Links
- Restart your computer. Seriously. This solves many, many problems. Do this even if you don’t think it will help.
- Answer all the questions you are asked truthfully. Don’t say you restarted you computer if you actually didn’t.
- Remember that the person on the other end of the phone almost always wants to solve your problem too. They are not the cause of your problem. Technology is complicated and finnicky and sometimes things don’t work. That’s the price we pay to live in the 21st century.
- Obey the Golden Rule. Talk to the person on the other end of the phone like you would want to be spoken to.
- If you are calling because you got an error message, know what the error message said and be able to relay that information to tech support. Don’t just say “I got an error
- Be prepared to tell tech support what you were doing when the problem occurred. (e.g., What program were you using? What other programs were open? Did the computer make any sounds?)
- If this is a reoccurring problem, how long has it been happening and what was your reason for not reporting it sooner? (Did you have a solution to the problem that no longer works?)
- Can you reproduce the issue or is it intermittent? If you can reproduce the issue, know what exact steps you took before the problem surfaced. (Keep in mind that intermittent problems are among the most difficult to resolve because of the difficulty in determining if the issue is fixed)
- What have you tried on you own to solve the problem? (Not that you have to solve your own issue, but it doesn’t hurt to Google it. It might be something simple that can save you a call.)
- Be familiar enough with the tools you use to know what operating system your computer uses and (especially if you are on a corporate network) what the name of your computer is.
- Do your best within your abilities to describe the issue. It’s not cute to use language like ‘thingy” or “doohickey”. If you don’t have the IT vocabulary to explain an issue, there’s nothing you can do about that. Just use plain language and you’ll be moving towards a solution.
- If you are having a problem with something online, try to know if your computer is wireless (bonus points if you know the name of the Wi-Fi network) or if it is connected to a network through a cable.
- Only call for help if you have the time to work through the problem. Don't call five minutes before a meeting or quitting time.
- Activity Watch - a time tracking app that monitors apps used a websites visited
- Next DNS - one of my security tools
- Gmail - After nearly 20 years of using Gmail, I still feel most comfortable using the web interface over any email app
- Yahoo Mail - I use this account just for newsletters and mailing lists
- Google Drive - I use this for different personal documents like tracking the words written during Writing Month and the list of apps I've reviewed as well as automated documents from IFTTT that I keep an eye on
- Inoreader- I love the web interface of my RSS provider more than any app
- Pocket - since the death of Omnivore this is my read it later service
- Raindrop.io - my bookmarking service
- Social.lol - My home Mastodon instance
- 500.social - Another Mastodon instance I belong to
- Onephoto.club - a travel photography Mastodon instance
- Another private Mastodon instance with a few friends
- BlueSky - mostly for POSSE
- Threads - mostly for POSSE
- Facebook - primarily for family use
- LinkedIn - fascinated with how weird it is
- Fedica - a free service to post to multiple social media sites at once and.or schedule future posts
The Fascinating History of Swearing in Movies
Left to my own devices, my language is quite profane. I temper myself in public and on the Internet, mostly because my Mom reads my blogs and I care about offending her. But, when I am working on a troublesome computer or dealing with carrying my groceries across a rainy parking lot, swearing is in order. It's all kind of silly of course, deciding that one sound is OK but another sound is bad. I know a certain Kindergarten aged boy whose take home behavior chart recently had a big red X on it and a notation that he "Said the F Word!!" He probably won't do that again, not worth it I'm sure.
As for movies, well society seems to have moved from not letting Lucy and Ricky Ricardo sleep in the same bed to an anything goes situation. In the first season of The Wire on HBO (AKA, the greatest TV show ever made), there is a scene that is just shy of four minutes long during which the F-Bomb is dropped 38 times by two actors. What a great play on words!
One fact I learned while looking for links for this post - the director of Gone with the Wind paid a fine equivalent to $100,000 today just so Clark Gable could say, "Frankly me dear, I don't give a damn." That is a commitment to art right there!
The First Onscreen Curse Word Was in This Classic Movie
Well, I swear: A brief f---ing history of profanity in the movies
The top 10 movies with the most swear words
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To All the Ones I've Loved Before
The social media landscape is in flux these days. Twitter is having it's second mass exodus. The first happened when Elon Musk purchased the network in 2022. The most recent is a result of the 2024 US election. The primary beneficiary appears to be Bluesky. Mark Zuckerberg is being mocked for rapidly making changes to Meta's Threads to copy the things people like about other networks. Even Instagram is now allowing users to reset the algorithm so they can see more from people they follow and less of what Meta wants them to see.
Over the years there have been many social networks come and go. They promise to be the next big thing but they end up falling to the wayside when they end up not being able to compete with the behemoths. Let's hope the underdogs make it this time. I'm heavily invested in Mastodon and I am beginning to also spend time on Bluesky. I want them to last.
Here are a few of the late, great attempts to catch on that tried and failed or were just superseded.
What Happened to Myspace? The Fall of the Social Giant | Enterprise Tech News EM360
The Quiet Death of Ello's Big Dreams - Waxy.org
Looking Back on Ping, Apple’s Failed Social Media Platform – iDrop News
Why Google+ Failed: 5 Lessons To Learn For Entrepreneurs
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Superlatives
The Guinness Book of World Records became famous when I was a kid. I don't know how many times I read it fro cover to cover, but it was a lot. The things we curious types could read about back in the 70s were much more exciting than what books kids can get a hold of today. Aside from Guinness we had Ripley's Believe It or Not and multiple books on things like The Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot and more. These were shelved in the non-fiction section and honestly, as a kid I though they were going to be a much larger problem than they turned out to be.
Back to my original point - here are a few links about superlatives you may enjoy.
What movie has been viewed the most times?
Most Watched Movies Of All Time
What is the most watched television show of all time?
List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States - Wikipedia
What is the largest city in the world?
Top 10 Largest Cities in the World By Population 2024
What is the best selling book of all time?
The 24 Best-Selling Books of All Time - Mark Manson
Who is the richest person in the world?
The 10 Richest People in the World
What country has the longest life expectancy?
15 Countries With the Highest Life Expectancy - NY Requirements Blog
What is the most valuable car in the world?
What is the most expensive car in the world? - Autoblog
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I updated my /now page - What I’m reading and watching, plus links to this week’s blog posts, the week’s best purchase, and the links I added to my personal bookmarks.
This Week's Bookmarks - Email Ettiquette, Gladiator, da Vinci, TSA Tips, Quotes You Get Wrong, World History Encyclopedia, NG Pics of the Year, 25 Recipes That Changed America
Email etiquette: How to ask for things and get a response | Zapier
TSA’s New Facial Recognition PreCheck Becomes Go-To Timesaver for Veteran Travelers - WSJ
31 Famous Quotations You’ve Been Getting Wrong | Thought Catalog
2024: The Pictures of the Year
The 25 recipes that changed it all in American cooking, just in time for Thanksgiving.
Diamonds Are a Racket
Contrary to what you may believe, the practice of giving diamond engagement rings isn't a long established tradition. It's a 20th century practice concocted by a single company, DeBeers, and promoted through an exhaustive marketing campaign. Today the image of men holding a little box up to a woman to propose marriage is instantly recognizable for what it is, a conditioned practice reeking of human rights abuses that puts young couples into debt for a rock, robbing them of an opportunity to use their resources to actually improve their quality of life. It needs to stop.
How DeBeers Invented the Engagement Ring
Blood diamond | Conflict, Trade & Human Rights | Britannica
The diamond industry is lying to you …
Diamond Trade Still Fuels Human Suffering
The Big Lie About Diamond Engagement Rings
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What Do Kent State, Bloody Sunday and the Next Four Years Have in Common?
The last time Donald Trump was in power, he told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, that he wanted the military to "beat the fuck" out of racial justice protesters. "Just shoot them,"he told Milley. When Attorney General William Barr and Milley explained that the law didn't allow that, Trump responded, “Well, shoot them in the leg – or maybe the foot. But be hard on them!.”
Many states havepassed laws that provide immunity to drivers who kill protesters with their cars. Think about it. Republicans, and all these bills were passed by GOP-controlled legislatures, are essentially invoking the death penalty for the crime of blocking traffic. Following the alt-right/Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA in 2017, Heather Heyer was killed by a self-professed Nazi who drove his car into a crowd of protesters. If he'd done that in modern-day Iowa or Oklahoma, he would be free today instead of doing life in prison.
When Richard Nixon ran for president, he did so on a law and order platform. Under his watch, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War and the invasion of Cambodia at Kent State University. Four were killed. Nine more were shot but survived. The Nixon administration blamed the students for the shootings. None of the National Guardsmen were ever convicted of any criminal charges.
Less than two years later, Irish Catholics marching for civil rights in Derry, Northern Ireland, were fired on by paratroopers from the British Army. It was January 30, 1972, a day known as Bloody Sunday. Fourteen unarmed men were killed. Twelve more were shot but survived. Many outright lies were presented by the British government justifying the killings. It took decades before British Prime Minister David Cameron finally absolved those killed of any guilt. By then, it was too late. Thirty years of violence between the IRA, loyalist paramilitary groups, and the British Army resulted in over 3,000 deaths.
If the Trump administration resorts to militarized responses to the legitimate grievances of the American people, we are going to have a lot of new articles on Wikipedia about infamous incidents with lists of the names of those killed by a government that will blame the innocent and the unarmed for their own deaths.
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Bluesky Resources, If You're Curious
I am by no means an expert on Bluesky. My account is coming up on a year old and I have about 1400 posts on the site, the majority of them from cross posting. Until the great migration happened, I didn't have much real involvement with people there. As someone with an interest in tech, I've stayed abreast of what's happening behind the scenes and out in public. As a compulsive note taker and data hoarder, I've collected some information in the forms of guides and articles that I am happy to share. I'll be adding more and you can bookmark this page to see what gets aded. Also, feel free to send me any links you have to share.
You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for the collection.
If you want to connect on Bluesky, I am amerpie.lol.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Transgender Day of Remembrance is marked every Nov. 20and began in 1999 to honor Rita Hester, a trans woman who was killed in Massachusetts. The day marks the end of Transgender Awareness Week, which is used to raise public knowledge about the transgender community and the issues they face
The first trans guy I ever met was an anti-war activist from North Carolina. It wasn't a big deal to me. At the time, all I wanted were allies against the Bush administration'd policies and Aiden was just such a person. That was almost 20 years ago. We are still friends on Facebook to this day, although I have not see him for years. I didn't get into activism until I was nearly 40 and I had no idea how things work on the left. We get criticized often for going off topic. People talk about Palestine at the wrong time or they bring up Trans rights in the wrong places. I here to tell you, Trans rights are human rights and there isn't a wrong time to be an advocate for human rights, especially these days. The Republicans can't get us cheaper eggs so they are keeping their hate filled agenda going by tapping into the anti-trans sentiment they have ginned up.
Even if you've never knowingly met a trans man or woman, you still have room in your life to be an ally and an advocate. Don't let people denigrate them in your presence and let others know how you feel about respecting human rights - all human rights. Make a donation to the Trevor project. Post something on social media. Write a letter to the editor about what a terrible person some trans-hating politician is. Speak up. Be visible. Do the right thing.
Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) | GLAAD
Supporting the Transgender People in Your Life: A Guide to Being a Good Ally | A4TE
HRC | Be an Ally - Support Trans Equality
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Some Advice on Not Drinking
I am not one of those priggish tee-totalers who thinks drinking is a sin and that no one should indulge in demon rum, not at all. In fact, coming from a 12-Step recovery tradition, I have no real opinion on drinking as an institution, but I've never looked down my nose at anyone who enjoys a cold beer, a glass of win or a mixed drink. I don't look down my nose at people who have a problem with booze either. Nobody volunteers to become an alcoholic. Alcohol just has a way of taking over the lives of a certain percentage of the population, usually ones who have family members with the same issue. There are certain genetic markers for addiction and whether it's an illness isn't really debatable anymore except by science denying morons - so about half of America.LOL.Sob.
I digress. My point is, if you have decided not to drink for a night or for the rest of your life, whatever, here are a few things I have learned. Number one - it's less of a big deal to other people than you think it is. When people who like to drink are kinda sorta thinking about stopping, they almost always cite the social pressure to drink as a reason why they can't. That's their inner little drunk devil talking to them. Nobody cares! They aren't thinking about you as much as you think they are.
When you are at a party or a family holiday celebration, get a non-alcoholic drink and hold on to that sucker for dear life. DO NOT PUT IT DOWN! If you're trying to camouflage your sobriety, put a twist and a swizzle stick in you club soda. Just don't let go of it. I've had a couple of occasions where I've failed to obey this rule and ended up with a horrifying mouth full my step-father's gin and my sister's wine. Not cool. I didn't relapse or anything, but it's not a good feeling. Once my sister-in-law spilled a glass of wine on me and I had two-hour drive home. I used Vick's Medicated Rub in my nostrils to kill the smell just like people at the morgue do to cover up the smell of decaying flesh.
You can also plan on arriving late and leaving early to any parties when you are trying to live that sober life. Drinking mocktails or alcohol free beer is an option for some but personally I never wanted the romance of booze without the booze. If you get a craving for alcohol, eating sweets is a well known way to make the craving subside. Trust me.
If you've decided you do have a problem and you want to quit for good, and brothers and sisters, I'm here to tell you that for real problem drinkers, cutting back is not the answer. Abstinence is. Sorry, them's the facts. Anyway, if you want to quit, you can. You've never met anyone in your life who loves to drink as much as me and I haven't had one in about 16 years because of reasons. Lots of reasons.
My inbox is always open.
How to Stop Alcohol Cravings - Handling the Urges to Drink - Rethinking Drinking | NIAAA
How to Stop Drinking Alcohol | Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation
How to Stop Drinking Alcohol, According to Experts - GoodRx
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Need Tech Support? Some Tips
I started working in IT support right after Windows 95 was released. I’ve worked in manufacturing health care, banking and insurance, but primarily in K-12 and higher education. In some way or another, I’ve always been involved in end-user support. Currently I have a relatively low stress job at a well-run private university where the relationship between the IT department and the faculty, staff and students is pretty good.
Almost every adult in 2024 has experienced technical difficulties that required them to call tech support, whether it’s the help desk at your job, your Internet service provider or the manufacturer of your cell phone. I’m not immune to this. I switched ISPs last year and my new setup didn’t work when I followed the directions. It was frustrating, but I wanted to solve the problem, so I called.
I promise you that if you follow the steps below, your technology problems will get solved faster and with better results than if you don’t. And, trust me, I’m sure you’ve dealt with some incompetent or mean or unfriendly tech support folks in the past. I get it. That’s out of your control. What is in your control is how you react. Don’t act aggrieved or victimized. Be solution oriented and things will work out better.
Look, I understand technology is frustrating. Trust me. I do. My whole professional life has been spent fixing things that aren’t working as expected. But don’t be angry at the person who is there to help you. There’s no need to tell them how many years you’ve been using a computer or what high-speed tech job your kid has. Just work together, get the problem solved and then you can get back to work.
For Mac users who want to try solving their own problems, here are some resources.
Mac troubleshooting. Get tips on how to fix mac problems
Mac Basic Startup Troubleshooting Steps - Apple Community
macOS Basics: Troubleshooting Common Problems
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This Weeks Bookmarks - The Shipwreck Detective, Python Hunter, Best Inventions of 2024, Digital Literacy for Teens, Apple Stymies Cops, Influential Cookbooks, Five Villages to Visit
The Shipwreck Detective | The New Yorker
The 200 Best Inventions of 2024 TIME
For Teens Online, Conspiracy Theories Are Commonplace. Media Literacy Is Not. | EdSurge News
Apple Quietly Introduced iPhone Reboot Code Which is Locking Out Cops
The 25 Most Influential Cookbooks From the Last 100 Years - The New York Times
Five Uncrowded Rural Vacation Ideas You Should Consider - Bloomberg
A Case of the Mondays for Forty Plus Years
I have things pretty good at home. My favorite person is almost always there. My Internet is fast and my beloved MacBook Air is positioned right where I like to sit to surveil my little kingdom. Whatever I like to eat and drink is nearby and if I nod off, which I am prone to do, there is no one to hassle me. Yet five days a week, I have to voluntarily leave my little paradise and go to work in an office where people ask me to do things I don't want to do. I have to do them on someone else's schedule and I don't get much say so in the matter. As hard as it it is to believe, I have been living like this since the early 80s. Remarkable, isn't it?
The worst day of the week is Monday. After two days of relative freedom and being able to sleep at will, my entire system is shocked by the return to "work". Just when I am getting used to the kind of lifestyle to which I would like to become accustomed, I get the shock to the system that returning to the workforce brings.
If you too share in my detestation of Mondays, I have done some research for you to help alleviate some of the downsides of the whole experience. You're welcome.
Mondays Suck—Here are 10 Ways to Make Them Better
14 Ways to Have Better Mondays
Mondays Suck: 10 Monday Tips to Kickstart Your Week
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Camping with Kids
I didn't camp much while growing up other than an occasional trip with the church youth group. In high school, some buddies and I would sometimes sleep under the stars on the hillside beside the pond on my family's farm. Later, my military occupational specialty was in combat arms, so I got to spend plenty of time doing the Army version of camping at Ft. Bragg, Ft. Hood and Ft. Irwin among others.
When my kids were old enough, we liked going to Cliffs of the Nuese state park where I told such terrifying ghost stories that my son late confessed he'd been traumatized for life. My girls could take it or leave it, depending on their mood. They are both adventurous adults now with kids of their own.
Wonder Woman's daughters grew up camping with her and her parents but they haven't gotten into it as adults. Theirs are the kids who live closest to us. We se them often.
Despite our backpacking background, most of the camping we've done in our marriage has been car camping in state parks. There are several within a couple of hours of our house. We decided to take the five youngest to Jones Lake State Park for an overnighter this weekend. We have two campsites, three tents, miniature camp chairs and lots of snacks. The kids all brought electronics, of course, but they are more interested in fishing, playing cards and exploring the woods. I did a little research before we came for some activities to do with them and that's what I'm sharing today.
17 Fun Activities for Your Family's Next Camping Trip
Outdoor Activities and Crafts for Kids While Camping
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Slimy Politician Update
To get ready for the morass of corruption and ineptitude we are going to witness over the next four years, I thought it would be a good idea to brush up on a little history of political criminals associated with the guy the Republicans just elected. The last time Trump was president, his national Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, only lasted 22 days before he had to resign for lying to the FBI about, what was it? Oh, Russia, that's right. Trump later pardoned him.
Matt Gaetz - Attorney General Nominee
Tulsi Gabbard - Director of Natiional Intelligence Nominee
Trump's pick for top intel job has been accused of 'traitorous' parroting of Russian propaganda
Kash Patel - Potential Head of FBI
This Unqualified MAGA Addict Might Become Trump’s FBI Director The New Republic
Kash Patel The Magical Rise of a Self-Described ‘Wizard’ in Trump World - The New York Times
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The Best App for Subscription Tracking
For many, the consumer landscape today includes subscriptions in
lots of areas, for news. TV channels, music services and software. Was
life better when we all just paid a single cable bill instead of cord
cutting? Was it better when you had to pay an upfront price on any
software you wanted to use? I don't know the answer to that. I remember
when it cost nearly $300 to get a copy of Microsoft Office with Outlook
Included, which didn't include anything like cloud storage or a free
email account. Cable bills got to be well north of $100 a month. These
days, you can use Office in about five minutes for less than $10. If you
get a good deal and sign up for a full year, you can often get a premium
TV subscription for roughly the same amount per month.
Keeping track of all this is challenging though. An old-fashioned spreadsheet might do the trick, but for a polished experience with a few extra bells and whistles, I use an app from Touchbits, Inc. It's called (wait for it) Subscriptions, and it cost either $1.99 a year or $7.99 for a lifetime purchase ($14.99 for a family license). It is a universal app, so it works on your phone, iPad and on your Mac.
For me, it ticks all the boxes. It lets me categorize each subscription (entertainment, software etc.). I also have the option of using tags for further categorization. It can handle weekly, monthly and annual subscriptions. There is a place for the URL associated with my account information for each sub. You set a renewal date for when the next bill is due and for what amount. There is a reminders option for those due dates. You can select a payment account if you want to track that. The Subscriptions app saves a price history so you can see what changes vendors make over time. Finally, there is also a notes field.
The app has analytics to help you track spending over time and by category. There are several view and sorting options as well. The data syncs via iCloud across all platforms. You can export your data via a CSV. It has a backup and restore feature, but it is a proprietary database file and there doesn't look there is a way to import data from anywhere. I've been using it for nearly a year, and I've recommended to lots of people.
What Tabs Do You Keep Open All the Time?
It's hard to believe there was once a time when browsers didn't have tabs. Prior to 2002, opening more than one website at the times required opening multiple instances of a browser. Memory management wasn't as robust as it is now and computers had much less power. These days you often hear of people running hundreds of tabs at the time since browsers can hibernate unused ones easily. I am nowhere near that level, mostly because I don't have the headspace to make use of them all. I normally have two or three windows open at a time depending on whether I'm at home or work. Having 30-45 open tabs is the norm for me.
If you are one of those 500 tabs open at the time people, please, please leave me a comment and try to explain why you roll like that. I';d be fascinated.
These are the ones I almost always have open:
Window 1
Window 2
Social Tab Group
Blogging Tab Group
The rest of the tabs I have open normally will include a news site or two, a few blogs and a few open Google docs. I use an app called HistoryHound that consolidates my history from several browsers into one searchable database when I need to reopen something.
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Twitter - What Was Taken from Us
When Elon Musk purchased Twitter and his toxic nature became clearly evident, lot's of people left the platform, with the socially aware tech crowd leading the way. After last week's election and Musk's role in it, there is another mass migration under way. Part of me thinks "better late than never" and part of me thinks"you should have been gone already." To e fair, I wasn't a big Twitter user. I didn't delete my account immediately because I rarely used it. It was never all that important to me and in my first six months on Mastodon, I posted more than I did in 15 years on Twitter. Still, I was very much aware of it and made use of it during times of fast breaking news. I preferred to monitor things like presidential debates through Tweets rather than subject myself to watching them on TV. When January 6th in all it's ugliness was happening, I followed it on Twitter.
Anyone with an interest in the Internet or the social history of the 21st century might get a whiff of nostalgia looking over the history of the platform. The idea for it was sketched out in a single day at its predecessor company, Odeo. A picture exists of Jack Dorsey's legal pad with a rudimentary sketch of the information flow that was imagined. We know who the first person to coin the term "tweet" was and we know who and when introduced hashtags, a carry over from IRC to Twitter.
To those who spent much time on the platform, nothing has really replaced it. I love Mastodon and plan to use it for the foreseeable future but it isn't the same. Neither in Bluesky or Threads or anything else. I don't know if the fractured outlooks people have on the world will ever again allow something like it to flourish.
Take a trip down memory lane. Look at what we had. Look at what happened to it.
History of Twitter - Wikipedia
A brief history of Twitter From its founding in 2006 to Musk takeover
What We Lost When Twitter Became X The New Yorker
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Five of My Favorite TV Series
Broadchurch
This British crime drama, filmed in scenic Dorset, tells the tale of a child murder and its aftermath. Starring Olivia Coleman, David Tenant and Jody Whitaker. Any of the three of them makes any show worth watching but the fireworks and raw emotion of Broadchurch are something special. Make sure you watch the British version of the show. For some weird reason, an America version was filmed and it is a poor comparison.
The Wire
Regarded by many as the best television show ever made, the five season's of The Wire loosely follow the Baltimore Police Department and drug gang while also spending time with longshoremen, politicians, newspaper reporters and school teachers. All of these intermix in an unflinching look at the intertwined cultures of a modern American city. The acting, the screen writing and the directing are all excellent. Some of the characters from the show live in my imagination years after watching the show for the last time.
The Sopranos
A classic by any measure, The Sopranos removed the glamor and mysticism from the mob created by The Godfather and revealed the extremely flawed human beings who make it up. Like The Wire, the screenwriting and acting is top notch and the characters unforgettable. It's almost impossible to watch one episode at the time if you have more available.
The Fall
Starring two of the world's beautiful people, Jamie Dornan and Gillian Anderson, this story of a Northern Irish serial killer and the cop, imported from the Metropolitan Police to track him down is as suspenseful as anything I have ever watched. A scene that takes place in Belfast hospital emergency room after a shooting is a revealing testament to the combat medical skills doctos in that part of the world learned during The Troubles.
Lonesome Dove
I regard Lonesome Dove as the best American novel ever written and this television adaption starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall among many others may be the best network show since Roots. It tells the story of an epic cattle drive out of Texas and has everything you'd ever want in a western. It's a must watch
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This is Where I Find All That Great Software
Rarely does a day go by without me downloading, installing and testing a new app or two. I'm currently dealing with an installed app count of 559. Part of the reason I have so many is because I'm always on the lookout for new apps to review over at AppAddict, my software blog with over 225 reviews already published an a new one being added every day. I have several sources for finding software and today I'm sharing them.
r/MacApps
This is one of the friendlier communities on Reddit. It's a place where software fans and devs both post. It's well moderated and spam free.
Tool Finder
Get over 450+ reviews, insights, videos, tutorials, and ratings for productivity apps for work & life.
Open Source Software
This website currently lists 642 free and open-source titles from a variety of categories. It's updated daily and makes it easy for devs to submit their titles for inclusion in the collection.
MacUpdate
This huge repository lets you narrow your search by several criteria. The link above is just for free software and it returned 5650 titles! The titles are in order by date last upated/released.
thriftmac
Thriftmac is a collection currently numbering 413 totally free Mac apps.Each app is assigned a category and accompanied by a short description.
MacMenuBar
I linked to the recently added page but it's easy to get to the entire collection and to filter for just free apps or just open-source.
Mr. Free Tools
Mr. Free Tools is a directory site with an advanced search engine that helps you find the best free software, apps, and tools from around the web. Those free solutions can help you with work, projects, studies, or hobbies.
Awesome Mac
Awesome Mac is a GitHub page with links to a huge variety of Mac software. The free and open-source titles are clearly marked.
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