Richard BF

I've been a Pro Tools fan for years, since around 1997 or so, but as each successive version came out, the user interface never really got any better, and the restrictions on hardware were never lifted. I'd search Google for possible replacements every time I had to pay for yet another upgrade, but stuck with it because I didn't believe that another product would be as good. Finally, at Pro Tools 8, my hand has been forced, because this version no longer supports some of my DigiDesign hardware. I've finally moved to Logic Pro.

If you read the web, most opinion considers Pro Tools best for audio editing and recording, and Logic Pro best for MIDI, and I kept on believing that, version after version. However, since Apple bought Logic, they've been greatly improving Logic Pro into an awesome editing tool, which is most of what I do. Don't believe what it says on the web, Logic Pro is now at least as good as ProTools in this area, and while the user interface is more complex at first, you do get used to it.

But the kicker was the hardware restriction. Pro Tools 8 removes support for my audio interface, which is also made by DigiDesign, so they've removed support for their own equipment. That's just brain, considering that Logic Pro 9 on the other hand, not only still supports my DigiDesign hardware, but when I decide to get something new, I can get pretty much anything from any company and it will work.

Its taken a few hours to figure out my Logic Pro workflow, but after a few short projects, and changing a bunch of the keyboard command to match Pro Tools, I'm almost as productive as I was before, and I can see it being way more useful and productive than Pro Tools in the long run.

Its sad saying goodbye to an old friend, but I've never really liked Avid, who bought DigiDesign a few years back, so adios Avid!

We went to Darling Harbour for Australia Day, so Molly could see Jay Laga'aia and friends on the kids' stage. Well, the first song was "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands...", followed by "stamp your feet", "yell ya hoo!" and then all three. I was amazed at the number of sad sack fathers that just didn't join in. They were happy to watch their kids do it, but sing along, clap, stamp and yell? Nope.

The old adage rings true, kids laugh around 400 times per day, and adults around 15. What happens to these disgruntled parents that makes them want to have kids but only from a distance? Two many hours couped up in corporate offices to think about having fun?

Regardles whether the parents enjoy it or not, the show is still for kids, their kids, and I'd have thought that by joining in they'd make their kids' experience more fun. Jay was a slow starter and the crowd wasn't exactly responding that well to his call and response, so even more reason to join in, to make it better for everyone.

I used to say this before I was a parent, and my opinion hasn't changed, most people are just plain selfish by having kids, and shouldn't be allowed to take on the most important roll we can have in life: bringing up a child.

I usually buy Panasonic phones and domestic video gear (DVD, VCR, TV), so I visited the Panasonic web site today, to look for a headset for my Pansonic office phone. Strangely, they don't have any on the site. Although if you search for "headset", a page of search results appears with one being a generic headset, and if you click it, it just does the whole search again.

I did a interwebs search and found dozens of Panasonic headsets available.

So I called Panasonic and spoke to what sounded like 16 year old boy in support:

RBF: I'm looking for a headset for my office phone, model xyz.

Panasonic support: I'm sorry, that phone doesn't support a headset.

RBF: Hmm... then why is there a headset jack on the side, with a picture of a headset, complete with microphone?

Panasonic support: I don't know sir, but my documentation here says that it doesn't support a headset.

RBF: What, the phone doesn't actually support a headset, or you don't make a headset for it?

Panasonic support: It doesn't support a headset, so you could try a third party one, but I wouldn't recommend it.

You can buy Panasonic, just don't expect support to know what they're talking about.

My Dad passed away in hospital last week, and we had the funeral yesterday. I think it was worthy of him, although I did unfortunately accidentally say the f word in the middle of it.

Dad requested that my sister and I speak, and she didn't feel she could, so sure I'll speak for both of us, and Mum as well. During the arrangements there was talk of a celebrant MCing, and I'm not sure how it happened, but I ended up saying sure, I get up in front of hundreds of people each week and make stuff up without a script, wouldn't it be better if I did it instead of someone Dad didn't know. How hard could it be?

So then we got to the music. Oh, I had to do the soundtrack, based on Dad's wishes, and in consultation with Mum and my sister. Oh, and we need a program, because the funeral directors don't do that, and the few I'd seen looked like some school kid had done them in Word, pretty amateur, so sure, I'll professionally do the program as well, nothing but high production quality for Dad.

And you know what, I may as well do the running order and Stage Manage it, considering most of the detail of that was in my hands anyway. Pre-show, intros, cue sheets, it felt like a show. We were running a show, and I would make Dad proud.

So somewhere in there I managed to write my speech as well, not as good as I'd like, I ran out of time, but pretty good I reckon.

I'm not sure what the tradition is, but people were saying afterwards how different the service was, in a good way. I figured it was the obvious to be honest. Four special speakers requested by Dad, including myself, and then intersperse it with fragments of my speech, tailored to also serve as introductions to each speaker. The narrative turned out well, and I think the pace was good.

I think Dad would have smiled, laughed, teared up a little, and said "Good job mate. Probably could have left out the fuck." He's right, I could have left out the fuck.

A little over six months ago I wrote a post titled MYOB - WTF is interaction design again?, in response to the frustration I was feeling over my ongoing battle with MYOB for Windows.

While that battle has continued, with neither of us giving way, I was very impressed that the MYOB team took the time, within 3 days, to find my post and respond. OK, it was just "call us", but still. And I never called anyway, so I only have myself to blame for the ongoing problems right? No, because as I said in that post, these are really obvious problems that any developer or tester worth their pay would discover. Which makes me wonder if MYOB are so under staffed technically that they've had to live with a really high level of acknowledged defects, but I don't buy that, because they'd have to be rolling in cash, seriously.

I don't want to call MYOB and have them show me workarounds for my problems, or promise that they're going to fix them. Just fix them!

Which brings me to my latest bunch of MYOB issues.

• The built in forms are crap. I don't know any other technical way to describe them other than just plain old crap. If one of my developers delivered these to me, I'd be questioning them whether they have any problems at home at the moment, or whether they have a medical condition at all. Here's a tip for MYOB: hire a contract form designer for two weeks, and have them provide some usable forms.
• The form designer is crap. For form design, its worse than Windows Paint is for graphic design. Here's just a few of its problems:
  • There's no way to pin an axis when moving an object. One of the key things with form layout, is lining up of objects on an axis, but in MYOB, you click to select and drag the mouse, and you've just got to hope it looks alright when you let go. You can then double click the object to see its left axis offset, close it, then double click the other object and type in the same left axis offset, but try doing that with a whole bunch of fields. Tip: add a simple shift key lock to the axis that isn't moved first by the mouse. This is how all layout programs work.
  • When you double click on an object, you can't select a position or size value and copy it to the clipboard. Likewise, you can't paste from the clipboard. Considering all the values are of the form xy.abc, its a pain in the arse to have to remember 4 or 5 digits, close a dialog and then double click open another one and then have to type them value in manually from memory. If you want to copy the left axis and the width, then good luck remembering both. Tip: make the clipboard work in EVERY text field in MYOB. And I do mean EVERY field, because it doesn't work in about half of them.
  • If you add a jpeg with the picture object, don't add any white, because white prints as cream. Which means that any logo with a white background will end up printing a cream coloured box around the image, instead of blending with the page. Also, nowhere in the documentation does it say which graphic objects are supported. From my testing, jpeg is OK, but has the lossy cream background issue, tif is OK for black and white but it completely mangles colours.
  • The print preview doesn't. i.e. what you see in the print previous is completely different line up wise to what's in the form designer!
  • The printing of a form with real data also bears no resemblence to either the form designer's view or it's print preview.
  • The customise forms window is modal, which means if you want to change a form, probably because you're tweaking the form and printing with real data is the only way to be sure, then you have to close and leave the form designer in order to get back into MYOB. This makes small tweaks to form painfully slow.
  • There's no way to line up objects other than by entering the position of the top left corner of an object, which means if your text field is right aligned, then you can't line up your objects without doing a mental calculation of xy.abc + de.fgh, where xy.abc is the left axis offset, and de.fgh is the object width. You then have to calulate the other object as well, and compare them, then subtract the difference from the object you wish to move, and enter that into the dialog. That's seriously insane! The workaround is to make both fields exactly the same width, and then put them at the same left offset, manually typing each. The problem with both of these methods is that you then can't line up the position of the first character in a right aligned text field, with the start of a left aligned field, which you definitely want to do if you're pinning fields to the left margin. Well, when I say left margin, I mean your manually chosen left indent, because the form designer doesn't show or support print margins, it doesn't even suggest that you leave margins.
• The process payroll screen shows an initial Select Pay Period panel, and none of the five vertically displayed fields are horizontally aligned, except for the two radio buttons which are on top of each other. The text field next to one of the checkboxes isn't vertically aligned either. But that's not the most annoying thing, its more the fact that: the pay leave in advance checkbox has a colon after it, which gives the impression that the pay start and end period is to do with paying leave in advance; and again the pay leave in advance checkbox only being enabled when you select to pay all employees and not just one. I should be able to leave in advance for an individual.

Here's one more tip: hire a contractor who knows how build user interfaces, and give them a month to just go over the line up and layout of all the various screens, and do mock ups for the refactoring of some of the more braindead wizard dialogs. The next build will just pick up the new layours, and the developers can then recode the wizards at a later date, based on the mock ups.

Having said that, here's a couple of the changes in the most recent version of MYOB:

• You can now record leave information when you process the payroll. Well, they don't say that you can only do that if you're paying by the hour, not a salary.
• New tax table validity tests. In other words, when MYOB supply you with new tax tables, they now validate that data to make sure its valid. Umm... I'd probably want it fixed at the source, but maybe that's just me.

I'm still seeking an adequate replacement for MYOB, preferably for the Mac, but I'll survive with a Windows application if the developers are professionals. If you know of such a replacement, then please let me know.