Archive for the 'Scratchpad' Category

It’s been almost two years since MacBeth arrived, but every so often I still find myself rooting around on the Web for software. Today, I needed a decent disc burning utility. I find Mac OS X’s Disk Utility app woefully inadequate to create CDs and DVDs, and (gasp!) it was the first time I had to use my system’s superdrive to burn a DVD. So, I happened upon Burn, a compact application that makes creating CDs and DVDs easy, while still giving you a lot of options.

Burn “doesn’t reinvent the wheel”, says its developer, Maarten Foukhar, using a number of existing Unix utilities to create, recreate, convert data, audio and video discs. It’s interface is about as simple as it gets — select the type of disc you want to create, choose among the given options, drag and drop the files into Burn, and click on the ‘Burn’ button. That’s it. Burn will make audio CDs, audio DVDs, VCDs, DVD videos, DivX videos, burn disc images, copy discs and more. It can work with a variety of filesystems, such as ISO, UDF, Joliet and HFS+.

Oh, and did I mention Burn is open source?

One of the factors that went into the decision to buy MacBeth was the availability of freeware. I was afraid that moving away from the Windows platform would mean having to give up freeware heaven. As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s true that Windows corners most of the free software segment — understandable since it accounts for a vast majority of computer users — but there is very decent pickings for Mac users as well. Here’s a quick list of the freeware I’ve been using reliably on my Mac (running Snow Leopard):

• Office Suite: OpenOffice
• Antivirus: iAntivirus
• Media player: VLC
• Graphics: Gimp
• iPod Manager: Yamipod, and not iTunes, which is very annoying
• Browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Opera
• IM: Adium

I’m sure I’m missing some…

~PD

I am always on the lookout for interesting blog editors, and stumbled upon ScribeFire while working on a project on Chrome extensions. This one is already quite popular in its Firefox avatar, and a Safari version exists as well.

ScribeFire proved pretty simple to set up: just enter your blog’s URL and it fetches most of the technical details itself. You can add brand new posts or even work on your existing posts. One done, they can be published directly or scheduled for publication at a specific time. They can be saved as drafts or private posts as well.

ScribeFire supports categories, tags and custom fields. You can add a custom permalink as well. The only niggle is the inability to upload images from your hard disk. One hopes the developers are working to iron this out since it is a significant drawback.

~PD

Earlier this year I wrote about my rules for writing fiction. Little did I know that a few months down the line I would be breaking Rule #4: Characters without the right name have no life.

That’s right, I was convinced to change the names of major characters in The Secret of Fezar. Thus, “Kinnel” and “Tasil” took a tumble along with some key concepts and other names of people and places.

The siblings are now called Yavi and Fahe. It wasn’t as easy as doing a search and replace. These were well-know, well-fleshed characters, and changing the names was almost like saying goodbye to them and reincarnating them as new people.

Yes, Tasil and Kinnel will be missed, but I feel the change is for the better. I am liking the new names, but more significantly they fit better with my world. Also, “Tasil” was not an original name, since a Tasil exists in the Shadow in Eternity series, albeit in the background (Wahid’s wife, if anyone remembers Wahid).

All these changes were the direct result of some astute feedback from my editor. It also spurred me to work on a date and time system for the world the story is based in. More on that later.

Goodbye, Kinnel and Tasil.

~PD