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Tom B.

Posts: 26

Smile Score: +8

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Gender: Male

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Member Since: 02 Jun 2009
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http://www.tomburns.org

Tom B.'s Posts

Average Rating from Tom:

(11)

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Firefox

Tommy_b reviewed on 17 Jan 2012

I almost gave up on Fx after v. 8.0.1 came out because of its memory hogging. In comparison to Safari, it's still much more memory intensive, but at least it's back to being useable again for me in 9.0.1. A typical session in Fx 8.0.1 consumed ~400mb; that same session in 9.0.1 is down to 274mb. So a lot more could be done, but I am happy not to have ditch this beast simply because it was hogging all my RAM.

[Version 9.0.1]

Refresh Finder

Tommy_b reviewed on 26 Nov 2011

Using 10.7.2, I frequently have to quit & relaunch Finder in order to see any new files added to the Desktop. This is amazingly annoying, so Refresh Finder is a welcome helper. thanks =)

[Version 1.4.0]

Lion Tweaks

Tommy_b reviewed on 07 Aug 2011

I was in a hurry to swap out the new faux-leather iCal and AddressBook interfaces in Lion for something a little less old English and this did the job right quick.

Woo hoo!

[Version 1.1]

DfontSplitter

Tommy_b reviewed on 06 Apr 2011

I feel compelled to echo A.B. Carracho's sentiments directed to this application's developer: "Bless you."

I use this application frequently because it is a God send.

It has saved me tons of time when working cross-platform, particularly when I am working on a Linux box.

The great part about it is once you split the dfont file, you can pull just the specific form of the font you intend to use and leave the rest behind.

For instance, I am a heavy user of the Helvetica Neue font, but only in it's ultralight form. So I used dfontSplitter to extract all the different forms of the font on my Mac and then just took the extracted Ultra Light TTF file for upload to my Linux box.

And it's much easier to use this utility than it is to expend time searching for (and maybe not ever finding) a non-dfont file containing the font you need to use on a non-OS X platform.

Thanks!

[Version 0.4.1]

Name Mangler

Tommy_b reviewed on 06 Apr 2011

Love Name Mangler.

I've been using it since it first came out.

Makes things so incredibly easy when trying to batch rename a bunch of stuff. And the advanced use examples/templates have been enormously helpful to in crafting more complex renaming actions as I have no clue about regular expressions.

And, gotta say, it's kinda neat to have the Finder window open where your files to be renamed are, click the button in Name Mangler so it executes the changes, and then watch all the file names change right before your eyes in a split second! (OK, yeah, I'm still easily awed by the wonders of simple computing.)

[Version 2.4.2]

Bean

Tommy_b reviewed on 06 Apr 2011

Hats off to Mr. Hoover for continuing to develop an application that is both PPC and Intel compatible and is an excellent, easy-on-the-RAM word processor for when you need to knock out a letter, some personal writing, etc. that doesn't require all the powerhouse features of MS Word or OOo Writer.

I like to use Bean to start all of my word processing documents - both work-related and personal - because I dig the interface (love the tabs, thanks!) which is really comfortable to work with and uncluttered. Then, if there is a need (intricate formatting, intensive graphics, tables, foot/end notes, etc.), bring them into OOo Writer (or other OOo derivative) and polish 'em off.

My mom (gumdrop iMac PowerMac 6,3 with Tiger) also loves Bean - she's 'puter phobic and MS Word drives her bonkers with all the tool bars and what not as all she needs is to be able to write letters to her friends and the occasional memo for work; she said one day, "Tommy, this TextEdit... it's so... blah! Isn't there something nicer looking?"

So I installed Bean on her iMac and she was happy as a clam!

[Version 2.9.5]

Mozilla Prism

Tommy_b commented on 06 Apr 2011

Firefox is my primary browser so when Prism first appeared in beta a couple years ago, I was pretty excited by the possibilities; I had fun testing it out, but at the time, though, I had still had a PPC in my network so had to table Prism in favor of Fluid, which, too, is excellent app of the webkit/Safari variety.

I just re-visited Prism recently and, although customizations are not as easily/readily configured as with Fluid, it's still an excellent alternative, albeit Intel only.

What brought me back to it was my need to print out Avery labels - I don't have MS Word or any other of the commercial apps Avery puts out templates for and the .doc templates are some what cumbersome to use in OOo. OOo's built-in templates - at least for a few of the label types I've tried - have not printed out positioned correctly. Whether this is operator error (mine) or something else, I am not sure.

Avery has a pretty good web-based system to create perfect labels but every time you want to use it asks for a log in or your email address...

But if you set up Prism with this URL:

http://enu.print.avery.com/SelectSku

you can bypass all that nonsense and get straight to making to your labels.

The screen at that URL asks the user to enter/select the SKU number for the product you wish to use a template for and you're off to the races.

It's great to be able to get to what you need right away with just a double click of the mouse!

You create your labels - there's options for mail merge, inserting/resizing images, and of course your own personalized text (although fonts are limited to what Avery offers in the interface) - and it prints out to a PDF.

So far it's printed perfectly aligned, great looking labels every time.

(The technology Avery uses for this is Flash so if you are Flash-averse, there's the heads up.)

[Version 1.0b4]

VirtualBox

Tommy_b reviewed on 17 Mar 2011

Echoing the comments of Bmonno, I have used VirtualBox for three years running XP with nary a problem of any sort to report. I use it to deal (!) with DRM-protected Windows Media files.

Virtualization, by its very nature, gobbles lots of memory and despite this VirtualBox and my XP virtual machines have never on any occasion ever crashed or acted buggy.

It's not necessarily the easiest thing to configure, but all the virtualization solutions have their own little config quirks and challenges.

And aside from Windows, VirtualBox is a fantastic tool if you also find yourself with the need or just desire to extensively try out and play around with, for example, a Linux distro, without a reboot into a live CD or a multi-boot scenario. Both the RAM footprint and the disk space requirements for Linux virtual machines are very minimal. I presently have ten different Linux distros virtual machines installed on my primary Mac.

I also have a Leopard virtual machine that I use to test software and aside from a few minor pains with that, that too makes VirtualBox a very valuable tool - and it's freakin free. ;)

[Version 4.0.4]

All2MP3

Tommy_b reviewed on 27 Nov 2010

Mini-review: This is tremendously bad a$$. Thank you.

-Tested on Intel iMac 10,1 running 10.6.5, Intel MacBook 3,1 running 10.5.8, and a G5 iMac running 10.5.8

-Archive of misc. AIFF exports from QT Pro that needed to be ready to play out o' the box on OS X, Windows, and the various flavors of *nix, without any codec downloads from the internet (Windows Media Player 9 in XP - my lowest common testing denominator - choked - recognized the AIFF, said it was playable... but wanted to download a codec. No go.)

-Dropped them on this app's window... it did its thing.

-Job complete - MP3's all around for everyone!

[Version 2.0820]

Adobe Flash Player

Tommy_b tipped on 13 Aug 2010

Well, functionality may be busted (H264 decoding via the GPU "not supported on Macintosh platforms") but I think we have all come to expect nothing less of Adobe.

While this is seriously annoying, here's hoping that we won't be forced to update every time the moon changes to plug a security hole.

However, somebody finally got some sense of corporate responsibility and apparently now LSOs will not be retained during "private browsing sessions."

THIS I will have to see to believe. I had an Adobe Product Manager tell me in one of their forums that the reason there was no in-browser control over LSO's was because they couldn't get the API's from Mozilla, Apple, and MS... uh, hello, Mozilla builds an OPEN SOURCE browser, Safari is pretty open source-based with good ol webkit, and you are straight up lying to my face about not being able to get the API's from browser makers???? (deja vu)

Adobe is like the blackhat of media design & delivery.

[Version 10.1.82.76]

EasyEnvelopes

Tommy_b had trouble on 06 Apr 2011

I'm using this on a machine with 10.6.6 as a standalone app built using Mesa Dynamics' Amnesty Singles - one could use another program that converts widgets to desktop apps as well I imagine - and it seems to run ok for me.

I am using the trial version of Amnesty Singles so there is a nag box that pops up. (I don't like eSellerate - the program's third party e-vendor - so I have removed all portions of the eSellerate privacy-invasive framework from the Amnesty Singles app. Otherwise I'd gladly buy a copy but can't find another way to do this. =( )

I can't really explain why I don't get the same errors as outlined below other than the fact that I am using it as a standalone app and not a widget.

[Version 1.0.8]

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