Archive for the 'News' Category

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Internet problems

Published on March 8, 2007 in News and Personal. Closed

Apologies to anyone who has commented or emailed me in the last few months. I’ve had no active net connection, and the only internet I can get – campus internet – is crippled with regards to email, in that they block all outgoing mail except through their server, and provide no access to their own mail server through the wifi network anyway. In short, it’s been webmail all the way, and as it’s such a pain in the behind to use then emails have gone unanswered.

If you have an urgent request and you don’t get a reply within a couple of days, feel free to send it again (via email). You’ll get a response eventually if you keep bugging me.

Not only this, but all development work has had to stop, due to our lovely excessively-firewalled campus network. I love the network admins, really I do.

Hopefully, my issues at home should be resolved soon; my ISP has promised to test and reactivate the line within the week, and that’s the final barrier to us having a net connection again. I’ll believe it when I see it though…

I’m going outside now – I may be some time

Published on October 2, 2006 in News and Personal. Closed

No internet connection for – gulp – a month or more! Please address all enquiries to my email, I’ll aim to get back to you in reasonable time. In the meantime, enjoy the fact that Cinematic is going on general release after all. Enjoy!

Site Redesign

Published on September 21, 2006 in News and Personal. 5 Comments

So, it’s been an eventful week here at Phantom Gorilla. Not only do we have a new version of BBC Radio Widget out, but the whole site has had a makeover.

Go on, have a look around. The site’s a semi-fluid design – but I’ve bounded the pages to ensure the lines don’t get unreadably long. If you get a chance, see what happens when you change the font size… The whole site is measured in ems, which means every element dynamically resizes with the text. The next stage is implementing something as cool as this dude…

As ever, your comments are most welcome.

BBC Radio Widget v2.2

Published on September 21, 2006 in News. 20 Comments

BBC Radio 2.2 is here!Well, it’s finally here! BBC Radio Widget 2.2 hits the internet with the full force of… well, with full force, anyway.

I know I’ve been promising this for nearly a fortnight now but – what can I say – I’ve been busy! Speaking of which, you may have noticed a few changes around here…

This version includes a final fix for that irritating freezing problem many people were experiencing, along with speed improvements, and other fixes. Get yours while it’s hot at the all-new widgets page.

Freezing problem update

Published on September 6, 2006 in News. 2 Comments

It’s fixed! Apparently some Macs are fussier than others about Javascript errors… v2.2 – which will contain a few other fixes and enhancements – will be released soon. Sorry it’s so soon after the last update!

In other news, thanks to all those who have donated their hard-earned cash to Andy’s Beverage-Based Entertainment Fund. I’m still trying to get used to the idea of receiving money for this, but rest assured I really appreciate your donations. It certainly encourages further work! :)

Widget + Intel

Published on August 26, 2006 in News. Closed

There appears to be some kind of Javascript issue with the widget on some Intel Macs – specifically, that it may freeze on clicking the Done button.

Apologies for my late recognition of this – I’ve been away for a month.

As I don’t own an Intel Mac myself, I may be getting in contact with some of those who have already emailed me about the issue in order to resolve it. You lucky people.

Expect an update notification on my site and through the widget when a fix is available.

EDIT: So, it appears not to be an Intel problem after all – stay tuned. If the widget freezes for you when you press the Done button, please get in touch using the links on the right.

BBC Radio Widget 2.0 release

Published on July 22, 2006 in News. 34 Comments

Well, the time has come for an official release – so here it is! A slight name change, too; just because, really.

Read more about it or get it now!

Mac OS X Tiger v10.4.2 or greater is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, the widget installer appears. Click Install if you want the widget installed on your Mac. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive and open it to show the widget installer.

In addition, PPC users will need a minimum of RealPlayer 10; Intel users need 10.1 or better. A restart may well be required, too.

BBC Radio 2.0 beta

Published on July 19, 2006 in News. 1 Comment

A very short beta program (actually this is a release candidate really). Will be releasing by the weekend, but if anyone wants to check it out and make me aware of any issues it’d be appreciated.

Pulled – release very soon

RealPlayer goes Universal

Published on May 2, 2006 in News. 3 Comments

Good news for owners of Intel Macs – RealPlayer 10.1 is out and it’s a Universal Binary.

Go grab it now and enjoy listening to BBC Radio on your Dashboard once again!

Nice of Real to finally join the Intel party. What took you so long guys?

NSProgressIndicator – for widgets!

Published on April 11, 2006 in News. Closed

During my work on a couple of projects – including the forthcoming major upgrade to the BBC Radio widget – I desired a simple, OS X-like progress indicator, similar to Apple’s NSProgressIndicator. I found that a couple of people have implemented something similar in Dashboard widgets; generally in the form of an animated .gif. That’s fine, so long as your background is white. Mine isn’t.

So I opted to construct my own; I threw together a simple AppleScript Studio program, made a transparent window and took a screenshot of the indicator in each of its positions, then strung these together into a sequence of .png images, animated with the magic of Javascript. Seeing as I’d put a fair amount of effort into it, I decided to clean up my code and release it, just in case someone else would find it useful. As far as I can tell, it’s an exact replication in WebKit of the NSProgressIndicator circular spinner; and it works in the only browsers I’ve tested it in, Safari 2.0, FireFox 1.0.7, and (perhaps surprisingly) IE:Mac.

You can test it out here, or download it here.

[update] – I’ve seen a few downloads of this little tool; obviously, I didn’t expect many… it’s a bit of a niche product, to say the least! If you end up using this in a project, I’d love to hear about it – just drop me an email from the panel on the right. Obviously, any problems and I’ll do my best to fix them :)

PS. No using this in and Microsoft- or Windows-based projects. You should ask before commercial use, too.