Invisible Move

The website is moving to a new shared server in 3 days, but you shouldn't notice any change if everything goes well. It's still the same service provider, but they're moving this site to a newer, more powerful server. Since the site performed well on the old system, I expect it to do very well on the new system.

Any issues would appear late Friday or early Saturday (the 18th). I'll be monitoring the site, but I may away for a day or two.

Today's Downtime

The site was experiencing some abnormal server load and was brought down for most of the day. I'm currently working with my webhost to make sure the issue is correctly resolved. I'm not in a position to afford my own space, so I have to share space on a physical machine with other sites. The problem appeared to be a database issue and not a bandwidth issue, so things should hopefully be fine now.

EDIT: I've also fixed a problem with downloads not working.

New ArsClip for a New Year

Version 4.6 of ArsClip has been officially released. Most of the latest changes in this are bug fixes. The notable new features since v4.3 are Pinned Clips and customization for middle click and popup colors. For those that rarely reboot their system, there is an important memory leak fix in this version - so it is highly recommended to update.

1 Million Program Downloads

While some sites manage this milestone in a few days or even hours, it has taken this site a bit longer to reach this tally. The actual count since 2005 is closer to 1.2 million program downloads, so I missed the real achievement date and data before 2005 is not available.

To put this into perspective:
- the largest file on the website is less than 2 MB in size
- there are ~13 thousand unique visitors a month
- 20 GB of data are download every month (over 800 MB a day)
- over 1500 GB of data has been download since 2005

Single Page Updates

A long time ago, I added an RSS feed for the entire site. It was a "simple" way to get automatic notifications about new posts on the site. At the time, there was no Public Beta section so the only updates were mostly just new program updates.

With the new Public Beta section, there is a lot more activity on the site and the RSS feed shows now shows a lot more activity. For those that only want updates for single page, I've updated the "RSS Feed" page with new links to ArsClip, Rename Master, and MouseWrangler. In a future site update, I plan on adding a "Subscribe to Page" link on each page.

Quickfixes

New versions of ArsClip, MouseWrangler, and Rename Master have been released. While there are new features in ArsClip and MouseWrangler, these versions mostly address issues that where discovered soon after the last release.

For ArsClip, the biggest changes are two new Permanent Clip commands and fixes for a few "List Index" errors that only appear on certain systems. Several important fixes are included in the version, so it's a high priority release.

For MouseWrangler, I've added a new screen-drawing feature that helps visualize drawing the shapes. At the same time, this new feature also increases program compatibility since the "drawing" is actually just an invisible window that covers the screen. Also, certain keystrokes were not correctly generated in the previous version.

For Rename Master, this issue only contains bug fixes. It's a small update, but if fixes 2 major bugs that were not discovered in the Public Beta process.

A New ArsClip

Version 4.3 of ArsClip has been released. Though the version number is an incremental update, the program is built with a new compiler. This upgrade allows for full Unicode support.

Most notable in this version, there are quite a few small improvements and many bug fixes. The Tooltip hint window, however, has been fully redesigned to be faster using the new Unicode support. Permanent Clips also now can use and edit Unicode characters in the name and clip fields as normally expected.

A New Rename Master

Version 3.0 of Rename Master has been released. The most notable changes in this version are as follows:

- Unicode filename support
- new Wide Layout mode for the interface
- revamped File Tags window with video tag support
- revamped Thumbnail Window with more supported files

This is the first official release built with an updated compiler and this makes Unicode support possible. Renaming filenames with Unicode characters is no longer an issue.

The original version of RM was developed at a time when tube monitors were still popular and resolutions were smaller. The new Wide Layout mode takes advantage of modern monitors that are much wider than they are tall. In this optional mode, the Renaming Script and Filelist are placed on the left and right sides of the interface instead of the top and bottom.

Both the File Tags and the Thumbnail windows have been revamped to be much more useful. The File Tags window can now used to see what tags are support in a file (MP3, JPEG, and Video) and to copy the Tag Variables to use in the Renaming Script. The Thumbnail window shows more important information for all files and also supports showing previews for more file formats.

A New Niche Utility - RatTrap

RatTrap is a new utility developed for the Cyborg R.A.T. mouse. It's job is simple. It will switch profiles automatically for the current foreground program. This is one of the features missing from the mouse's software that's found in other brands, like Logitech.

ArsClip Version Jump

The official release of version 4.0 of ArsClip has been uploaded. I've jumped versions because of a major feature change. The change in this version is a completely new popup window. The changelog for this is rather long, so instead of trying to tell you about it, I threw together a video preview.

ArsClip Youtube Video

1 in 1000

For every 1000 downloads I usually receive feedback from 1 users. This is why your feedback is so important. To put this in perspective, the previous version of Rename Master was downloaded about 60,000 times in 8 months -- I'd expect 60 responses. Only a portion of this feedback is about program features or issues.

Each Public Beta may only be download a few dozen times, so the odds of receiving feedback is much lower. This is why I make my beta versions open to everyone.

The good news is that I've been receiving more feedback than normal the paste few months. This is why there have been more beta updates than usual. Each bug fix posted is usually the result of a report and each new feature is at least indirectly related to a specific email received.