TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – The cold weather is here. We still have three weeks to go past the winter solstice. Anyway, the first application of this month is ready for submission to Mac App Store. This new release is called Tower Pins.

Tower Pins is a desktop application that lets you post pins over a map in accordance with geographic coordinates from a CSV dataset you select. You can use Tower Pins to track the movement of a cellular phone by connecting pins with lines. You can also circle individual pins with a color you select.  Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – It has been very cool for the past 4 or 5 days because of a typhoon. Now, it’s gone, and the scorching heat is back. Meanwhile, I’m ready to announce a new software title for macOS. This new software release to Mac App Store is called CutOut 3 Essential.

CutOut 3 Essential is the 3rd edition of a desktop application that lets you clip an area of an image with a bezier curve path you select. Move the image here and there with your mouse pointer to set a cutout area. Then click on the cutout button to make a cutout.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – I have had double releases twice for the past four weeks. Today, no… I only have one software title to release. This new software submission to Mac App Store is called LittleCal 3.

It’s been more than 14 years since I released the first version of LittleCal. Now, it’s been developed from scratch with the SwiftUI framework.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – The second software title of the double releases is called FireSQL 4. Hopefully, it will be available at Mac App Store soon.

FireSQL 4 is a new version of the FireSQL series that is totally redesigned with the SwiftUI framework. The main purpose of using FireSQL 4 is still to browse the content of an SQLite database table and records under the selected table. Originally, FireSQL was designed to let you view the content of blob data. Also, it was originally designed to let you create an SQLite database file. When creating a database file, you can now set tab-separated values as initial records to any of tables.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – The scorching summer continues. I don’t even know when the rainy season ended in the Tokyo area. Has it ended? Anyway, I had double releases at the end of the last month. And I’m having another round of double releases. The first one to go is called Angry Images.

Apple’s Preview is getting more and more difficult to use, do you agree? When I first used it at the turn of the century, it was amazing. Well, that’s more than 20 years ago. Nowadays, when you save a translucent PNG image as a JPEG file to disk, it won’t automatically have a white background. I know the workaround. You have to export it as a PNG file without the alpha option, first. You then grab that PNG file and export it as a JPEG file. That’s too much trouble for just having a white background over the transparent area in a JPEG image, isn’t it? The worst part of Preview is that you can end up destroying the original file unless you consciously choose Duplicate under File to make a duplicate right at the beginning.

Angry Images offers missing pieces that old software titles used to have: Don’t destroy original files without asking! Angry Images is designed not to overwrite existing files wherever you decide to save new images. And it won’t destroy your original image files. If you just want to have a white back layer behind a translucent image, all the steps you have to take is (1) drag and drop files onto the application window (2) select JPEG as an export format from a drop-down menu (3) click on Export All and select a volume or a folder where to save new images. That’s all. Do you need more steps for that?

Another reason for Angry Images to come into existence is that Preview doesn’t let you change the hue level and the saturation level of an image. Angry Images lets you change the hue level, the saturation level, the brightness level and the contrast level of an image. On top of these color variations, you can set a new image size individually if necessary when you have multiple images listed.   Continue reading →