What's it all about, Alfie?

Gus at FlyingMeat is really working on VoodooPad these days, and has released version 4.2.2 with a pretty simple set of release notes:

VoodooPad 4.2.2 September 11th, 2009

• Fixed a problem where the web server wasn't working properly in VoodooPad.
• Fixed a bug where pages would remain listed in the tags list, even after they were deleted.
• When you search for something in VP, it now puts the search term on the search pasteboard, so cmd-g works to "find again" in your search results.
• When doing a Web Export via AppleScript, VoodooPad now closes the export window after it's finished writing all files.

It's great to see software being worked on, and I'm sure a good bit of it is related to Snow Leopard, as it's always fun to work with new features in the OS and tools.

Today I saw a tweet from Flying Meat, and VoodooPad (Pro) 4.2 (and then quickly 4.2.1) are out with a twist - the "Pro" is now folded into the "regular" so that there's only the 'Lite' and the 'regular'. I can see his point of wanting to simplify things, and maintain a single codebase, so it doesn't bother me. I'm sure at the next major update, I'll get back "off" the Pro version with the rest of the Pro users.

But it's nice to see fixes there for Snow Leopard issues - as I've taken the plunge already.

Well, one of the two biggies for me seems to have a stable beta - Dropbox has tweeted that 0.7.15 should be the answer to Snow Leopard compatibility and they want a little help testing it. Fair enough, I can do that.

I'm hoping that we see something from Growl today too... a beta is OK, but a release is better.

Well, I'm happy to read that Sparkle, that amazing updater for Mac OS X, is now being hosted at GitHub. While it doesn't mean all that much to many, I do believe that the choice for me of Mercurial or Git has ended up being right.

There are just too many things about Git that are nicer than Mercurial.

But hearing serious developers came to the same conclusion is also reassuring.

Again another update on the eve of the release of Snow Leopard, OmniGraphSketcher v1.0.1 is out with Snow Leopard compatibility, among it's list of notable changes:

• Fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
• You can now import data that has text labels specified for only some of the rows.
• Axis title styles are now saved separately in Save Current Styles as Default.
• Added a "Select All Fills" menu item.
• Fixed a bug where dragging a single point from a grouped data series could cause the point to get stuck to nearby points.
• Fixed several bugs where Undo had to be invoked more than once to revert a change.
• Fixed a bug where pasting data with the first column all zeroes sometimes caused a crash.
• Smaller fixes and improvements.

and while the big news this week is indeed the sale of Snow Leopard, it's nice to see the updates for Snow Leopard trickle in so that the upgrade is as seamless as possible.

This morning another of the updates for Snow Leopard (10.6) compatibility is out in Fission 1.6.5, the lossless audio editor from Rogue Amoeba. I was just using Fission yesterday to convert some sound files to iPhone ringtones, and it's simply amazing how simple it is. You simply tell Fission to "Save as Ringtone" and you look and it's there in iTunes, waiting to be synced to your iPhone. Wild.

I'm sure this isn't the last of the updates, but it's good to see that this one is ready to go for Friday.

Well, it's started. Updates are trickling out for the much anticipated release of Snow Leopard this friday, and today it was MarsEdit's turn. The 2.3.3 release notes indicated:

• Fix a performance problem that caused slow typing for some users
• Fix a rare crashing bug that became more common in 10.6 Snow Leopard
• Fix a bug that caused occasional distortion of text in the post editor
• Fix a bug that caused double-clicking a table header to open selected post
• Fix a crashing bug when adding categories to a blog with no existing categories

but I'm not sure if he's fixed the bug about the refreshing of the CSS file for preview. I'm hoping it does, but we'll have to see.

UPDATE: No, it's still got that bug where it's not properly rendering the table's CSS the way I want. Too bad. Maybe next update. Thankfully, WordPress at HostMonster works just fine in that regard.

I haven't been using GraphicConverter a lot lately - I just haven't had the need. But today when I heard about the update to 6.5.1, I got it - like I typically do. I then started looking at it a bit - playing, really, and then I noticed something I hadn't seen before - GPS functionality. It's not tied into GPS hardware that I can see, but with the geotagging feature of the iPhone's camera, and other's, it makes sense to be able to edit/update/add this kind of data to the images. Amazingly neat!

This means I can transfer the GPS data from one picture to another, and even add GPS data to pictures shot with previous cameras that don't have that feature. Slick! Glad I saw this, it's liable to come in quite useful.

This evening Liza, Nina and I went to Nina's Softball Party where the Varsity (and parents) played the Junior Varsity (and parents) in a simple 3-inning game. We then had Portillo's hotdogs (yum) and lots of little cookies and brownies, etc. It was a fun little party that the Coaches put together for the teams.

What amazed me was the arms of these middle-school pitchers. I mean Wow! I've gone to the batting cages for fastpitch softball, and it's pretty fast - face it, I can't get a complete swing in time. I can get my bat in front of it, but that's about it. But these pitchers make the machines look almost slow!

Middle-School!

I can't get over it. By the time they get to High School and College these ladies are going to have Rocket Arms! I was simply stunned at the speed and control. Thankfully, I didn't have to bat - there were far too many people there to get through everyone in the 3-inning game, but it was enough to play a little outfield and be amazed at the skill of these players.

Hats off to these girls. I was certainly put in my place.

Again this morning there are a ton of updates for the latest beta cut of NetNewsWire 3.2. I have noticed a faster response time to most things, and that's nice, but the nicest thing of all is the smooth transition to any new feature. I don't have to learn a new app just to upgrade. I like that.

So it's worth getting on this beta, as it's good software.

[8/19] UPDATE: there's now 3.2b23 out already. It's moving fast and furious there. Exciting times.