The Trove

Though most won’t notice, the blog has been upgraded over to Wordpress from MovableType. And in the spirit of upgrading, I finally recompiled GuitarChords and UpcomingBirthdays to make them Universal Binaries.

Having said that, I don’t actually own any Intel-based Macs, so I have no way of testing whether or not these really work on those machines. So any feedback there good or bad will help. Thanks. Download links are in the sidebar ->>>

We’ve got the kinks worked out of the system plus a few new features thrown in. Add it all up and you get UpcomingBirthdays 1.5.

New features in this release include:
- ability to use different time ranges for missed and upcoming birthdays
- adjustable font size for people who like large and small text
- resizable widget window
- new help page showing how to add birthdays to the widget

Bug fixes include:
- fixed a refresh bug so birthday listing will update each time Dashboard is opened
- fixed a timing bug that would cause birthdays to change at noon instead of midnight

What are you waiting for? Download away. It’s free.

As always, here’s the standard disclaimer:

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Thanks for the continuing support. We’re set to hit 100,000 downloads any day now. The good news is that you can now download a new version of GuitarChords. Here’s a list of the new features:

1. Now supports 50 different types of chords. In earlier versions, you could only display basic major and minor chords but now there is support for 7th chords, Minor 13th chords, even things like Minor Major 7th add 11. I don’t know what half of these chords are, but hey, you asked for them, so you got ‘em.

2. Improved chord calculator to use a fret range based on linear distance. This means that if you scroll up high on the neck, it will display chords with a range of five to six frets whereas lower on the neck the fret range is three to four frets.

3. Added support to display alternative chord fingerings. When a chord is displayed, if there are alternate fingerings it will display a row of grey circles just above the fretboard. Click on the circle to display the alternate fingering.

So quit listening to me yap, and download the latest version. Also, in case some of you haven’t noticed, I’ve also released a widget called Upcoming Birthdays. It reads your Address Book and tells you when you have birthdays coming up. I’ll be making updates to that pretty soon too.

Here’s another widget for your Dashboard. UpcomingBirthdays. As usual it’s free, so download away.

This tiny widget checks your Address Book for people with an upcoming birthday or for people with a birthday that just happenend. Click on their name to start writing your own personal Happy Birthday email to them. With this widget on your Dashboard, you’ll never miss a birthday again.

As usual, here are the standard Apple installation instructions:

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

So I’ve released the GuitarChordsPlugin 1.0. It’s free. Download away.

Note that is NOT the same thing as the GuitarChords widget also developed by me and featured on Apple’s website. Instead, this plugin is used by the GuitarChords widget to generate MIDI sounds with the DLS Synth built in to Tiger. Widget developers can use the plugin in their own widgets to play single notes, chords, or a sequence of notes. So if you’re looking to add generated sounds to your own widgets, then feel free to use this. Included in the download are documentation and a sample widget demonstrating how everything works.

Let me know if you have any questions. And have fun with it!

Fixed another memory leak, and added code to make sure your saved preferences are valid. Tons of thanks go to Matt for all the help debugging.

Download away from the usual link.

I’ve gotten a few reports of the new sound module in GuitarChords crashing people’s machines. I’m not sure what might be causing it, but I went ahead and added a lot more defensive programming to the module to try and alleviate the problem. So if you had problems before, try out version 1.5.1 and let me know if it fixes things.

If it’s still crashing, then I’ll go ahead and release a secondary version of the product without the audio module. That way you still get the UI enhancements over version 1.0 but without the crashing.

Thanks for all the positive feedback. To date, there’s been over 32,000 downloads of GuitarChords and the software reached #4 on the Apple Top 50 Dashboard Widget list. But rather than rest on our laurels, you can now download GuitarChords 1.5. Additional features in this release include:

- Sound! Click the play button and hear what the chord sounds like. Each string is played one at a time, and then the chord is played all at once.
- Choose from all the guitar sounds in Apple’s built-in synthesizer
- Control the speed of playback for the chord
- View the fretboard left-handed or right-handed
- Partially displayed chords are auto-scrolled so that they appear fully on the screen
- Get feedback if a chord cannot be found to display on the fretboard

Two highly requested features that did NOT make it into this version, but should make it into the next one are horizontal views and four-note chords (7th, add9, etc.). Look for those to be added before the end of the summer.

As for the future, soon I’ll also be releasing the GuitarChordsPlugin. It’s a custom plugin written in Objective-C that other Dashboard developers can use to play sound in their own widgets. It’s mostly finished, but I need to write some decent documentation for it first. More about that later. For now, let me know if version 1.5 gives you any problems.

GuitarChords 1.0, a Dashboard widget for Mac OS X has been released. Download away.

Just pick a note and type of chord. Then watch as the widget displays how to fret that chord on the guitar. Scroll up the neck and see alternate ways of playing that same chord. When you get tired of that, flip the widget around and change the tuning on your guitar. Ever wondered how to play a E-flat augmented chord in Open G tuning? Now you can find out.

In the future, I’ll be adding who knows what to the widget. Maybe nothing. Maybe other cool things depending on what kind of feedback I get. Anyway, hope you like it.

OFFICIAL APPLE DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.