January 1, 2021 ku1 vsco

New Years Eve

It’s finally the last day of 2020, a year none of us will be sorry to see go. Much to look forward to in the new year. And honestly what is there to say that hasn’t been said already? This year was just a major kick in the ass. Earlier today I was watching MSNBC and wrote this in a note:

Wow. MSNBC just had one of those “in memoriam” segments of all of the celebrities, etc. that passed during 2020. The list was huge. Seemed bigger than normal. Maybe just because of the year but wow. Got a bit teary.

Not sure if we lost more of these folks than normal but it certainly does seem that way.

But, on the 20th we’ve finally got Trump leaving office. That in itself will be huge. I can’t even think of how huge. How much of a relief it will be to not have a complete and utter moron with his hand on the tiller of the country. How much of a relief it will be to not have to worry about what Biden will tweet next. If we’re lucky Twitter will shut Trump down. If we’re lucky. I won’t expect it but once he’s not President what he writes there isn’t automatically newsworthy. Another thing I hope happens in 2021: that Twitter gets a set of balls.

We’ve also got the COVID vaccine which will be huge in the new year. God help us to get moving a lot faster than we are right now in getting it into people’s arms. With more candidates on the way that should be easier.

So Happy New Year to anyone who might read this. So hopeful for a better year for everyone, especially all of those who have lost loved ones to COVID this year. Hang on everyone, we can see that light at the end of the tunnel.

December 31, 2020

Tips on using Jump Desktop for Mac

Just a quick posting to share a few tips when using the Jump Desktop application for remote access to computers.

General

To use “privacy mode” to hide the screen VNC needs to be used. Does not work with Fluid.
Clicking the “Fix Screen Sharing” button in the Jump Desktop Connect settings will “unfix” a VNC connection that is properly set up to allow the lock screen to be used for privacy.
- Clicking this button will leave Screen Sharing alone in the Sharing section of System Preferences but it will shut off Remote Management if it is turned on.

Fluid Mode

Can’t lock the screen
Display resolution matching (iPad app settings)
- If Change Display Resolution setting is turned on Mac will be put in scaled display mode. Once the Jump session ends it might not switch out of the scaled display mode and usually the screen will look odd (Safari icon is the dead giveaway for this with the tick marks around the compass).

VNC Mode

In order to use the VNC server need to turn on:
- VNC in Jump Desktop Connect settings
- Screen Sharing in System Preferences->Sharing
In order to use Privacy Mode
- Turn on Remote Management in System Preferences->Sharing
  - This will turn off/uncheck Screen Sharing which is fine because that is included in the Remote Management option.

December 23, 2020

I gave up blogging. Well, I thought I gave up blogging. What I gave up on I suppose is blogging via WordPress. For me, the inertia to post there was just too much to overcome. WordPress is that needy, high-maintenance person you don’t want to be involved with. It’s a great content management system but I needed a simple place to post things I feel are worth writing about and WordPress just isn’t that place.

It turns out neither is a static blogging tool like Hugo. The inertia to even get a site up and running is even worse than what I was facing with WordPress, let alone writing posts. I love the idea of those tools. I don’t love the commitment in time to getting something useful running. So I thought it was time to hang it all up. Then I found blot.im.

Level of difficulty to post to a blot website? Drop a text file into a Dropbox folder. Done. Post published. You could also set up a GitHub repository if that’s your thing but that’s not as easy as dropping a text file onto Dropbox. Like I said I want the pressure involved in posting to be as low as possible. This is about as easy as it gets. It’s Twitter-easy.

I had a few other requirements as well: being able to post code with syntax highlighting (check), being able to (eventually) make changes to the template (check), and lastly low cost ($4 a month, check). Oh, and to top it all off space is essentially unlimited. Yes as always it’s within reason but I just want to post photos and such and there really isn’t a limit if you don’t get stupid.

So we’ll see but so far I’m loving this thing and the simplicity. There is enough power there behind the scenes should I want to take advantage of it but if I just want to plunk down a text file to publish I’m covered.

December 16, 2020

Today on macstories.net they released their list of Best Apps of the Year and they awarded Best Mac App to the new code editor Nova from Panic. In his notes Alex Guyot calls out the preferences window in Nova and how nice it is compared to Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code. He notes how nice it is to have a graphical settings window compared to Sublime Text and VSC which require you to edit JSON settings files by hand:

On that note, just having a Preferences window is a minor victory — most other popular code editors these days don’t even bother to support such a simple macOS affordance as this. Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code, the two popular editors I’ve most recently coded with before Nova, both store settings as a series of JSON files which you can edit to change settings. I wish I was joking.

I can’t speak about Sublime Text (though I hear that one does require editing JSON files) but in Visual Studio Code that is not required. There is a settings tab that looks like this (here I’m searching for any settings that have the word “keys”):

Huh. This doesn’t look like JSON to me. Does it look like a Mac app? No, I have to admit it doesn’t but that isn’t something that really bothers me as I use Visual Studio Code because it’s cross-platform and that’s more important to me than a native preferences window. Just makes me curious the last time Alex actually used Visual Studio Code. I can’t recall a time literally in years where I’ve had to edit JSON settings by hand.

December 14, 2020

Not only did Apple make up for their stupid mistake of initially taking Charlie Brown Christmas off of TV but they did one better by putting it on the only network with no commercials. Good job Apple.

December 13, 2020