This is a weekend for long-awaited software updates. Not a day after new versions of Cuckoo and LCD Scrub appeared, a bugfix update to our TapeDeck audio recorder is now available for download.

Here’s what’s new in version 1.1.1:

• Fixed a crash that occurred when playing back corrupt audio files. Now the tape will simply appear to stop playing earlier than expected.
• Copies .m4a tapes directly into the library, rather than sending them through the QuickTime importer engine
• Drawing performance improved slightly
• Set the file’s extension automatically according to the user’s currently selected QuickTime export component.

LCD Scrub version 1.1.1 (download)

Cuckoo version 1.2.5 (download)

Changes in LCD Scrub 1.1.1:

• Modified several of the patterns to give them a more even track across the screen (bug identified by Neven Mrgan).

Changes in Cuckoo 1.2.5:

• Fixed a bug causing the CuckooChimeAgent to crash when checking for updates in certain situations (while the network is unavailable or if the cookies database is corrupt).
• Added support for chimes in Core Audio Format (.caf).

New releases: TapeDeck and Pyrothèque

TapeDeck, my exciting joint project with Chris Liscio of SuperMegaUltraGroovy, has made it all the way up to version 1.0.3 without so much as a mention over here on toastup!. The latest release fixes a few more quirks that we’ve discovered in the weeks since TapeDeck’s big introduction last month.

More recently, Pyrothèque got a long-overdue update. Version 1.1.1 incorporates almost a year’s worth of minor bug fixes, including an adjustment to the rocket launcher to better position explosions on monitors of odd sizes and proportions. (That means the fireworks ought to show up properly now, Mister Thirty Inch Cinema Display.)

Web site fixes

One of Google’s robot army helpfully informed me last month that spammers had exploited a hole in the version of WordPress used here at toastup!—resulting in lots of invisible nasty spam keywords that got the blog evicted from Google’s index. The hole’s now been patched, so (hopefully) we’ll re-appear in your search results in the near future. I’ve also gone through and fixed up earlier blog posts that were mangled by the update, so you should be able to see images again in the popular LCD Scrub article, among others.

And, finally—

Expect updates to be light for several months, as we’re expecting a rather large new “version” here at toastycode HQ in the next few weeks. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch (using the email link below, or in your toastycode software product) if you have questions or find any bugs—but also please understand if my replies are somewhat in arrears.

LCD Scrub version 1.0.1 (download)

Foam version 1.3.1 (download)

If you run into any trouble with these new versions, please get in touch using the email link at the bottom of this page. Release notes:

Changes in LCD Scrub 1.0.1

• Fixes registration problems for some users.
• Now shows license agreement when entering registration code.
• Other small improvements.

Changes in Foam 1.3.1

• Uses a different (better) pseudorandom number generator to improve randomness of bubble placement. (The previous method was OK, but could cause repeated sequences when invoking Foam in rapid succession.)
• Fixes a pretty silly infinite loop that the preferences would enter if you selected no color combinations.

Every piece of software available here at toastycode exists first and foremost because it was something I wanted to use and, finding it not to exist, had to go about creating it. Pyrothèque is a perfect example: I had fond memories of Pyro!™—perhaps the granddaddy of all screen savers—and wanted to bring its iconic B&W fireworks back for a revival.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about LCDs.

At my office I have my Mac workstation hooked up to a 19″ flat-panel display from Dell (the 2001FP). I drive it over DVI at native resolution (1600×1200), which is totally sufficient for my multitasking needs.

April 25, 2007

One sunny Wednesday morning, I arrived at my office to find this:

The standard “Computer Name” screen saver was running¹, but something was very, very wrong. Bright green lines streaked down the black areas of the screen, while green echoes smeared rightward off displayed images. The entire screen was dusted with stray green pixels, sparkling and popping like TV snow.

Not good.

It turned out that my officemate had used my iSight/iChat setup the previous evening. He must have swiveled the monitor around when he was finished; it was torqued so far out of position that the DVI cable came loose (with a few bent pins for good measure). Somehow the cross-talked DVI signal resulted in the green noise, which danced on my screen all night long.

The video, it burns

Here’s where it gets interesting. When I replaced the DVI cable, the screen almost went back to normal: my Mac’s screen was now covered in dark shadows where the searing green had been. It was like having CRT burn-in.

I continued using the monitor for the rest of the day, but the lines were distracting, irritating, and deeply concerning: I didn’t want to have to tell my adviser that I’d busted my shiny LCD panel². I turned it off overnight, hoping to release whatever bad mojo had found its way in there, but when I powered it back on the next morning, the lines were still there.

I turned the display off when I went home, and over the course of normal use over the next few days, the ghosts faded a little, but were still pretty annoying. I came in a couple of days later with a better camera³ and took some close-up images of the burned-in areas:

Over the weekend I did some research. I had always assumed that flat panels couldn’t get burn-in⁴; it turns out I (along with countless LCD salespeople) was mistaken. LCDs can instead get image persistence (aka image “retention” or “ghosting” or “traces”), and manufacturers disagree as to exactly why it occurs; perhaps stray charge, maybe combined with heat and “ionic impurities”, or some other abstruse electrochemical condition.

What is universally acknowledged is that one image, displayed for a long time, will tend to leave an after-image on an LCD screen or TV. High-contrast static images (like my green lines) are the worst. There also seems to be some consensus that Dell displays are particularly prone to this sort of thing. Lucky me.

Prevention and repair

The common recommendation, from manufacturers and message boards, is: don’t leave a static image on your screen. (So keep using those screen savers, folks.) Which is all fine and well, but what to do with a screen that’s already burned?

Finally, some good news: it turns out that image persistence is usually reversible (something that was never possible with CRTs). I quickly found Apple’s recommendation for eliminating image persistence: Create an all-white image in Photoshop and set up the photo-album screen saver to use just that one image. (Other manufacturers and forum posts also recommend displaying a solid white image.)

I tried the solid white image technique for a day, but for whatever reason, the lines were still there. After reading the NEC white paper talking about fixed high-contrast images causing persistence, though, I wondered: Could I use moving high-contrast images to “scrub away” and smooth out the excess electrical charge (or whatever it is that causes the problem)?

Scrubbing solution

I set about building a screen saver module that would let me try different high-contrast patterns to see how they fared. Furthermore, since patterns with thin bright lines caused the problem, I set about using similar line patterns to ameliorate it.

It worked.

After a day of using the high-contrast patterns, the lines were almost invisible; the next day they were gone.

So, to recap: Dan’s LCD is hosed; Dan does a bunch of Internet reading, tries a bunch of stuff, creates a solution that works; Dan doesn’t have to get a new monitor. Q.E.D., the end.

An epilogue—and also a preface

I thought I was done with LCD scrubbing forever; with my display fixed, my screen saver properly configured, and my DVI cable securely screwed to the back of my display (!), I was free of the whole issue.

And then I started hearing, from friends and family who had heard the sob story of how my monitor was ruined and how I fixed it, that I should make this tool available to everyone. “Our office’s IT guy just threw a few LCDs away,” said my brother-in-law. “They had burned-in logos and patterns, and we couldn’t use them like that. I told him about your scrub thing, and he said, where can I get that?”

“Don’t you sell software?” he added, somewhat irritably, to my blank stare.

So, here we are: A few months later (well, more than a few; it’s been a busy time for my other career), I present LCD Scrub 1.0.

It’s a descendant of the same screen saver I wrote for myself last spring; to use it, set your energy saver settings to never turn off the display, and your display settings to your LCD panel’s native resolution. Then select LCD Scrub as your screen saver, pick a pattern, and let it run overnight. If you don’t see any improvement, try another pattern.

You can download a trial version from the LCD Scrub page; it will run for 20 minutes so you can see how it works and decide if you want to purchase it. The full version (without time limits) costs just $18.

If LCD Scrub doesn’t work on your display, shoot me an email (with photos of the problem, please) and we’ll try to figure out how to improve the software. I can’t guarantee that it will work in every case of image persistence (having only a limited set of screens to test it on) but, as it uses Apple’s recommended techniques along with my additional high-contrast patterns, I expect it to be effective on all but the most severe cases of image persistence.

Download LCD Scrub and give it a shot.

The new version includes the usual heap of bug fixes and unremarkable tweaks, and adds the following nifty new features:

• For registered users: Cuckoo can now optionally toll the hour (that is, play the sound five times at 5:00) at the top of the hour. This is one of the most often requested Cuckoo features, the other being different sounds at different times.¹
• Includes a new clock-tower sound called “Campanile”—quite effective when tolling the hour as described above. BONGGGGG. (Because it’s built in to Cuckoo, this sound is available in Cuckoo’s free mode.)
• Finally, the de rigeur background checking for software updates. If the appropriate box is checked, Cuckoo will check the toastycode website every few days for new releases. If an update is available, the Cuckoo preference pane will open automatically and you’ll be given the opportunity to download the new version—or ignore or defer it. Cuckoo won’t make any changes to your system (you’ll have to double-click the new version to install it) and no personally-identifying information is be sent in the update query. ²

Please download the new version, and then consider stopping by iUseThis to vote for Cuckoo. Happy holidays!

There’s another minor fix for Mac OS X 10.5 users, and it has to do with one of the new security features in the OS. Read on for the details.

In Leopard, when you download software from the Internet using Safari, an invisible “quarantine” label is applied to the file. Then, when you (or any other entity, including automated tasks and login items) launch the application for the first time, the Finder notices the quarantine and first asks the user if the application is OK to launch.

While this feature has proved somewhat annoying for advanced Mac users (who have already invented ways to disable it), everyday users ought to appreciate the fact that the new Finder is looking out for them.

For preference panes, the process is a little bit different. When you double-click on a .prefPane file (like Cuckoo.prefPane) to install it, Mac OS X has always presented a dialog to confirm the operation. In Leopard this process is unchanged (and, in fact, doesn’t mention the quarantine at all, which may very well be a bug). In the case of Cuckoo, the prefPane is installed and the CuckooChimeAgent—the background application that takes care of chiming at exactly the right moment—is automatically launched.

The trouble comes when you reboot and see this dialog:

The prefPane installation process appears not to lift the quarantine on downloaded items (another small Leopard bug), and (as stated earlier) Login Items are subject to quarantine. So the user is presented with this perplexing dialog the first time she reboots 10.5 after installing (or updating) Cuckoo.

The latest version includes code to explicitly remove the quarantine label from CuckooChimeAgent once you’ve already approved the installation of Cuckoo itself. Future bug fixes to Leopard may make this unnecessary, but for the time being, it should save some extra clicking (and possibly some extra confusion, especially if you don’t reboot very often, in which case this dialog—appearing a long time after you’ve installed Cuckoo—will be very puzzling indeed).

It’s now three hundred sixty-four days later, which means fireworks time is again upon us again here in the States. To celebrate, Pyrothèque has gotten a bump up to version 1.1. Don’t let the tiny numerical increment fool you, though: the new version is chockablock with new stuff.

New classic-mode features

• In case you found the verisimilitude of the classic mode lacking in some way, you can now simulate using one of four classic Mac models: Plus, SE/30, IIci, or IIfx. For a true Pyro! experience, crank it down to the 8MHz Plus and watch the pixels crawl by, or pretend you’re rocking that IIfx you drooled over in Macworld. Registered users can configure the “emulation level” in the redesigned classic mode preferences.

New modern-mode features

• The modern mode preferences have gotten a facelift as well, including a selector that lets you choose which types of explosions you’d like to see. (There are four charge types…plus a highly realistic dud.)



• Also configurable: the various visual effects applied to the rockets while in flight. Don’t like the rocket’s red glare? Turn it off.
• Finally, a new “combo” option allows multiple explosions to erupt from the same shell (for dramatic results).

Finally, there’s a new splash screen (another tribute to the original) that’s been carefully designed to be true to both modern and classic modes.

All this stuff, and still just $4 for the full version (which I understand is now less than a grandé espresso drink at some high-profile coffee retailers). As promised, registered users of 1.0 will get all these new features for free.

Enjoy your 4th of July (whether it’s a holiday where you are or just another Wednesday) and remember: pixellated fireworks are safer than real ones.

Yes, you heard correctly: Cuckoo’s great new feature is that it makes less noise, according to your preferences. Chiming can optionally be suppressed:

• while iTunes or Front Row is playing music or video
• while the screen saver is running
• during a specified hour range (e.g. 11PM to 6AM)
• while your chat application thinks you’re “away”

For that last bullet, Cuckoo currently has support for the following chat programs: iChat, Adium, and Skype. Why these? They’re the ones I use. (It’s good to be king.) That said, please let me know if you’d like support for some other chat software; if possible, please send me the necessary AppleScript incantations to query the app’s away status.

Fear not: these new features come at the low, low cost of FREE. That is, they are free to registered and unregistered users alike. (I couldn’t in good conscience charge for features that make my software less annoying to use.)

Why are you still reading this? Go download the new version of Cuckoo, already. (Oh, I see, you already downloaded and installed it. Good for you! Go vote for Cuckoo on iusethis.com.)

Note: The upgrade procedure is the same as installing for the first time: Download the .zip file; double-click it if it doesn’t expand automatically; then double-click the Cuckoo.prefPane file. You’ll be asked if you want to overwrite the old version of Cuckoo—the answer, in case you were wondering, is “yes.”

See Cuckoo 1.1 at: MacUpdate; VersionTracker; Apple; iusethis.

“I suppose I could…do freelance, uh, selling of some sort of, uh, product.” —Nigel