All posts in Software I use

Font rendering on Windows and Mac

By On Thu, Jun 14th, 2007 In Apple, Software I use With 4 Comments Permanent Link to Font rendering on Windows and MacPermalink

Introduction of Safari to Windows has rehashed old discussions about which font rendering is better, Windows ClearType way or Mac OS X way. My experience so far tells me that it is largely a matter of habit: each and every Windows user I talked to thinks that Mac font smoothing is “shit”, “unreadable”, “hurts” etc. Mac users use the same adjectives, just vice-versa.

Here’s what some long-time Windows users say…

The always-opinionated Joel Spolsky says this:

Safari even managed to bring the inferior font rendering of the OS X platform to Windows, no easy trick.

On another hand, this post is perfect example of “I fucked up writing on impulse, realized my main argument is mute and then dug my self even deeper trying to cover my mistake with half-ass attempts to irony”. On my office computer (Pentium 4 3GHz, 2GB RAM) 1st time Safari startup took 5s. Joel later wrote a quality post on font rendering, which is usually his norm.

Jeff Atwood obviously agrees with Joel:

I’m curious why Apple’s default font rendering strategies, to my eye — and to the eyes of at least two other people — are visibly inferior to Microsoft’s on typical LCD displays

Jeff also wrote a great article on font smoothing.

Mac users are another story

Jeffrey Zeldman uses examples to drive his point:

It’s worth pointing out that these tests were done on Macintosh computers, which are known for their superior handling of text…

Jon Hicks clearly agrees:

Its wonderful looking at a website on XP, and seeing gorgeous text smoothing.

Truth is somewhere in the middle

Me, as a long time Windows user who have long time ago fallen in love with ClearType but am increasingly using Mac, agree in parts with both.

Non-italic font smoothing is better with ClearType, but is ugly with most sans-serif italics, like Verdana or Tahoma. Mac handles this much better. Here are few examples, made using Firefox 2 and Safari 3 beta, on Windows:

Tahoma rendering in Firefox and Safari

Mac rendering to me looks better. Which is the reason why on this site I use different fonts for italic and non-italic styles.

But, like I said, it’s a matter of habit. I even know few people who disable all font smoothing and use blocky fonts. They are usually non-front-end programmers. ;)

Post-processing magic

By On Fri, May 4th, 2007 In Software I use With Comments Off Permanent Link to Post-processing magicPermalink

I’m trying out Adobe Lightroom, and so far I’m thrilled how much power it gives you over your photos.

Ana in Paris

Exposition all wrong, overblown highlights, details buried…blaaah

You have certainly had those moments. You’re abroad, excited to be where you are and do not pay much attention to status display. You just shoot and shoot, trying to capture as much atmosphere as possible.
Only after you get home you see that some very dear photos are…well, not that good. Despair often ensues, when you realize that there is no going back – you may get there again, but that one moment, that single memory is gone and can’t be recreated.

I used to fix this in Photoshop, but it was tiresome to do it and took way too much time. And I never really mastered the photo re-touch in Photoshop, all that I did was mostly stumbling in the dark until the sudden light.
Lightroom on the other hand, is a miracle in simplicity and power; in under 10s, with just few mouse moves in the histogram palette – et voila.

Ana in Paris

Look, there is color in the sky!

Add-in fantastic crop tool and this alone is well worth the price. There will be a whole post or two about this honeyweek of ours ;) but I had to share my joy about Lightroom. I’m so happy going through 1500+ images I took in Paris – it’s a joy to develop them.

MovieCollector templates

By On Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 In Software I use With 7 Comments Permanent Link to MovieCollector templatesPermalink

I have a knack for collecting. Whether it is music, videos of particular type (like Steve Jobs keynotes), paper gadget ads…or DVDs. I used to have huge DivX movie collection, but essentially give/threw it away due to really bad image quality. This coincided with start of my DVD collection, which has now grown to over 200 movies. And which naturally leads to cataloging software, which is this post’s topic.

There are many of these. Delicious Library gets a lot of praise and good word of mouth, mostly due to its iSight barcode scanning and lovely interface. Equivalent software in the Windows world is MediaMan, although it’s far from finished, if I may say. Although they are nice, they seriously lack one crucial thing once you go past the interface: sources.

They both work with just Amazon, and pardon me – but Amazon just does not cut it. It does not have too many data about the movies, often lacks non-US movies and/or non-US DVD editions. Those apps can be beautiful as Eye Nebula – they don’t have the substance.

Movie Collector imaginary boxCollectorz.com’s MovieCollector does. A lot of it.
Continue Reading →

Changing WindowsXP username while keeping the existing apps intact

By On Sun, Nov 26th, 2006 In Software I use With 2 Comments Permanent Link to Changing WindowsXP username while keeping the existing apps intactPermalink

…as in: still keeping as much of your settings and data as possible. When XP is installing, at one point it asks you for the name of the user(s) that should be created. What you actually type will be usernames, which I like to keep short and sweet. I typed in my full name and realized what I did after I installed most of my everyday apps. Blindly copying from the backup did not work, as they had the old path written all over the place. Time to dig…

Here is the procedure that worked for the apps I had at the time. You mileage may vary… Continue Reading →

Reinstalling Sony VAIO

By On Sat, Nov 25th, 2006 In Hardware, Software I use With 30 Comments Permanent Link to Reinstalling Sony VAIOPermalink

Initially, when you buy Sony VAIO notebook, you get things setup as Sony sees them fit. You have C and D partitions, both with 40+GB, and a hidden partition of 7GB, which is factory-restore partition. All this on 100GB disk (which is actually 93GB if you count 1024 instead of 1000 for kB).

On those partitions, there’s amazing amount of software installed, both Sony’s own and from partner deals. Adobe, Symantec, Office 2003 trial, lots of other shareware…Out of all of that, I had use for…none. I don’t need security-encrypted folders, I don’t need biometric login, I certainly don’t need Norton’s crap etc.
The only software that seemed to be of some use was Intervideo WinDVD for VAIO (v5.0). It would be useful if it wasn’t 2-speakers only edition. :( Since I have 5.1 speakers connected to VAIO over Creative Live! 24bit sound card, this was useless and I de-installed it.

It really is shame that Microsoft is not providing DVD decoder for the Windows. For all you MacOSX owners out there, if you didn’t know – Windows can’t play DVD movies on its own. You need to purchase DVD player that has the decoder: Cyberlink PowerDVD, Intervideo WinDVD and lots of others.

To cut the story short – I decided to reinstall Windows, remove the hidden partition and resize the C and D to what I like. Heh…not a small feat to do.
Continue Reading →

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