Firefox – natch
  • NetNewsWire – RSS reader, a Newsgator product so it syncs nicely with FeedDemon on the PC. Doesn’t seem a patch on FD though – and how the hell do I hide feeds from view which don’t have new items? Grr.
  • Marsedit – hoped this would be a useful replacement for Windows Live Writer and BlogJet, and while it has a nice way of managing images – especially from Flickr – it doesn’t even seem to have wysiwyg editing, which strikes me as being rather backward.

So, am impressed with the Mac, less so with the software. Any hints and tips gratefully received!

FeedDemon 2.6.0.21

I was alerted by Neville Hobson‘s tweet that a bug fix release of FeedDemon was available for download. This announcement came through the FD support forums, which I never look at, so am thankful to Neville for bringing it to my attention.

The upgrade fixes bugs like:

  • New instance of FeedDemon loads with misleading “application is hung” error message when attempting to subscribe from Firefox (123414)
  • Cyrillic characters don’t display correctly in FeedDemon’s desktop alert
  • Buttons cut off on keyboard shortcuts dialog when running at 120dpi
  • Exception when importing invalid OPML (123539)
  • Exception after synching on Windows 98
  • Exception in prefetch options when setting “max items to prefetch” (124117)
  • Wrong/ugly colors in newspaper header with some XP or WindowBlinds themes (124000)
  • Thousands separators missing from large numbers displayed in panic button dialog and elsewhere (123986)

The top one (my emphasis) was a big fix for me, as this was proving a major pain in the neck, as I mentioned here.

Replacing Notepad

notepad Notepad, as I am sure everyone knows, is a text editor that comes free with Windows. It’s very, very basic, but that’s part of its charm. I use it quite a lot, for quickly editing HTML or PHP pages, or sometimes just to strip the formatting from some text I am copying and pasting.

The trouble is that Notepad is sometimes a little too minimalist, and there are a number of free (as in beer, though sometimes as in speech too) replacements out there vying for your text. They offer functionality such as allowing much larger file sizes than Notepad can, having more than one file open at a time, and some fancy scripting markup effects. Here’s a couple of examples of what text editors are out there.

(Please bear in mind that I am not wanting to generate some kind of mad Vi vs. Emacs text editor flame-war here! But please do leave a comment letting everyone know what your favourite text editor is 😉 )

A social media software toolkit

Being a blogger is about far more than just words. To that end, you need tools which you feel comfortable with to enable you to create in any number of different media. Here’s some of the software I use to create my blogs and other online content. It would be cool to know what other options are out there, so do let me know what you use in the comments!

  1. Firefox. My window onto the web. Of course, the various plugins I use make Firefox into a better tool for blogging. But that’s for another post…
  2. FeedDemon. My RSS reader of choice. Of course, now it’s free, it should be yours too 😉 Being a desktop based reader, as opposed to web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines, has a number of advantages – like downloading feed items to read when you are without the web – but to be honest I like it best because I am used to it. How pathetic is that?!
  3. Windows Live Writer. This is a new one for me as I always used to be a BlogJet fan. But I gave the latest version of WLW a try a month or so back and I love it. How come MS can get some stuff, like this, so right – and yet others so badly wrong? Using an offline editor just works better for me that using the inbuilt WordPress online offering. One advantage is that I can write blog posts without an internet connection, like right now when for some reason the connection’s dropped…
  4. Paint.net. A great free image editor. Much easier to use and more stable than the Windows version of the GIMP. Paint.net is easy to use and packed with features.
  5. SnagIt. Lee Hopkins tipped me off to this one and it’s the most recent addition to my toolkit.Snagit is a great little bit of software that makes taking screenshots a doddle. No relying on the PrtSc key any more! Snagit lets you copy just a portion of the screen, or even an entire web page that scrolls a number of screens. You can then use SnagIt to resize, crop and add effects as you see fit without having to fire up another image editor.
  6. FileZilla. A great little open source (free as in speech, as well as beer) FTP client.
  7. Audacity. It’s always cool when an open-source bit of software is also one of the best available, and Audacity is one of those. An audio editor which makes producing podcasts child’s play.
  8. BB Flashback. This lets me produce screencasts – videos of what I am doing on my PC screen. Great for producing demos and tutorials. Not sure if this is the best package on the market – lots of people use Camtasia – but this was more reasonably priced 🙂
  9. Windows Movie Maker. OK, so I need to get some better video editing software 😉
  10. Evernote. A lovely note-taking application. It lets me clip things as I am browsing through the web, whether text or images. Handy for pulling together thoughts for blog posts.

Photo credit: Saffanna

FeedDemon 2.6 problem

There’s a bug with FeedDemon 2.6, I think.

Whenever I click the little orange RSS icon on the FireFox address bar to subscribe to a new blog, it tries to open a new FeedDemon window. Every. Single. Time.

This is a pain in the neck as I am never sure if I have actually subscribed to a feed or not!

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