Software

Mac Bravery

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And so here we are again. With a new MacOS version imminent I contemplate erasing the hard drive and starting afresh – again. Alas I have not been brave enough to do it for many years and so a new version just updates the old version amidst all the accumulated crud. And when I occasionally buy a new computer the hard drive size will be enormous compared to the old one so everything gets copied over, because there is so much space in there, and we carry on. The oldest file on here dates back to 2007.

How many versions of GHC does a chap need?

ghc versions

But this is a whole new era and we are moving from iterations of macOS 10 to the all new and shiny macOS 11 and so I will definitely be doing it this time. Deep down I know that something is going to get screwed up – like that account for something or other that I use daily and set up 10 years ago which will now require a password which I will not have saved anywhere – or more frustratingly I will have saved it but cannot now find it anywhere.

I did a full back up yesterday and a mere 13 hours later it had copied all of the 4.5 million files.. did I mention the crud?

So I am planning on using a blank partition on an external drive and booting from that with a fresh install to see what happens and if I can produce a functioning system. If that works then the big red ERASE-AT-YOUR-PERIL button will be clicked and we will be crud free – for at least a week.

Blog tweaking

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The current SemPress theme places the Header image between the title and the start of the articles…

…which may be what was intended but I wanted it behind the title text so it was time to do some more CSS tweaking. Having moved the image I coloured the text from the cloud’s colours, used the darker blue corner of the sky both as a shadow under the title and as the background colour behind the articles. I rounded the corners of some images and the article’s panels.

Of course the moved image was screwed up on smaller screens so it is no longer shown on mobile devices – although some tablets will show it in landscape mode but not in portrait mode.

The amendments, which override the default CSS, now look like this:

As I’m sure there will be more to come I leave this here as an Aide-mémoire.

Yadit #100DaysToOffload

Too many distractions

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On TV quiz shows one frequently see old people explaining that now they are retired there is so much to do they wonder how they ever found time to go to work. Despite my best intentions to spend my retirement catching up with all the stuff I have never really got to grips with – half understood software, half learnt programming languages, books that were purchased but never read etc. – the torrent of new stuff continues to overwhelm. I should draw a line and say no more… but

The update to Logic looks exciting and Arturia’s extended free licence for Pigments and Analog Lab shouldn’t be wasted. And I am already way behind on the Tidal training sessions. Not to mention the endless opportunities to explore the musical backwaters available to stream.

And then I am about to throw out the sourdough starter I started a few days ago when the weather was warm but abandoned when the weather turned colder – my home is not warm enough ordinarily to sustain the beast, but, I think, ‘it does smell like a good starter’, so I gave it a feed and a drink and it has been bubbling away all day; so the weekend will be spent cultivating some bread.

Not to mention being on fox cub watch…

There is no time for this 100 day nonsense…

Yadit #100DaysToOffload

Installation fun

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Attempting to update TidalCycles only managed to break everything. Everything seemed to be in the right place but nothing was aware of anything else. Apparently it is a common problem. Perhaps it was the multiple versions of ghc…

or the changes to cabal, or the Mac’s recent switch from bash to zsh. After wrestling with it for a couple of days I gave up and deleted random .ghc and .ghcup directories and did a complete fresh install which seemed to sort things out.

Far simpler was Nextcloud which just involved uploading a php file which when executed checks that the required components are available and then installs and sets up everything for you. Their iOS app gives access to your Personal cloud from anywhere.

Yadit #100DaysToOffload

(Not) Mac Apps

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These days some of the software produced for Macs seems to lack the very Mac-ness that makes a Mac a Mac – the attention to detail, the delight of discovery. Some would argue that Apple itself is as guilty as anyone here – although the cursor for the iPad suggest they still get it mostly right. The article today by Brent Simmons highlights some common problems. I have left reviews on the Mac’s App Store along the lines of – nice idea but it is a pity it is not a Mac app. To their credit some developers have taken steps to rectify the problems when they are pointed out – If I close a window it does not mean I want to quit the app. Etc. Etc.

Yadit #100DaysToOffload

Menu Bar Clutter 2020

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A quick catch up after the 2010 and 2012 editions.

Skitch Capture material for sharing.

Quick Draft Simple text editor for notes. Syncs with iOS devices.

Dropbox Online storage, file sharing etc.

Backblaze Online backup service.

MyAddress IP address monitor syncs across iCloud for when you are away.

BlockBlock Keeps an eye on what is being installed and notifies you about anything suspicious.

Presentify Highlighter for presentations etc.

Hazel Automates routine tasks.

Typinator Type in a short sequence and it gives you the long form version.

1Password Excellent password manager.

PopClip The single most useful thing to add to a Mac.

Amphetamine Keeps your Mac awake. Very configurable – set a time or wait for a job to finish etc. before going to sleep.

BwanaDik Monitors your connection notifying you when down. No longer supported but included here for continuity with older posts.

WiFi

LittleIpsum Adds Lorem ipsum text in words, lines or paragraphs. No longer supported.

Cookie Removes specified cookies, trackers and the like either at set intervals or when you quit the browser etc.

Memory Cleaner

Bluetooth

AirPlay

Sound

Bartender Declutter the menu bar. Hides all the icons you do not need to click on regularly.

FuzzyTime Tells you the time in a normal (not to the precise second) way
in a variety of languages. I have had to add the day to the display otherwise I would not have much idea what day it was lately.

ClipMenu Having tried numerous clipboard managers I have found nothing as useful as this although it has not been updated in years and never made it to version 1.

Spotlight Search for anything on your Mac.

User

Notifications See/ignore information.

Yadit #100DaysToOffload

Which WordPress Plugins I Use

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I was interested to read Kev Quirk’s plugins article as I had found his introduction to the IndieWeb thing very helpful.

I currently have 18 active plugins – which is probably far too many. So this is as much an exercise for me to consider which can be deactivated as it is information for anyone else; but in the tangled mess that this blog has become over the years it is hard to say which are still actually needed.

Akismet Anti-Spam which did a great job of filtering out spam comments. But as I now have a JetPack account I probably do not need this plug in. And as I have turned off the ability to comment I probably do not need this plugin.

Background Update Tester Checked the site to ensure it was set up correctly for automated updates. I can probably deactivate this one too as it has not been updated in five years and is probably no longer required.

Classic Editor Restores the classic WordPress editor replacing the new blocky Gutenberg editor when required for IndieWeb stuff.

Hotfix Provided quick fixes for individual WordPress bugs between updates. Can probably be deactivated as I do do the updates regularly as required.

IndieWeb Adds IndieWeb functionality – whatever that is :-/

Insert Headers and Footers Not sure what I was using this one for as I do not do the Google Analytics or Facebook linkage things. Possibly deactivate.

Jetpack adds a lot of goodness to the site – security, backups, image optimisation etc.

Microformats 2 More IndieWeb stuff. Not sure it is required as I have switched to an IndieWeb friendly theme anyway.

Page Links To Provides simple links out of the WordPress site. Could probably deactivate this as I am moving link outs to the sidebar widgets.

PHP code widget Allows you to add PHP code to the site – not sure what I was doing with this.

Post Kinds More IndieWeb stuff doing something or other.

Preserve Code Formatting Displays code as text so it does not get used as code by the site.

Simple Lightbox Presents pictures in a neat way. I need to configure this to do more.

Tumult Hype Animations Player for animations created in Tumult’s Hype editor. I should try and use this more.

VaultPress Backup system which is now part of JetPack so this one can probably go too.

WP Super Cache Helps to speed up the presentation of site.

Wiki Tooltip Makes the little window that pops up when you move over a link to Wikipedia (or whatever you have set it to respond to).


WP-DBManager Helps to keep the tangled sprawling mess that is this blog’s database in some kind of order.

So apparently most of my plugins can go and I should just stick with the half dozen or so that are actually required/doing something.

Tomorrow: What is all that crap in the menu bar? As we have not had one of those for a while.

Yadit #100DaysToOffload

Retirement project No. 173

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I somehow had missed the joys of Vuo which continues where Apple’s, now defunct, Quartz Composer left off.  It provides much sound and video mangling possibilities.  For example you can grab a website and spin it into a kaleidoscopic frenzy.

 

[videopress VtDW2sHh]

 

So that’s something else I will have to try and learn.  If only I had the time.  Oh! wait… 🙂

 

 

Yet another day in the #100DaysToOffload

Freebies and the decline of civilisation.

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It is a full time job trying to keep up with all of the stuff being made freely available, or at a goodly discount, to help people through their locked-down existence. For example Sound On Sound are maintaining a list of software deals available on noisy stuff. One such deal was from Heavyocity who produced a #StayHome instrument for Kontakt.

https://youtu.be/4gdTUZFL96Y

 

They asked for a $10 donation for UNICEF et al or it was available for free. Who can resist things that so delightfully bleep and bonk?

So I fill in their form to make an account – because how can you possibly buy anything without setting up an account and providing all your personal details these days? I am then sent off to PayPal to make the purchase/donation. I log in to my PayPal account but my money is rejected and I am sent back to Heavyocity with red text on my details. Red text is never a good thing. Apparently the email address I use for my PayPal account does not match the email address I used for my Heavyocity account. Who knew that was a thing? I can think of five domains I own and can use for email (there are probably more) and for most of them I will use a multitude of addresses as befits my needs. So I am a little peeved that Heavyocity has taken it upon themselves to specify which email address I should use.

Not to worry I shall just use my bank debit card. I am sent back to PayPal where I am now a guest. Before I can make my purchase/donation PayPal demands that I provide my phone number. I have had a PayPal account for many years and have never given them my phone number – which suggests that they do not really need it and so I never will. So declining to give them my phone number I return to the Heavyocity site to see if we can resolve this problem. Alas there Get In Touch and Contact Us links just take you to their Zendesk support pages with no obvious way to actually get in touch and contact them. As I do not do the whole TweetyBook thing that was not an option either.

So I just gave up and downloaded it for free.  It is very good.

 

But don’t get me started on PayPal:

A promo code you say?  Let me just type that in…..

Conway’s Life as noise

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To the ever-growing list of names of people that have been so familiar (almost as if we actually knew them) but are now no more we must add John Conway. Many who dabbled with programming on old computers will have implemented a version of Conway’s Game of Life which determined if a cell should live or die by following a set of rules:

  1. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours survives.
  2. Any dead cell with three live neighbours becomes a live cell.
  3. All other live cells die in the next generation. Similarly, all other dead cells stay dead.

There is a version implemented within the wonderful Xynthesizr which allows for some random generative noise. We add a few cells, which live or die by the rules, and then let it evolve by itself – never quite reaching a stable state.

It uses a Messiaen scale. There was a nice tribute by XKCD too…