Pragmatism in the real world
One thing that I've found helpful is to add a set of patterns to my global git ignore file (config/git/ignore for me) that allow me to create temporary files that are automatically excluded from git. The patterns I use are these: # Ignore a file by renaming it with ignore its name *.ignore ignore.* *.ignore.* This lets me create a file with a prefix ignore., a postfix of .ignore or add .ignore. somewhere in the… continue reading.
When I'm on a Zoom or FaceTime call, I want stop all notifications on my Mac so that I'm not distracted by them and would like this automated. It's not easy to tell when a call is happening, so I simplified the problem to stopping all notifications if the Zoom or FaceTime is running as I only run these apps if I'm on call. To do this, I created two Shortcuts to turn the Do… continue reading.
I recently discovered the /usr/libexec/corebrightnessdiag command line tool on macOS. In particular, /usr/libexec/corebrightnessdiag nightshift-internal will give information about when the Mac's nightshift settings, including when sunrise and sunset are! $ /usr/libexec/corebrightnessdiag nightshift-internal Night Shift Status { AutoBlueReductionEnabled = 1; BlueLightReductionSchedule = { DayStartHour = 7; DayStartMinute = 0; NightStartHour = 22; NightStartMinute = 0; }; BlueReductionAvailable = 1; BlueReductionEnabled = 0; BlueReductionMode = 0; BlueReductionSunScheduleAllowed = 1; Version = 1; } Night Shift Sunset/Sunrise {… continue reading.
I recently acquired an Elgato Prompter which acts as an additional screen on my Mac. It does this using DisplayLink and the DisplayLink Manager app needs to be running. A new security feature of the newer macOS versions is that when your screen is being recorded, an icon is displayed in your menu bar. It looks like this and cannot be disabled: Certainly unmissable! This icon is displayed nearly all the time DisplayLink Manager is… continue reading.
I've been playing with different Ethernet network adapters to see if I can maximise the throughput to my Mac as my ethernet didn't seem particularly faster than WiFi. To test the speed, I want to use my internal network only as going onto the Internet will create too many variables. iperf3 is the solution for this. Running the test To run a speed test with iperf3, you need two computers: one to act as the… continue reading.
For some work I'm doing, I have been given access to a Linux box that is part of a legacy production system. The first thing I have done is updated the terminal prompt to include the word PRODUCTION in red, by adding this to .bashrc: export PS1="$(tput setaf 1)PRODUCTION $(tput sgr0)$PS1" The nice thing about doing it this way is that I don't have to worry about whatever is in PS1 already. Not the most… continue reading.
There's a new feature in macOS Sequoia that allows mirroring of your iPhone to your Mac. This is a nice feature that allows you to fully interact with your iPhone as an app on you Mac's desktop. When I upgrade to Sequoia and run the iPhone Mirroring app, it selected Victory, my old iPhone 14 Pro Max which is running an older version of iOS. This didn't work and there is no way within the… continue reading.
Last week, Dave Winer posted that Scripting News turned 30. That's an amazing milestone and Dave's still writing daily. 1994 seems like quite a while ago; the web was only 3 years old! I started blogging in 2003 on a personal domain and added this blog in 2005. I don't write daily though and I tip my hat to Dave. His writing is also really really good. Scripting News was the catalyst for the creation… continue reading.
It's common to use a UUID when you need a primary key for your database records. Unlike incrementing numeric keys, it has the advantage that it's not tied to a specific database instance and can be created before insertion into the database. Usually, people use version 4 UUIDs, which contains a lot of randomness to ensure that it's going to be unique and not clash with any other id. Recently, I became aware of version… continue reading.
I'm a huge fan of making my life easier and one thing I have found really helpful is automatic text substitution. The Mac has a built-in solution, but it's slightly clunky as it uses a popup to confirm that you want to substitute, so I use Keyboard Maestro, however there's many alternatives out there. My personal preference is to prefix all my substitutions with a semicolon as there are no real words that start with… continue reading.
