Outside the Box | On the way to indie land http://bluezbox.com/blog On the way to indie land Fri, 10 May 2013 01:18:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 Audiobook Binder 1.16 http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/05/10/audiobook-binder-1-16/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/05/10/audiobook-binder-1-16/#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 01:18:33 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog/?p=38 Audiobook Binder 1.16 was released yesterday.
List of changes:

  • Added ability to reset audiobook project
  • Fixed bug with bitrate on OS X 10.8
  • Create new chapter for each added file
  • Use meta data from MP3 files for naming chapters (if available) instead of standard “Chapter” text
  • Minor bugfixes

Project has been dormant for almost two years now and this release is just a summary of feature requests received over this period. There might be more bugfix/maintenance releases if future Mac OS X releases will break something. But feature-wise this version (or even previous one) is pretty much what I had in mind when I started developing ABB. The only other thing I’d really like to add is multi-threaded audio encoding but without switching to completely different audio API it’s not possible. And who’s in that kind of hurry for audiobook anyway? :)

]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/05/10/audiobook-binder-1-16/feed/ 7 Updates and plans http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/05/09/updates-and-plans/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/05/09/updates-and-plans/#comments Thu, 09 May 2013 00:56:04 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog/?p=34 Last month I’ve been on and off OS X development, tidying up loose ends and cleaning stuff up. Here is short summary of my activity:

  • MLSwitcher has been updated to 2.0 and then to 2.1 getting additional functions and numerous localizations along the path.
  • Fb2Epub application has been released. It’s just like my fb2epub.com web service, but with batch mode, faster and does not require internet connection.
  • Audiobook Binder turns 1.16. More on it in next post.

I’m planning on taking sabbatical for couple of months and share my time between wearing FreeBSD kernel hacker hat and the career of aspiring indie developer.
Part of the plan is to get rid of dead projects, start new and clean-up the ones that are still used by people.

Namely “KnockOnD is still gets several downloads a day with occasional spikes I can’t explain. It was my first project for iPhone, second or third Obj-C project so there’s quite a few dumb mistakes in code of which I am ashamed and never came around to fix.

xcs, ruby script for controlling Xcode projects from command line gathered some user base as well. The problem is it works for Xcode3 but Xcode3 is practically a fossil by IT time scale and some of applescript actions are still missing in Xcode4. So I decided to drop apple script, rewrite it in Objective C and work with .pbxproj directly. File format is simple enough so I’m fairly sure this approach will work. The project was named after its predecessor: xcs-objc.

Audiobook Binder will get its own blog post and the rest of the projects were either jokes or simple weekend-projects nobody cares of any more. Including myself. Their place is in the attic and that’s exactly where they’ll be put as a part of proverbial spring cleaning.

]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/05/09/updates-and-plans/feed/ 0 Blog facelift http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/04/29/blog-facelift/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/04/29/blog-facelift/#comments Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:15:24 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog/?p=29 I decided to give this blog a face up as part of spring cleaning and switched from TextPattern to WordPress. The overall import went well but since comments were managed by Disqus – they didn’t make it to brave new world :(

Old permalinks should be functional

]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2013/04/29/blog-facelift/feed/ 0 ChapterX is open source http://bluezbox.com/blog/2012/10/14/chapterx-is-open-source/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2012/10/14/chapterx-is-open-source/#comments Sun, 14 Oct 2012 12:59:01 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog2/?p=23 I’ve just uploaded ChapterX sources to github: https://github.com/gonzoua/ChapterX.
Happy hacking!

]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2012/10/14/chapterx-is-open-source/feed/ 0 ChapterX: Humble Chapter Tool replacement http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/09/09/chapterx-humble-chapter-tool-replacement/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/09/09/chapterx-humble-chapter-tool-replacement/#comments Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:51:51 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog2/?p=22 My new pet project: ChapterX. About a month ago I got email. Author was asking how much effort would it take to code Chapter Tool replacement. My estimates were “one day or so” and since this idea crossed my mind before I decided to start. Turned out – my estimates were overly optimistic (aren’t they always that way?). In one day I coded chapters support and then hit a roadblock: artwork and links. It took couple more days toying with libmp4v2 to get artwork working. So far that’s it. Chapters and artwork, links are still to be implemented. Although all the plumbing is there, in the file – my ipod touch just refuses to show any links. But I hope it’s something I will figure out later.

And now latest version of ChapterX available for download: ChapterX 0.3.

]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/09/09/chapterx-humble-chapter-tool-replacement/feed/ 0 Audiobook Binder 1.15: Lion on the loose http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/22/audiobook-binder-115-lion-on-the-loose/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/22/audiobook-binder-115-lion-on-the-loose/#comments Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:42:35 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog2/?p=21 It seems that Audio Converter Services in OS X 10.7 has nasty bug: internal state got corrupted if application sets bitrate frequently. Even if bitrate value is the same.

Technical details aside – 1.15 is out and it contains workaround for this bug. Audiobook Binder should not crash now on Lion. New version is available via autoupdate. For those who use App Store build: review will take some time (as always) so I apologize for the inconvenience.

]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/22/audiobook-binder-115-lion-on-the-loose/feed/ 0 OS X Lion is out… more work ahead http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/20/os-x-lion-is-out-more-work-ahead/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/20/os-x-lion-is-out-more-work-ahead/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:47:28 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog2/?p=20 Audiobook Binder seems to have some problems running on Lion. If you spotted a crash or any unusual behavior – let me know, drop a line at info@bluezbox.com

Thanks

]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/20/os-x-lion-is-out-more-work-ahead/feed/ 0 Logo change http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/19/logo-change/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/19/logo-change/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:01:12 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog2/?p=19 Oh, and since 1.13 Audiobook Binder got new logo. Using iPod nano image violated Apple’s policy sop in order to get new version approved in App Store previous logo has been changed.

]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/19/logo-change/feed/ 0 Audiobook Binder 1.14 http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/19/audiobook-binder-114/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/19/audiobook-binder-114/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:58:40 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog2/?p=18 1.14 is out. Usually it takes more time to prepare release, but I thought several fixes for crash-bugs worth to be released early. Changes:

  • Stability fixes (application no longer crashes on drag’n'drop)
  • Try to guess author/title when files are dragged on window
  • Add dock icon progress bar that displays overall progress
  • Fix abbinder crash
]]> http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/19/audiobook-binder-114/feed/ 0 Audiobook Binder 1.13 http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/05/audiobook-binder-113/ http://bluezbox.com/blog/2011/07/05/audiobook-binder-113/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:38:23 +0000 Oleksandr Tymoshenko http://bluezbox.com/blog2/?p=17 And again I neglected task of announcing new release. Good thing that we have Sparkle framework and Mac App Store to deliver news about new versions to user. So… As you might know Audiobook Binder 1.13 hit the shelves: what’s new and exciting?

First of all – Italian translation. Thanks to Vainer Broccoli, member of universalaccess.it team, Audiobook Binder now parla italiano. Thank you, Vainer.

Then – more columns for file list. In addition to filename user can add new columns to the file list table by right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking on table header. Just like in iTunes or Mail.app. Also it’s possible to sort files by column values.

Minor improvement – application will try to guess author and title based on audiofiles ID3 tags. But only if user hasn’t filled them out before adding files.

One more minor improvement – now it’s possible to disable splitting long audiobooks in volumes. Just slide “Max volume length” to the rightmost position.

Like this:

Looks like that’s it for now.

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