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« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »
I was experiencing some scratching and "pitting" on my Aluminum PowerBook, and remembered back to a magazine article I had read years ago about touch-up paint for a Titanium PB (called TiPaint, for those of you who haven't heard of it). I went to look for an Aluminum solution and came up with "Conceal," which is made by the same "company" as TiPaint. It cost $19.49 from We Love Macs, plus $5 for shipping. I debated about making such an expensive purchase for what is really just a cosmetic problem (though, like the spot on my screen, it bothers me every single time I see it).
Long story short, I ordered it. It arrived today. I was immediately disappointed at the nearly microscopic bottle of paint (the photos on the site are very misleading). Deciding it was worth a try, I opened the small bottle and painted over a scratch on the underside of my PB, to test it out. The paint is a completely different color than the color of my Powerbook. Needless to say, I was very irritated, and felt like a total idiot for buying the paint in the first place. I immediately fired off an email to We Love Macs, asking for a refund. Then, I went to their site, and to add insult to injury, I finally read the not-so-fine print I should have read days ago: "Concerns about this product can be sent directly to manufacturer. WLM or the manufacturer does not cover damages to any products due to improper use of this product. WLM does not accept returns on this product."
Right.
So I try to contact the manufacturer, at buyconceal.com, and their site is down.
Well, I feel ripped off, and beyond that, a chump. All I can do now is try to convince the few of you who read this site to NEVER buy "Conceal," or anything from TiPaint, for that matter. I read around on the net and found that I am not the only one who has had problems with them. Apparently, there is a large amount of people who sent them money and never even received product.
Posted by pozytron at 10:14 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
I have no idea whether anyone will find the program I just posted to my site useful or not. It's called iTunesMouseRemote, and it turns your mouse into, well, a remote for iTunes. You activate it by picking an option from the Script menu in iTunes, and deactivate it by pressing the escape key. It is very simple right now, more a proof-of-concept than anything else. It doesn't work that great with multiple monitors, or do anything useful with mice that have more than three buttons. Contact me if you want me to "beef it up," so to speak. I find it useful, especially with my Logitech bluetooth mouse, but your mileage my vary. I am very interested in any feedback you're willing to give!
I'm sort of stuck for a little bit on getting AcidSearch 0.4 to install on everyone's machines. I'm getting there, at least, but it will be a little while yet before I do an "official" release. You can still download the 0.4 "preview edition" from http://www.pozytron.com/files/AcidSearch040.zip (it's been updated some since my last post) if you want to give it a shot. If it doesn't install, you can always uninstall it and put 0.34 back on. It includes some sparkling new features, so I recommend you give it a shot!
UPDATE: I have received a lot of emails about iTMR--I am very glad to find people have found it useful! I actually came up with this concept back in 2003 and have never bothered to release it, thinking people would not really find it useful.
Posted by pozytron at 11:16 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
The AcidSearch 0.4 preview is finally done. This preview is identical to the final version in features. It is only available in English and may contain bugs, however. Use at your own risk (it is possible, though fairly unlikely, that this version could crash Safari). Please post any problems you may have (or send them to me via email). Comments and other feedback are appreciated as well! Download AcidSearch 0.4 Preview here.
New features in this version include:
This version also is the first to use SparkPlug instead of SIMBL.
UPDATE: I have reverted to using SIMBL for the time being until I get a few issues ironed out in SparkPlug. Apparently it does not work for some users. The problem is, I'm unable to reproduce these issues, even when installing on three different computers. Once I figure it out I will return to using SparkPlug. If you had an issue with AcidSearch not working before, please use the old installer to uninstall (if you still have it) and redownload.
UPDATE 02/11: I have posted a new version with a few bug fixes, and some other modifications, which should hopefully allow those of you who had problems with the previous versions to use AcidSearch. It uses SparkPlug again. If you do have problems, please state what localization you use normally, as well as whether or not you have used AcidSearch before. It would also be great if you emailed me your console log, which you get by running Applications/Utilities/Console.app. Thank you.
Posted by pozytron at 12:08 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
You can now download a preview version of PlaintextPaste 0.2 here. This new version also uses my brand-spanking-new InputManager plugin system, SparkPlug. I developed SparkPlug as an alternative to SIMBL which is a bit more powerful. It allows you to control which apps PlaintextPaste is loaded in, as well as controlling which items appear in the menu.
The other notable features in this new version of PTP are as follows: It adds the functionality of the now-defunct PlaintextCopy and introduces two new clipboard tricks, the ability to paste as 7-bit ASCII (if you don't know what that means, it probably won't interest you) and to swap the current selection with the contents of the clipboard. If a program already has the command-shift-v or command-shift-c keyboard shortcuts, PlaintextPaste will no longer hijack them. The "Copy Plain Text" item is a *little* smarter about when it enables or disables itself. You can change any of PlaintextPaste's options with the System Preferences application. Just select the SparkPlug preference pane.
Hope people find this new version useful. I will be making an official release after I contact my localizers.
Posted by pozytron at 04:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
