Always after a big and hectic release, such as Feeder 1.2 at the end of last month, there is tons to be done. I always say to myself that I’ll try to take a few days off to restore sanity and I’m lucky if I get a single day of a weekend. Of course time is spent promoting the new release and there is Real Life, where I need to catch up with all those things that have needed doing, but I couldn’t find time or inclination. I also have to reacquaint myself with friends and make time with my family – not that it’s work, but sometimes you need total downtime.

So, immediately after a release is actually the worst time to consider a break, no matter if you think you need one. Inevitably support emails and other feedback floods in – a lot of this can be positive comment, which is fantastic and I always try to respond. While most of the rest can be dealt with quickly requiring no fixes, two things persist in being big issues with Feeder.

FTP remains the thing that needs the most support due to the myriad differences between various systems, configurations and user understanding. That is hotly followed by people needing help with their feeds, almost always malformed or invalid feeds from other applications. I do my best to make these things easier and Feeder has a host of features to filter out crap. There are improvements I can make to the way Feeder works with different FTP configurations, but I doubt the invalid RSS issues will go away in a hurry. Top tip: if you have a feed on your site, check it out with FeedValidator. You’d be surprised at the applications and systems that have problems.

I should mention that the people who write in with support queries can’t be more helpful. They’re always willing to answer questions and try stuff out. I simply don’t have the resources to test every configuration of every FTP server, for example, so in the world of Indieware it is these people who help make products and life better for everyone. Whether it’s questions on how something should work or positive feedback, it all helps developers to know what’s good and where improvements could be made. I think all good developers agree with this. Here’s to you, Mac-using community!

To anyone who, like me, reads and enjoys sometime Reinvented Software helper Hans Kim’s blog, Post Hog, Ergo Propter Hoc, it has moved to http://nsobject.blogspot.com. I eagerly await the repost of “Das Hans Idyll”.

ThinkMac‘s Rory Prior has written a couple of posts on his blog about his disappointment with the Apple Mighty Mouse. Its touch sensitivity means you have to lift your index finger off the mouse in order to right-click, amongst other annoyances. Latest post here.

That’s a shame because I quite liked the idea of a mouse that didn’t look like you needed 12 fingers to operate it and had some extra OS X features of its own. Of course you can do all this stuff with other mice (mouses?), but you’d expect to see a Mighty Mouse bundled with new Macs in the not-too-distant and this isn’t going to be good enough.

Anyway, Rory has saved me £40 for the time being, so cheers! 😉

Apologies if anyone has tried to post comments on this blog recently and found them vanishing into thin air. I think I added a word to my comments blacklist that caused comments to get nuked. I didn’t realise it could work on a partial word match, not the whole thing.

Also, I’ve had a few occasions where emails sent to info [at] this domain alias don’t seem to have reached me – I only know about these because people write in again and it works. I usually answer all emails ASAP, usually immediately and almost always within 24 hours, so if you’ve sent an email to that address expecting a reply and not received one, please write in again to steve [at] this domain.

I don’t know why this is happening, but I suspect it’s something to do with the alias. Most the time, it seems to work well.

For years I’ve enjoyed photography in an amateur but enthusiastic sort of way and my interest was reborn a few years ago when I got a digital camera, as I’m sure is the case for a lot of people.

Lately, however, I’ve been stuck inside more than I’d like and let it slide. It’s horrible to be feeling so rusty. I’ve had a Flickr account for a while and not used it, so I’ve decided to get cracking and start uploading photos old and new, beginning with some of Rhossili Bay – my favourite retreat from all things digital, urban and noisy.

The Gower Peninsular, where I live, was the UK’s first designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is littered with beaches, wildlife, castles, Medieval churches, caves, woodland, curious pagan monuments and sheep. Naturally, I took all this completely for granted when I was growing up and thought it the most boring place on Earth. However, after seeing a bit more of the world and getting a little older I came to realise that actually Gower was really cool.

The above photo I’ve actually used before on this site in KIT’s product pages. It is one of my faves.

You can see those and any other photos I upload here and there’s a link in the sidebar of this blog.