The ZAZ Studios: Blog: General

Come With Us by Thom McGrath

We've started a Battlefield 2142 clan server. It's a flexible infantry-only server, only few rules. Number one rule, no demo pak whoring!

Address 68.232.170.19:16567.

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Nintendo Almost Disappoints by Thom McGrath

I watched Nintendo's E3 conference live today. As expected, it was more gimmicks. A lot of them. I'm happy to see New Super Mario Brothers coming to the Wii, and I imagine the RPG titles coming to the Wii and DS will make their fans happy too. But most of the conference was about appealing to tweens and non-gamers. That's fine, but gamers need something too!

Until the end of time by Thom McGrath

My laptop is finally a laptop again! Since my hard drive went bad about 6 months ago, I've been running it from an external. Not a small, friendly one either. I looked around and determined it would cost about $350 to repair it. That's why I've been waiting.

The Lab! by Thom McGrath

Kelly and I have been moving since Friday morning. Got a new place with lots more space. When I started with REAL and began working from home, it quickly became obvious that I needed my own space. The apartment complex we were in has some very nice townhouses, so we put our names on the waiting list for one of those. That was in June.

REAL Software Website Updates by Thom McGrath

We've had our new site online for a little over a month now and since then, we've been listening to user feedback and rolled out some new updates for the site. Some of which you'll notice, others are under the hood. (Those under-the-hood ones are very useful, but I won't speak of them here.)

Casualty by Thom McGrath

We just got back from the vet. One of our newborn rabbits got her paw tangled in the bedding. We were using the store-bought cotton nesting material, which I would certainly not recommend. Unfortunately, we did not catch it in time, and the paw was deprived of blood for too long. Much of the paw did recover, but the toes did not.

The odds of surviving the amputation were not good. Even in adult rabbits, the survival rate is low. In a week-old such as this, there was nearly no chance she would survive it. If left untreated, it would spread and eventually kill her.

She was euthanized about an hour ago.

The other four are doing exceptionally well, and we expect them to open their eyes by the end of the weekend. We're using a couple old t-shirts for a nest now, which they and the mother are satisfied with. We're hopeful they will make it through.

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Pet Multiplication! by Thom McGrath

My wife and I are not allowed to have dogs or cats in our apartment, so we have a couple rabbits (Mystik and Rayne) instead. Turns out, we have a male and a female. We keep them in separate cages for obvious reasons, but let them run around the apartment quite a bit.

By now, if you're paying any attention at all, you'll guess that Mystik just gave birth. And you'd be correct, we have five new bunnies!

New Website! by Thom McGrath

Finally, after a few months of work, the new REAL Software website is live. We've been working hard on this for a little while now, especially Dana and I, so here's a look at what we've done that may or may not be instantly noticeable.

What I've been up to by Thom McGrath

Just a general post, nothing special about it.

The ZAZ's Open Source Roadmap by Thom McGrath

I've got a brand new open source project coming up. In fact, the code is already complete and in use, I'm just working on the documentation... and this one will have significant documentation. I imagine that nearly every REALbasic project will want this code included.

Best. Song. Ever. by Thom McGrath

I'm going to keep this short and simple. View the picture.

Relove for the iPhone by Thom McGrath

I used the leaked iPhone 2.0 firmware. It's like I when I first bought the iPhone over a year ago - I can't put it down.

But this time, I can keep adding features. Some will be better when push support comes in September, like AIM and NetNewsWire, but it's pretty damn cool.

My personal favorite new app is Shazam. That's one really cool thing Verizon customers could have over me - but this is here now and free!

OmniFocus is pretty great too, I'm keeping it synched with my desktop.

I'm sure you'll read about this everywhere else, but I felt like saying something here.

:: Sent from my iPhone, BTW ::

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Figures... by Thom McGrath

I've been working on an internal tool for REAL Software that is probably my best web app to date. It's a web 2.0 app, feels like a desktop app, on caliber with some of the .Mac stuff. Really sweet.

And yet, I'll never get to show the world.

Figures.

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Tropical Sillyness by Thom McGrath

So, I stumbled across a trailer I thought I might check out.

Tropic Thunder - don't bother. Just to view the trailer, the website asks for too much personal information.

Source-Controlled Website by Thom McGrath

This concept is so simple and easy, I'm amazed I had not yet thought of it. See, I keep a subdomain of this website which I use as a sandbox. I draft new designs or concepts with it. But it's always been a complete pain to bring the sandbox to the live site. I don't want to overwrite too many or the wrong files, and I made the mistake of keeping subdomain files inside my www directory. It's a mess, and I know better now.

Finally, a new day job by Thom McGrath

So after five and a half years with Subway, I have found a new job that's actually in the industry I have real talent in. Not to say hadn't done a good job managing over a hundred teenagers, it just isn't what I want to do. Not to mention it requires me to work about 50 hours a week over 6 days. If I were single and had no friends, it wouldn't be so bad, but considering neither of those are true it really gets to me sometimes.

But no more. I just signed and returned an offer letter.

Supremely Awesome by Thom McGrath

I consider myself a bit of a gamer. I have, until now, kept it mostly secret to the outside world that a) I have a PC, and b) I use it to play games. Let's face it - the Mac sucks for games. Completely and utterly terrible. Everything else, and you wouldn't hear me say enough good things about the Mac. But gaming? No way, at least not until Apple makes a truly customizable Mac.

But we won't get into that today.

What I've done here is one of those "Holy crap that was a good idea" moments we all like to have once in a while.

Leopard Compatibility Notice by Thom McGrath

I have waited the line for my copy of Leopard.

Mail.app RSS sucks.

But more importantly, I've tested my projects for compatibility for Leopard. I find no flaws. Everything, including HIToolbar and Mac OS X Search Field appear to work exactly as they should.

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Blog Comments Back Online by Thom McGrath

Alright, the upgrade to Movable Type 4 is nearly complete - at least for now.

Smart Crash Reports is a godsend by Thom McGrath

Ok developers, if you haven't heard of this yet Unsanity has created an InputManager plugin called Smart Crash Reports. To sum up the entire story, this plugin allows the user to send the crash report to you as a developer, rather than only Apple.

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Panic outdoes themselves... again. by Thom McGrath

Legendary Mac software company, Panic, Inc has recently released Coda, a new web development tool that's really, not that new.

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New ping system ready by Thom McGrath

Anybody paying attention to the RSS feed - thank you for your patience. I've implemented a new ping system which will allow other blogs to notify us of an update, and will put a little star next to the link on the sidebar.

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New comment system live by Thom McGrath

Our new comment system seems to be working well. There's another improvement I plan to make, in order to make it totally invincible, but I have not found a plugin for MT that can do what I need, so I may need to write my own plugin.

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Disclaimer: I am currently an employee of REAL Software. My comments and opinions are mine alone and do not represent those of my employer. My posts are not official REAL Software communications, and may contain information that is incorrect or misleading.