walking & talking all over again



archives

September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009

WT1 (2003-2008)
WT2 (2008)

stuff

Pollen
Marching Boys

RDF
RSS
Atom
« Home Again, Home Again | Main Index | Rosas Daily News »

September 6, 2009

Snow Pollen

Rather quicker on the uptake this time than last, I installed Snow Leopard on Thursday. It seems fine, on the whole, most of the changes barely nudging the threshold of perception. But, as Google will quickly confirm, it breaks third-party screensavers wholesale, and Pollen was no exception.

Since I had to go back and rebuild it anyway, I took the opportunity to add the colour scheme feature I've been meaning to for years and generally tidy up some rough edges. And I think it's finally time to call the result version 1.0. It's only taken 8 years.

I don't, alas, have ready access to any other machines to test on, so if any of you do -- Leopard or Tiger, Intel or PPC -- could you install this new version and let me know whether it runs?

Ta!

Update: flerdle pointed out that it can all be a bit frenetic at the new framerate, so I've added a speed control: version 1.0.1 is now posted. And it looks like it works on Tiger machines. Anyone want to try Leopard? (I can do this myself tomorrow, but feel free to beat me to it!)

Posted by matt at September 6, 2009 10:07 PM

Click here to comment.

It works on a macbookpro running tiger (2GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 GB RAM).

In Main Screen Only mode or with a single screen, the motes go significantly faster than in the old version (I still had it on my system to compare). The overall effect is kind of frantic, whereas it was quite calming and mesmerising before. Using images other than the default also works fine.

In dual screen mode, it goes fast-slow-fast-slow in, at a rough guess, about a 2-second per stage cycle.

Let me know if you want further info, but I don't think there is much more to it than that. Thanks for making this, it's very cool.

Posted by: flerdle at September 7, 2009 2:39 PM

Hi flerdle, thanks for the info. I managed to test it on a PPC Tiger machine today as well, so it looks like the old school is doing ok.

I had wondered about the speed thing, and since you brought it up I decided to add in a control to allow the motes to be slowed down to a more sedate pace. Thus, after waiting three years for an update, we're on to the second release in just over 24 hours!

Don't think there's much to be done about the dual screen speed issue, though...

Posted by: matt at September 7, 2009 11:34 PM