Folding Text
Recently I paid £28 on the Apple app store for a copy of Mellel 3, a word processor I don’t intend to use. This is more than just an example of my relentless addiction to acquiring software (honest!). I recently came across a cache of files from way back in 2006 when I used to use Mellel as my word processor of choice– for the record, it is excellent for handling long documents. At the time, Word on the Mac was more or less unusable for me– it kept slowing down and crashing and Scrivener was not even a blip on my Read more…
MacHeist 4
While I am talking about software I may as well recommend the MacHeist Bundle. At $29 this is a real bargain, a bundle of 17 apps that includes Scrivener and a 15 month sub to Evernote Premium– two of the most useful programs ever for writers. (As ever, I shall just take a moment to plug Scrivener— the best app ever for the working writer.) Either one of these things alone cost more than 29 bucks. The rest of the bundle has some nice software– I particularly like Radium, a really cute internet Radio App, and Mariner Software’s MacGourmet– a recipe collection Read more…
DragonDictate 3
I suffer from RSI. When it gets really bad I switch to a speech recognition software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking or DragonDictate. Over the years I have tested a lot of speech recognition systems on OS X. To tell the truth I have never been that impressed by any of them. It is the one area in which the Macintosh has lagged behind Windows in terms of software for writers. I started with MacSpeech’s iListen back in the days of the PowerPC iBook. A number of people reported getting good results with it but I’m afraid for me it was Read more…
Guild Wars Third Impressions
I am a couple of weeks into Guild Wars 2 and have had time to poke around a bit, get over the initial glitz of the launch and see a bit more of the world. What do I think now? I am still impressed. If anything I am more impressed now than when I started. An incredible amount of work has gone into this game, giving it a level of polish in the world-building that I don’t think I have seen in an MMO before. It’s not just that the game is beautiful; it is clearly a labour of love. Read more…
Computer Migration
Last week I upgraded my PC computer. Since my games machine often doubles as my work machine, it normally being the most powerful computer I own, I had to migrate my work stuff to the new machine this week. Back in the bad old days, I used to dread this. I would needed to have locate a large number of disks and activation codes and installed my software onto the new computer. I would have had to burn CDs, DVDs or used an external hard-drive to shift my data. There would have been a lot of fumbling as I tried Read more…
Guild Wars 2: Second Impressions
On Friday, I upgraded my computer just so I could play Guild Wars 2 and I am glad I did. As the owner of one of Asus’s Republic of Gamers laptops I am now in a position to really appreciate all the work that has gone into this game. The world now looks like all the screenshots on blog posts and magazines. It’s jaw-dropping. The special effects when you use a spell or skill are lavish. When you get a group of people fighting together it’s like an explosion in a fireworks factory, and I mean that in a good Read more…
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