Is anyone using the preview release of DarkRoomX in Snow Leopard? I have a testing system setup, and when I ran it I noticed a weird issue with the menu. Apparently, I am getting a duplicate, useless apple menu. I am curious if this is an issue with Air and Snow Leopard, or just DarkRoomX, if anyone knows an Air app that uses OS X’s native menu I would like to know so I can test it out.
Archive for September, 2009
Distraction Free Writing in 2009
While Dark Room has been mostly dormant, many things have changed. I originally got the idea for Dark Room from Jesse over at Hog Bay. WriteRoom was really the first in this modern era of retro text editors. Back then, WriteRoom was the only game in town, and it was, and still is, Mac only.
Unfortunately, around this time my powerbook passed into the after life. This meant that I had to switch to my windows laptop as my primary machine for a while. And, since I had gotten so used to WriteRoom, I needed something. After spending a couple of days searching, I was quite surprised not to find anything available for windows. This is when I decided to pick up the torch, and write Dark Room. However, it did not remain alone for long.
Now, there is a glut of this style of program. Here are just the few that I know of off my head:
Cross Platform:
- Dark Room X
- jDarkRoom
Windows:
- Dark Room W
- Q10
- WriteMonkey
Mac:
- WriteRoom
Linux:
- PyRoom
- RubyRoom
Web:
- DarkCopy
- Writer
- MyTextFile
I would love to hear feedback on what you love or hate about these programs, as it will help me determine how best to shape future development of Dark Room.
An interesting factor here is that even though there are more programs, they are still pretty fragmented, as people are sort of just porting over functionality from applications exclusive on other OS’s.
jDarkRoom was the first cross platform implementation. However, I have not had much luck with it using an OS other than Windows. Which reminds me, I need to get with that developer to help him work out some kinks I experiences while using the app in OS X.
Dark Room X is my attempt to build an application that does everything you need, and nothing you don’t. I want users to be able to pick it up, love it, and be able to use it on anything. Be it their wife’s spyware loaded windows box, they’re sweet MacPro work station, or the linux box they keep as a guilty pleasure. It is just the first step in my ultimate goal: the ability to access, and work on your writing in the interface you love from anyplace at anytime.
Heroes: Season 4
The new season of Heroes started last week. I have been debating whether or not to watch it. I recently caught up by watching season three, and the premiere of season four. My question is: is anyone still watching this show?
The first season of heroes was terrific, but the show has gone down hill since. The second season was utterly nonsensical. The show was clearly a one trick pony, and the powers they gave the main characters didn’t make sense in an on going world. In the second season the writers solution was to give Peter amnesia, and banish Hiro into the past. To make matters worse, the story wasn’t very compelling.
The third season was a mess. The first half, aka volume three was very rushed, and sloppily handled taking down over powered characters. Both Peter and Hiro lost their powers, and Peter got a pathetic power in replacement. In the fourth volume (the second half of season three) featured another rushed story that was a tired story that has been done to death in all media (government persecution of a minority group). In this volume Hiro kind of gets his powers back, but not really, or rather they don’t work correctly. Lovely.
The fourth seasons, aka volume five hasn’t covered enough territory to determine whether or not the storyline will be good, since the villains remain largely cloaked in mystery, and their motives are yet unknown.
What do you think? Are you still watching the show?
Cosmic Justice
Today was turning out to be a rather miserable day for NFL football, as the much maligned Lions, some how, managed to not lose a game today. Based on the Redskin’s performance in the game, I am thinking this game was likely fixed.
I entered the late games with a sense of annoyance, since I could not think of anything positive to take away from the Lions’ victory. But, the Pittsburgh v. Cincinnati game gave me something to be happy about: a Steelers loss.
Apparently, the Lions’ fail to lose was the first time in 20 games that they haven’t lost. Coincidentally, this was also the first time in 20 games that Pittsburgh had two consecutive losses.
Random coincidence, or cosmic justice?
Battle to the Bottom of the Barrel
Sorry to people not appreciating my slew of football posts today. But, I have some good and bad news. The good news is that Grand Valley State University continues their seasons, thus far undefeated, by defeating Michigan Tech by a score of 55 to 7. The bad news is, the anticipated “Battle at the Ballpark” game at 5/3rd ballpark is looking to be rather underwhelming.
Ferris State is 1-3, 0-3 in the conference, and Michigan Tech is 0-3. This means that this “event” is really going to be a nonfactor in the scheme of things, and the only thing the winner will take away is their first conference win. Bummer. At the beginning of the season we were hoping that this might be a relavent game, and a battle between two schools with winning records.
To make matters worse, in a blunder of poor planning, this game is also being played the same weekend as the family weekend at MTU. Thus, it is uncertain how many student will actually be at the game, it will probably only be alumni.
Sadly, this will be no, “Bash at the Big House” but, two of my brothers are alumni from these schools, so I plan on attending no matter how pointless the game.
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