To All the Ones I've Loved Before

myspace_logo_a_h

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Here are a few of the late, great attempts to catch on that tried and failed or were just superseded.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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Living a Life of Leisure

Main_in_Woods

For years, I fantasized about not having to work and all the really fine things I would do when that magical time arrived. Then I retired and was at a loss. I read a lot of books and watched a bunch of movies, but it wasn't what I'd call really fun. Instead, it felt like I was just doing things to occupy my time. Eventually, I just went back to work. That was a pretty good solution, but not a perfect one. I still think about not having to work a lot, but I think the next time I get that opportunity, it will be different.

My fantasy retirement includes plenty of time for writing. Over the past year, I have made blogging a priority by default. It's something I enjoy. I do it every day, and I can just imagine having the time to fully develop ideas, do research, and polish my posts instead of the rush jobs I'm knocking out now. I'd like to have a nice office space at home with decent speakers to play music on, a really comfortable office chair with all my tried-and-true computer essentials right there at my fingertips. I don't currently use my office space because it's not where Wonder Woman hangs out. When we are at home together, we like to be together.

I'm so conscious of my limited free time right now that I don't like to use any of it to do anything except exactly what I want to do, with a few limits. I imagine myself with more time, being more willing to get a walking routine established with just the right mix of music playlists and downloaded podcasts like I did before my mobility was limited by knee surgery. I would not be forced into early pre-dawn walks like I am now.

Since I'm a couple of years older than Wonder Woman, part of my fantasy retirement will be spent at home while she is still working. I will be able to use my time to do some of the chores, like grocery shopping, that we now do together on the weekends. I'm not going too far out on a limb by claiming that I will be Molly Maid or anything because that ain't happening. The cleaning and lawn services we've had over the past few years have been among the best investments we've ever made, and I am way too used to them to think about moving backward and taking that stuff back over myself.

A few years ago, I looked into volunteering at a few places using the skill set I have in technology. I didn't find anything that was a good fit around my work hours, but I'd be willing to look into that once more while having a much more flexible schedule. We have one of the best military history museums in the world in my hometown, but it's mostly staffed by retired guys from the 82nd Airborne and Special Forces. My half-communist ass would probably not fit in well there, although you never know. I have some retired military friends who are just as radical as I imagine myself to be.

The primary benefit of not having to go to work is that I'll no longer have to do customer relations. I'm not the biggest people person. Although I don't have any problems with getting along with folks at work 99% of the time, that remaining 1% is a giant PIA that sucks the joy out of too many days. When I never have to crawl under another desk to plug something in for another adult, I will truly be a happy man.

For the time being, however, I'm going to keep punching the clock and just enjoy knowing that, if push comes to shove, I can make my way towards the exit. I'll enjoy the 99% of the job that isn't aggravating and be extra grateful that I get to ride back and forth (and eat lunch!) with the love of my life.

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The Top 25 Most Downloaded Mac Apps

Top 25 Apps
Top 25 Apps


I looked at the list of the top 25 most downloaded apps as compiled by MacUpdater, who I figure are as good a source as any and drew a few conclusions.

  1. VLC
  2. Pages
  3. AppCleaner
  4. Numbers
  5. Keynote
  6. iMovie
  7. The Unarchiver
  8. GarageBand
  9. Android File Transfer
  10. Speedtest
  11. Amphetamine
  12. Google Chrome
  13. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
  14. Microsoft Teams
  15. Transmission
  16. HandBrake
  17. Firefox
  18. Microsoft PowerPoint
  19. Microsoft Word
  20. Microsoft Excel
  21. ImageOptim
  22. OneDrive
  23. Bartender
  24. Magnet
  25. IINA

Only five of the apps in the list are paid apps. They are  the big three in Microsoft Office, the menu bar manager, Bartender and the window manager, Magnet.

The vendor with the most apps on the list is surprisingly, Microsoft with five.

For it' market share to be as small as it, Firefox must have a higher proportion of Mac users employing it than PC users.

I would wager that VLC's popularity is due to its longevity and because of enterprise deployments. I know I have been putting it on images in the educational space for as long as I can remember. IINA seems more popular with more knowledgeable users,

Despite all the predictions made about Bartender's future after the botched handling of its sale, it is the most downloaded paid app in the ecosystem after Microsoft Office.

I have never been a big user of window management tools, and I had no idea Magnet was as popular as it is. It has 165,000 reviews in the App Store and a 4.9 rating.

I find it interesting that the top 25 apps did not include a single notes app, automation tool or clipboard manager. The only messaging app is Microsoft Teams, and I hesitate to say that is its primary function.

The presence of the six-year-old Android File Transfer app is mind-blowing. I suspect this indicates that the download figures are worldwide and include countries where Androids have huge market share.

The high ranking of App Cleaner is good for two reasons - it demonstrates that an app doesn't have to be updated constantly to be useful (last update was 2023-07-05). It also shows that lots of people believe in doing more than just dragging unwanted apps to the trash.

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Superlatives

benz

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

Winners and Losers

Ricky_Bobby

Now I've been a-lookin' for a job, but it's hard to find.
There's winners and there's losers.
And I am south of the line.
Well, I'm tired of gettin' caught out on the losin' end.
But I talked to a man last night.
Gonna do a little favor for him.

Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen

Societies, including ours, have a habit of classifying people as winners and losers. In World War Two, Japanese soldiers committed mass suicide in battle after battle rather than surrendering or being beaten. I am reminded of a scene from the Will Ferrell comedy, Talladega Nights, after Ricky Bobby's sons brag of throwing their grandfather's war medals over a bridge and disrespecting a teacher, their dad exclaims "My boys are winners and winners get to do whatever they want." It's obvious that a lot of people share that sentiment.

Athletic contests by design have a winner and a loser at the end of the competition, but who is going to call Aaron Judge of the NY Yankees, a man whose salary is twice that of the entire Detroit Tigers, a loser? Are the athletes who go to the Olympic games and don't win a medal losers? Maybe they use that definition on their own minds as motivation, I don't know. I've only been around a couple of Olympians and I didn't ask them. I just know that from my own athletic career, I felt like a winner every time I gave the competition everything I had. What more could I do?

I've never been as opposed to anything in my life as I was against the Us war with Iraq. I opposed it with everything I had. When Obama, who unlike other prominent Democrats, had never supported the war, was elected, I felt like the antiwar movement had won. So did a lot of other folks. Most coalitions closed up shop as we waited for the troops to come home. Only it took years for the last soldier to leave Iraq (2011). When Obama left office in 2017, there were still American soldiers in Afghanistan for reasons no one could really explain.

There are people who turn just about everything into a competition to satisfy some need they have to be better than other people. I've known too many dentists and ad execs who, in their minds, turn into Tour de France riders on a Saturday morning bicycle ride at the club ride. Putting other people in danger and disrupting the flow of the entire undertaking is entirely acceptable in their minds if they can beat a bunch of school teachers and retirees to the next stop sign. Even on something as neutral as the Appalachian Trail, there were those people who bragged at camp sites about how many miles they'd covered and how fast they'd hiked. No one cared.

It's funny how these competitive types never try to win the competition on the job to close the most tickets or help the most customers. I wonder why.

After the recent election, a lot of people feel like they are on the winning side, but I have news for them. Unless they are in the 1%, they are going to come out of the next four years on the losing end. The educational system is going to suffer, and that hurts everyone. Unmitigated climate change will accelerate, and that hurts everyone. Pollution will increase. Government services will be deprecated. We will all live in a less functional country. All of that Trump-style winning is going to help one fat guy with a bad combover and too much makeup.

Winners are happy people. Winners are those amongst us who live in peace. They don't have the biggest houses or the nicest cars. What they have is appreciation for what they've got and an absence of longing for what they don't. They enjoy what they enjoy without a need to beat someone else. I like winners like that.

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Using Supercharge

Supercharge Options
Supercharge Options


Although I use a lot of apps that have a menu bar interface, most of them are hidden by Bartender. An app has to be super useful and be something I use frequently to remain visible at all times. The latest addition by Sindre Sorhus, Supercharge is an instant add. It has a great many uses and has replaced other utilities that have narrower focus. More tools are being added regularly, so if you have this app, make sure to install updates as soon as they are released to get new features. I won't cover them all, just the ones I use personally.

From the Menu Bar

The menu bar icon presents the following option in a drop-down:

  • Hide all windows
  • Show Desktop
  • Quit All Apps
  • Hide My Email (opens this buried item in System Settings)
  • Private Relay opens this buried item in System Settings)

Tweaks

  • Unminimize windows when app becomes active
  • Dim icons of hidden apps in the dock
  • Create new text file with Option+N
  • Open new files after naming
  • Auto-adjust column widths in Finder
  • Quit an app when closing its last Window (I don't usually like to mimic Micro$oft behavior, but I like this feature)
  • When clicking on an active icon in the dock, hide app
  • Add to Finder's context menu
    • Copy path
    • Copy file name
    • Image dimensions
    • Make symlink
    • Move to...
    • Copy to...
    • Open in Terminal (for folders)

The ability to make those modifications in the Finder makes it much more powerful.

Shortcuts

  • Toggle desktop widgets
  • Open Passwords from menu bar
  • Hide all windows
  • Quit all apps (except menu bar apps)
  • Show desktop

I was using the beta feature to close visible notifications which definitely had a beta feel to it, until I discovered that Better Touch Tool's implementation of this feature closes not just visible notifications, but all existing ones. I'm sure Sindre will get this working similarly in future releases.

Tools

I work on an MBA at home and an iMac for work. For apps that don't have iCloud sync, using the export and import settings tool has been extremely useful and has saved me a ton of time. It's also useful when I want to experiment with how an app is set up, allowing me to revert settings if I don't like what I get after changing things around.

You can get a fully functional copy of the app here. The only limitation is a reminder to buy the app every 12 hours, and no automatic updates. All data and settings carry over if you buy it.

I suggest you just go ahead and buy the app. If there was ever an Instabuy, this is it.

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Diamonds Are a Racket

ring

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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AMA - What Are Your Favorite Childhood Memories?

Family

This might be rough for some. Not everyone had a happy childhood. Mine certainly had its rough spots, but for the most part, we had a lot of opportunities for pure joy too. So, in no particular order, here is a hit parade from the 70s.

Music - My mom and stepfather had a record player that stayed busy. I grew up listening to music that I still play today. We had all the Beatles albums. James Taylor got a lot of airtime. Especially for us kids, we got to listen to Pete Seeger sing Little Boxes and Abi-Yoyo. I even remember my stepfather playing a particular Arlo Guthrie record with Alice's Restaurant. My own dad was partial to Neil Diamond, so I get feelings for him whenever I hear one of the familiar songs.

Food - My mom didn't always cook breakfast, but more often than not, we didn't have to resort to cereal. Being in the South meant that bacon, eggs, and grits were a staple, although she had an actual waffle iron, so we got that sometimes. Pancakes and oatmeal were also on offer. When we did get cereal, there was always a controversy over whose turn it was to get the prize in the bottom of the box. I wasn't really fond of the "eat everything on your plate" rule that my stepfather imposed because Mom insisted on regularly serving English peas, which I despise to this day. I did learn how to enjoy asparagus though.

Travel - We weren't that well off, but we managed to have plenty of opportunities to visit parks and beaches when we happened to be living in the eastern part of the state. We moved a lot. When I grew up, I took my kids to some of the same places I'd been able to go to as a kid. One problem with travel was the size of the cars my parents had. Imagine five people in a Ford Pinto on a late-night trip up Interstate 95 from central NC to Washington, DC. That one was partially a business trip. My stepfather, a journalist, got to attend a press conference with other NC reporters to grill President Ford.

Holidays - Despite the lack of funds, we were never disappointed at Christmas. We got all the regular stuff kids get: bikes that lasted for years, baseball gloves, and always books about whatever we happened to be interested in at the time. We usually traveled to see family too. To my mother's everlasting credit, even though she and my dad got divorced around the time I started school, she has stayed in contact with his family to this very day. My dad lived out of state, but we still got to see our grandparents, our aunt, and our uncles.

Freedom - In the time before cell phones and excessive protectiveness, we had the license to roam. I was a hustler as a kid, always on the lookout to make a few bucks, and I rode my bike far and wide looking for soda bottles to sell back to the store. I walked the roads looking for aluminum cans. My mom willingly took me to the salvage yard to cash those in. We always had permission to go to the library when we lived someplace where it was close enough to get to. Some summers I practically lived there. Lots of times we lived in apartments with pools, and when we didn’t, we joined a co-op pool, which I didn't realize until I was an adult was whites only. I was born the year the civil rights act was signed, but there were still vestiges of segregation around if you looked.

TV and Movies - We had the same 19-inch TV my entire childhood. In the afternoons, we'd watch black and white re-runs of The Beverly Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show, and Gomer Pyle. Some of our favorite nighttime shows were Happy Days and * Laverne and Shirley.* One little town we lived in had a main street movie theater with one-dollar tickets. We could just about see the place from our house, and we got to go there whenever anything appropriate was playing. We still make fun of my sister for leaving Pippi Longstocking early because she got scared.

What was best about all of that was that it took place in an environment of my mother's love and commitment to give us the best childhood she could. She 100% succeeded, and I am so very grateful to this day.

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Mac Compression Utilities

Compressed File
Compressed File


When it comes to opening compressed files in just about any format, the most downloaded utility is The Unarchiver from MacPaw. There's not much you can throw at it that it can't handle, including old files from StuffIt and DiskDoubler. It can even extract files from some Windows .exe installers. The problem with The UnArchiver is that it does decompression only. If you want to make your own archives, you need another program. Natively, macOS can create ZIP and DMG files but that's it.

BetterZip 5 from macitbetter is a much more full-featured app, although it isn't free. It's $24.95 for use on up to five Macs for personal users. It is also available on Setapp. Better Zip has some pretty cool superpowers:

  • Quicklook extension for viewing files inside archives without opening them
  • Edit archived files in an external application, and BetterZip can save the changes back and update your archive.
  • Open and extract winmail.dat files.
  • Open, extract, and modify ePub files.
  • Extract images and sounds from PDFs
  • AES-256 Encryption, password manager, password generator
  • Finder Integration and share menu
  • Filtering - only extract certain files from archives
  • Integration with Alfred and Hazel

Keka is a perennial favorite of many Mac users. It has a free version on the developer's websiteand a $5 version on the Mac App Store. Keka has compression and decompression tools. Keka can divide large files into multiple parts that will automatically reassemble after decompression. You gain the ability to use 256-bit encryption. You can also take advantage of a drag and drop interface into the Keka main window, or by simply dropping files onto the Keka icon in the dock.

For those who want scripting and a CLI as well as a GUI, Peazip is probably the best bet. A free app, it also has the widest array of security features.

  • Offers two-factor authentication
  • Opens 200 types of compressed files in the GUI
  • Multiple file management features: convert archives, search in archives, bookmarks, tabbed browsing,
  • Portable - can be run from a USB or other external drive
  • Open Source
  • Cross platform (Linus, macOS Windows)

Some Finder alternatives offer compression and decompression, including:

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What Do Kent State, Bloody Sunday and the Next Four Years Have in Common?

blood2

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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Living in the Bible Belt

Bible Belt

For a good part of my life, I tried to be religious and failed miserably. During my formative years, church was a social connection as well as a place for religious instruction. During elementary school, my Mom was married to a non-believer, so she didn't attend church, but my siblings and I went with a neighbor to a Southern Baptist church on the outskirts near the prison. My brother and I were active in the boys’ youth group, called RAs for Royal Adventurers. In the summer, we went to VBS (Vacation Bible School).

In high school, I lived with my aunt and uncle. They went to a Presbyterian Church, one of many in the area, reflecting the Scottish heritage in the part of North Carolina where we lived. One of my favorite parts of each week was the Sunday evening Youth Fellowship meetings. It was the one place where kids from the different high schools in the area hung out together. We had a church league softball team that was a lot of fun. Our yearly beach trip was something I looked forward to immensely. I got a lot of love there in spite of getting caught smoking weed by the youth minister. I wasn't a well-behaved kid, but I was still welcome.

As an adult, I have attended Baptist, Presbyterian, and Seventh-day Adventist churches. I've been baptized at least twice. I may have also been baptized as a baby since during the brief time my parents were married to each other, they attended the Methodist church, which practices infant baptism. All three of my children attended private, church-affiliated schools for part of their K-12 lives.

Both my sister and my father are ordained ministers in the United Methodist Church. It was a second career for both of them. In retirement, Dad no longer worships at a Methodist church because it has grown too liberal for him. My mother has done medical missionary work in Rwanda. She is a member of an Anglican church that is affiliated with the Rwandan version of that denomination. She was a member of an Episcopalian church for a long time, but when her congregation split after the ordination of Gene Robinson, an openly gay bishop, she went with her husband and the other conservatives to form a new congregation. My sister has many of the same political beliefs that I hold, and she is one of the few people I feel comfortable talking to when it comes to issues of faith.

Despite all that churching, I ended up a non-believer. I tried as hard as I knew how to find a connection with a supernatural God, but I never felt anything, not ever. As a recovering alcoholic from the 12-Step tradition, which relies heavily on the concept of a "higher power," I had to do considerable mental gymnastics to finally get sober. I finally resolved to use my AA group as a power greater than myself. Collectively, that is 100% true, and it was only after I stopped fighting against what I felt was an inappropriate religious influence that I was able to stop drinking for good, or at least for the last 16 years.

Aside from the lack of an emotional connection with religion, my other reasons for the position I hold are much the same as many other non-believers. I can't reconcile things like the Holocaust and childhood leukemia with a loving and caring God. The historical reality of how the Bible became canon is more than a little sus to me as well. I really like quite a few parts of it anyway, especially The Sermon on the Mount, which is as good an outlook on a righteous life as I have seen anywhere. I am also disgusted to the very core of who I am as a person with right-wing-influenced Christianity. People who talk Jesus out of one side of their mouth and cut nutrition programs for the poor out of the other side are contemptible, and I want as little to do with them as possible. When I think of the average white conservative Christian, I think of the ways they advocate for things like discrimination against LGBT people, their support for the death penalty, and their attempts to force their beliefs into the political fabric of a country that was founded on religious freedom. I like Christians like Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King, Jr. I do not like Christians like James Dobson and Tony Perkins. I think they are evil people.

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MarkEdit - A Pure Markdown Editor for Free

MarkEdit in Action
MarkEdit in Action


Markdown documents are written in plain text and generally saved with a .md file extension. Various apps like Obsidian and Bear use Markdown by default. There is a whole ecosystem of tools around the easy-to-use language where you use various keyboard elements to create styles that can be interpreted by browsers and other apps. Markdown lets you add:

  • Bold
  • Italic
  • Quotes
  • Lists (numbered, bullets, and checklists)
  • Links (to web pages and images)
  • Code blocks
  • Headers
  • Tables

There are different flavors of Markdown, but the most commonly used one is referred to as GitHub-flavored Markdown. As a blogger, I prefer to write in Markdown to format my posts for the web. The free app, MarkEdit uses 100% pure GitHub Markdown. Out of the box. The interface is pretty bare bones, but you can customize the toolbar to use the various tools on selected text. MarkEdit permits the insertion of multiple carats, so you can highlight disconnected blocks of text. MarkEdit is intended to be a minimalist writing tool. It has a good feature set. There isn't any bloat. There are plenty of other editors that have preview, different flavors of Markdown and more. It's just a matter of taste and what your needs are. 

The latest version incorporates Apple's writing tools, allowing you to use proofreading and AI rewriting tools to change your text. Although I am not personally a fan of AI-generated content, there probably isn’t any harm in letting it make a business email more professional if need be.

MarkEdit does not contain a viewer to show your text with the formatting enforced. I suggest Brett Terpstra's app Marked 2 if you're not going to be looking at your content in a browser.

MarkEdit Settings
MarkEdit Settings

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Bluesky Resources, If You're Curious

Blue_Sky_Logo_Cropped-alpha

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.

AMA - Do You Have Faith in the Future?

dual-resized

Brandon asked - "Do you have faith in the future of humanity? Why or why not?"

By nature, I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I do the best I can to live in the moment. The future will take care of itself, I figure. I do have my moments where I dare to contemplate what's going to happen. I don't always have a rosy view. Like a lot of people, the recent presidential election shook me to my core. The realization of a lot of my worst fears is already in motion as our new government takes shape. From a purely personal perspective, here in old white guy land, things are just grand. The future of Lou is pretty rosy, but I will be damned before I let that selfish perspective be the lens through which I view the world.

As bad as things look, there is one overriding truth. Throughout the history of mankind, things have always gotten better. Sometimes the pace has been excruciatingly slow. At other times, progress has been made at breathtaking speed. I look at things like HIV research. We've gone from an epidemic illness being a death sentence to it becoming just another treatable illness in one generation. We went from the first airplane to landing on the moon in a single lifetime. Mankind is badass like that.

When I talk to friends having a rough time, I like to remind them that every bad thing that has ever happened to them in the whole entire life hasn't killed them. Whatever they happen to be going through at the moment, whether it be a lost job, a divorce, or something else, isn't likely to kill them either. Sometimes in life, you lose battle after battle only to win the war. During the civil rights movement, the people of Birmingham had police dogs turned on them and were sprayed with fire hoses as police chief Bull Connor dealt violently with nonviolent protesters. John Lewis had his skull fractured for marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The very next year, the Civil Rights Act was passed. Bull Connor lost, and John Lewis won.

Life is a series of peaks and valleys. When we are down in the valley like we are right now, it's hard to remember what the mountain tops were like. It's a lot easier to be pessimistic than it is to be positive. People of faith have heaven to look forward to, but secular people just have their one wild and precious life. I'll not let anyone take away the things in this life that give it meaning. I will continue to be a loud and proud progressive. I will hold on to the values I have until I find a better alternative. There are plenty of people like me. The conservatives have won two majorities over a period of 32 years. Their current hold on power is temporary, and unless we move into a total dictatorship, and I realize there is a chance of that, we will have weapons of democracy to use.

The challenges we face are real. Climate change, competition for resources, rising authoritarianism, oppression of vulnerable minorities - all of these things are real. We will experience setbacks in combating them, but we will win in the end. We always do.

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Recents App for Mac - A Free Intelligent File Launcher

Recents
Recents


The Recent Items section of the Apple Menu lists your 10 most recently opened documents. There are some apps that let you increase that number, but not by much. At most, you'll have a couple of days work to refer back to. The app, Recents, will trace you work back by months in some cases.

Recents breaks your workflow down on a per-app basis and provides the most recently used documents for each one, even if the app itself doesn't have a recent files menu. For example, I use Rapidmg to open disk images. The program normally opens the disk image, moves the contents to my Applications folder, and then dismounts and closes without any intervention from me. There is no menu. Using Recents, I can see a list of the last 15 DMGs I've opened, and reopen them at will.

Recents works with a wide variety of apps and file types. In the admittedly confusing file structure we use at work, I often can't remember the exact path of saved documents, but I know the app I created it with. Using Recents, I can easily find and open what I am looking for in a centralized location. Some of the apps with which I use Recents are:

  • Microsoft Office
  • Console
  • Preview
  • PDF Expert
  • VLC
  • Obsidian (opens vaults, not documents)
  • Motrix

The app has a light and dark mode and can be set to mimic your system preferences. Recents can be access three ways:

  • From the dock
  • From the menu bar
  • Hidden and summoned from a hot key

Recents can be downloaded from the developers website. It is a free app.

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Transgender Day of Remembrance

TDOR-image-scaled-resized

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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Humor Me

American-comedian-Richard-Pryor-c1977

Inspired by a post from Annie Mueller, I thought I'd write about humor today.

Making wisecracks is one of my primary forms of communication. Just about anything can be funny if you frame it the right way. It sometimes shocks people who don't know me that well, but anyone who has to suffer through working with me gets used to it rather quickly. I lean towards dry and acerbic humor because that's pretty much the way I perceive the world. There are an awful lot of absurd things about being alive, and pointing them out to people gives me purpose. I can't stand it when there is an obvious joke waiting to be made and yet no one will say anything because "inappropriate." No! Someone needs to get that laugh. It might as well be me.

I went through a stage when I downloaded routines of some of the most famous comics who have ever lived to listen to when I was spending a lot of time in my car for work. Being funny on demand didn't seem easy, but it didn't seem that hard either. I thought about writing some jokes and going to an open mic night at a comedy club, but I never followed through. For one thing, me and bars don't mix well, and I also might have been a little bit chicken. It was still fun listening to Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks and even Bill Cosby. This was before he went to prison for being a predator.

I think Richard Pryor is probably the funniest human who ever lived. His humor is timeless because it's about the human condition. A lot of comedians do topical comedy, which is funny at the moment, but it doesn't age well. My daughter thought me and her mother were so weird because we went on and on about how funny the show In Living Color was. She finally found it on DVD and watched a few episodes. It was full of jokes about Barbara Bush and Mike Tyson and other people who just weren't part of her world. She was very disappointed and hasn't asked me for entertainment options in a very long time.

I try not to be think-skinned when listening to stand-up. I'm more than willing to grant artistic license to a performer, but there are still some lines that don't need to be crossed. I don't like anti-trans humor. If you were to substitute some other marginalized group for tans folks into some of those jokes, people would look at you like you were wearing a Klan robe. I get that not everyone "gets" the struggle of that community, but making jokes at their expense is getting old. Even otherwise perceptive people like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais fall into the not-funny category when it comes to that brand of humor.

I love using humor as a weapon when I don't have anything else to offer. Any time someone tries to defend the indefensible to me, I laugh at them. You want to defend Trump? You're funny because he's a clown, and you're one too if you're defending him. Not only that, but you want to tell me why the death penalty or cutting school lunch programs are good ideas? I'm going to laugh right in your face. How can you seriously feel that way and call yourself a human being? Maybe that's disrespectful. Ok, it is disrespectful, but I don't really care. Laughing at you is better than fighting with you, which I don't care to do.

Feel free to send me jokes.

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Two Free Apps for Mac OS Installation Ease

Mist
Mist


On most modern Macs, the later Intel builds and all Apple Silicon models, you can boot into recovery mode, access disk utility and download and install a new operating system. Unless you can't. Then you have a problem. Or, maybe you are experimenting with Open Core Legacy Patcher to install a later version of macOS on a device that doesn't officially support it. In that case, you are going to need a copy of an OS, preferably bootable, and some sort of media to copy that OS installation onto. You can do the installation through other methods, like target disk mode or various imaging applications too, but they take some know how. The other thing you can use these files for is when experimenting with virtual machines in something like Virtual Box, UTM or VMWare Fusion.

Mist

To get a copy of the firmware and OS you need, I know of no easier method than using Mist, a free app available on GitHub. With Mist, you can get everything from the latest beta, all the way back to Mac OS X 7.5. You can get Intel or Apple Silicon installers, or the universal installers available for macOS Big Sur and later.

Balena Etcher

If you are planning to use an SD card or a USB drive, things work better when you flash the media than when you try to fiddle with partitions and permissions on your own from the command line. Luckily, there is an app for that. It is Balena Etcher, a free app with built-in safeguards to keep you from erasing the wrong drive. Balena Etcher will also create bootable media for Windows and various Linux builds too.

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