celebritarian

…and here’s a desktop alternative to the aforementioned web app.

Img2icns — it’s been around a long time. It’s really simple and easy to use.

It creates OS X icons out of your image files (PNG, TIFF or whatever). Also, it helps you applying the icons to files and folders.

Sweet little app. The free version works great.

“Convert ico, icns, and png icons online for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux”.

A friendly-looking site. Obviously extremely easy to use. And it does exactly what it says on the tin.

It spits out a great-looking ICNS file for Mac OS X, PNG versions for various Linux distros (and I believe Windows 7, too?) plus the legacy crap format ICO for Windows.

Nicely done. Web apps really shine when it comes to tasks like these. Do one thing well and present it in a simple way to the user. That’s it.

SproutCore and HTML5.

Loving it. Adds the right lyrics to my iTunes library — right there in the shadows of the dashboard. Wonderful little widget.

Just finished ripping my newly purchased copy of Stones in Exile on DVD.

I use RipIt to digitalize my DVD collection and I have been since I first bought it. I’m satisfied with the application for two reasons:

1. It’s beautiful, elegant and simple and…
2. It does exactly what it says on the tin

Having previous experience with more or less obscure and complex video encoding applications, RipIt feels like a breeze of fresh air.

RipIt’s will save a playable, untouched, undistorted copy of your DVD, which you can watch at anytime directly from your hard drive. No scratched disc required.

However, RipIt doesn’t try to squeeze your DVD into one single burnable DVD-R disc. It doesn’t convert your DVD to some other format, and it doesn’t even offer you the option of compressing the video data.

Why? Well, my guess is because there are already a lot of great apps for that — especially on Mac OS X. HandBrake and VisualHub (unfortunately now discontinued) are two great apps for compressing, converting and encoding video files. They come with a lot of options and advanced settings.

RipIt, on the other hand, doesn’t. Insert a DVD and it will back it up for you. Removing copy protection and other junk, leaving only a folder with an exact replica of your movie. (The folder becomes a “virtual DVD” — open it ewith VLC or eveb Mac OS X’s built-in DVD Player and they wukk treat just like a physical disc.)

So. RipIt. Great for making exact copies of your DVDs. Does require a lot of disk space though. The other apps I’ve mentioned (and other classical apps like MacTheRipper) are proofs of just how insanely great Mac OS X apps there are out there.

If you don’t already own RipIt, download it now. And if you like it, buy it (obviously). It pays for itself.

Or well, maybe that’s just me and my prejudice. There might be good third-party apps for Windows, too. Compare them to the third-party OS X software and well… they don’t compare. Not even close. And I’m not just talking video apps, obviously. Take any category of applications. Honestly. Proof me wrong. But now I’m just off-topic.

I’m so used to the way Mac OS X renders text, and I enjoy the way text looks in Safari. However, there’s people who feel different.

-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased makes your text a bit thinner and less heavily anti-aliased, compared to the default subpixel-antialiased.

What do you prefer? Paste the CSS below into your code and use the classes on different paragraphs to try it out for yourself:

<style media="all">
/* Different anti-aliasing options in WebKit */
  .subpixel {
    -webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased;
  }

  .antialiased {
    -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
  }
</style>

XAR is an “easily extensible archive format”. I didn’t know about XAR until recently. I discovered it when examining a Safari 5 extension.

I assumed Safari extensions were simple bundles — like apps or widgets. So, removing the file extension .safariextz would turn an extension into a simple OS X folder — at least, so I thought.

Turned out I was wrong. So, I typed the file command in the Terminal and found out it was some kind of archive format. So. That’s how I first got to know about XAR.

Anyway. XAR. Apple uses it (which automatically makes me interested in the technology at hand…) Why? Probably because it’s structured. The content is basically described by a simple XML file. (Or by a property list — plist — in Apple’s extension case.)

I think the idea behind Safari 5’s extension architecture is way less-geeky than Chrome’s equivalent. Also, it’s more beautifully executed. Now, onto next task: Coming up with an idea of a Safari extension.