Category Archives: Software

iMovie '08 on a 1.8GHz single processor G5

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According to the system requirements for Apple’s newest incarnation of iLife (iLife ’08), iMovie ’08 shouldn’t work on my machine (an ‘original’ 2003 1.8GHz SP G5 with 1GB RAM).

The installer runs a system check before it installs iLife (as it did on my G4 laptop) to see if your system meets the minimum requirements (a dual 2GHz G5 PowerMac or a 1.9GHz iMac). If you don’t meet them, it won’t install iMovie, and you’re stuck with the old (but oddly, better featured) iMovie HD.

That is, unless you own on the of the original 1.8GHz single processor G5s from 2003. I installed iLife ’08 last week, just for the upgrades to Garageband and iPhoto, but miraculously, iMovie ’08 installed as well.

And it works rather well. Playback is smooth enough for me, scrubbing through frames works well, as do the transitions and titles. And I didn’t even need to perform any of the dodgy hacks that have been going round to make it work on my system.

Since my system was only around for a few months before being discontinued back in 2003, maybe they’ve forgotten to put it in the ‘exclude’ list, who knows?

Testing Ecto 3 alpha

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Way back in the dim and distant past, before my other blog, Past Thinking, began to focus solely upon heritage matters, I reviewed Ecto 2. Now, 2 years later, I’m writing this with the alpha version of Ecto 3.

This isn’t a full review – this is really just a test drive of the alpha version, and a quick account as I go along.

I once decried the rich text editor of Ecto 2, wishing for a WYSIWYG editor, and it seems as if at long last my wish has been answered. Everything you do in the editor is actually displayed as you expect it to, rather than the strange highlights and awkwardness that went before (which I did get used to).

Ecto 3, although not yet finished, has a much more ‘Mac’ look and feel to it, although perhaps I still find the multiple windows to be slightly annoying – I’d prefer a more unified or tabbed GUI. Still, you can close the windows that you’re not currently using.

Uploading images is a breeze – the screenshot below was captured in Skitch and dragged from Skitch right into Ecto, where it was automatically resized. Very nice. I then had the option to upload the image there and then (which I forgot to screen grab).

Ecto 3 (alpha) screenshot)

And, since the WYSIWYG editor uses WebKit, it looks like it’s doing a fairly accurate job.

As you can see from the screenshot, there’s a “Keywords” box below title. It’ll be interesting to see if these hook into Ultimate Tag Warrior, or appear as html meta tags (does anything still use them these days?). In the alpha version, there is no help file (it’s still being written) so I’ll give it a go and see what happens.

All in all, writing this little ditty was a pleasure in Ecto, and if you are reading this, it successfully connected to my blog and posted this.

When Ecto 3 is finished, I’ll post a comprehensive review here. You can read Adriaan’s announcement over at Infinite Sushi.

(ahh – so that’s what the ‘Keywords’ does!)

On NewsFire an other feed readers

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My feedreader of choice is, and has been for some 2 years, the excellent NetNewsWire Lite on a Mac. It handles my 244 feeds very well, and they’re all nicely categorised into groups.

But I’ve had a bit of trouble recently in that NetNewsWire Lite has begun to randomly jumble up individual posts. Rather than sorting them by arrival order, it’s just mixing them together. I’ve checked “View > Sort By > Arrival Order” and it’s checked. I’ve clicked everything and double-checked settings, and it should all be OK.

Just out of curiosity, I thought that I would try out NewsFireRSS. Its interface looks very clean, and I do actually have a license bought through the recent MacHeist promotion (I bought the MacHeist bundle primarily for Delicious Library and Rapidweaver). So I thought that I would give it a whirl.

NetNewsWire allows you to export your RSS subscriptions to an OPML file with two options: first, as a flat file, and second, preserving your subscription groups. I opted for the second option, as I’ve got them all nicely grouped, and it would takes ages to sort them again by hand.

Sadly, when I imported the OPML file into NewsFire, none of the groups were preserved. I had one huge list of subscriptions. Not good!

Just to test the exported OPML file, I imported it into the open source feed reader, Vienna. My groups were preserved, thankfully, so the OPML file did export correctly from NetNewsWire. It seems that NewsFire just can’t cope with OPML groups – a big shame! I might have to relent and re-group by hand – or just stick with NNW or Vienna.

Google Metaverse?

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GigaOM reports that more evidence is turning up that Google are developing their own metaverse, i.e. a virtual 3D world like Second Life.

Google themselves have said nothing about it themselves, so this is pure rumour/wishful thinking.

What with Google’s acquisition of SketchUp and Keyhole which demonstrates their keenness in 3D, it wouldn’t surprise me if a Metaverse is up their sleeves. We shall have to wait, watch, and see…

Pzizz – software that helps you relax?

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I received an email today from Pzizz, which reminded me that I was going to blog about it ages ago.

I first heard of Pzizz back in July 2006, from Chris Messina‘s blog. The thought of software that helps you nap, relax or sleep sounded rather dubious to me. So I downloaded a demo to see what it was all about, and my, was I pleasantly surprised.

What the software does, is create a ‘guided meditation’ for want of a better term. You can get two versions – one for a short ‘energizer’ nap, and one to help you go to sleep. Suffice to say, I now have both versions.

A voice guides you into relaxation, whilst a nice soundscape is built up in really wide stereo. It’s astonishingly relaxing, and a number of techniques are applied to help you have a nice daytime nap, or slip off to sleep:

pzizz is a remarkable invention that combines several different proven techniques to help keep you feeling energized throughout the day. It combines Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques along with especially composed music, sound effects and a binaural beat to induce a wonderfully relaxed state, similar to that of the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep.

You can generate naps to put on an mp3 player as well, which is a handy feature if you don’t want to have a computer switched on while you relax.

What a marvelous invention!

Link: Pzizz (Disclaimer: affiliate link!)