The former is the having of a quality; the latter, to be overcome by something. I fancied “possesed of” in Fear and Docking, but I checked with chat-you-know-who first.

I went through the pile of mechanical and solid-state drives I always see when I’m organizing my storage, and decided to plug them into the sata-USB interface I have to label everything.

Prior to today the date of the first photo in my Photos library (once iPhoto) was from 2001. It’s an old screenshot of my modem settings for Earthlink, which was my ISP back then. I was experimenting with OS X, probably on my PowerMac G4.

At the time, I was taking pics on a couple of early-model Olympus point-and-shoot digital cameras. My second camera was an Olympus D-340R, which took shots at 1280×960. 1.2 megapixels! I believe the first digital I had was the preceding model, which ChatGPT thinks is the D-320L.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I found a pile of old pics that I took that precede my earliest entries in my photo library. I still get a kick out of scrolling back that far in my library and seeing those old pics.

A fun one was a pic of my then-new Palm device, which was the last of its kind for my usage (and close to the end of that brand’s run). It was a Palm TX. The pic is from 2008, though.

Another good one: some maybe Apple people hamming it up with iMacs for heads, holding a newly introduced iBook. I had pre-ordered an iBook when they were announced, but ending up cancelling the order in favor of a Lombard PowerBook G3.

Tub Shroom

I saw the Tub Shroom years ago, and was attracted to getting one, because we had a family member who was squeamish about hair in the drain after a shower. Letting the hair slide down the drain is obviously not a good solution to this squeamishness, but we have done just that for a while now. Fast forward to the inevitable conclusion: clogged drains, trips to the hardware store for drain-o, and some showers spent in an ankle-deep puddle of bath water. Not to mention fruitless plunging on my part.

We got the last clog unstuck, but I wanted to avoid another event. While shopping for basket strainers for the drain, I chanced upon the Tub Shroom , and ordered one.

Short story: it works, and discreetly. I’ve been cleaning it just to see, and I’m happy with the results. 12 bucks!

Bellview Winery’s Serafina

I picked up a growler of this yesterday to have with our cheap rib roast. I tried a sample at the winery after giving the mustang a good flogging on a dry, hot day. I’d say it was very dark-berry forward but very good. We had spritzes with their pet-nat rosé too. I didn’t take good pics but hey.

OWC Dock

Hobbies have long tails. The dream is to be able to plug any device into your rig and just work. This is a great step for geeks with multiple devices. I’ve been writing about it here a fair bit.

Easter

I’ve always adored Easter. Because I went to catholic school, Easter was as momentous as Christmas. With Christmas, you get a kind of hunkering down for the long winter ahead vibe, ceremonious as it is. Spring and Easter have a more optimistic, forward-looking groove.

32” is the size of my Samsung U32J59x, which at the time of purchase, was a great deal and remains perfect for my usage. I’ve used 32” and 27” displays, and while I would probably choose 32” over 27” when picking out another display, 32” does hit the edge of usability for me. There are just times when a window is over to the left of center on the display, and I really can’t see it that well (I do run my text fairly small on the Mac).

For the record, I had a 27” Dell 4k display at my last gig, and I have a 27” Samsung that I grabbed from Walmart around Christmas time to plug into my MacBook Air. 27” is a great size but I really like having the 32” at home.

Anyway, when I log into my Mac at home and a window is up in a corner somewhere, I’m tempted by the urge to center it without having to mouse up to the title bar and move it manually. It seems like something that I should be able to keyboard shortcut.

AppleScript is an obvious and easy way to cobble a solution together. I checked in with ChatGPT and it offered me a decent starting point; I do get better results specifying the resolution of the display, although I suspect I’ll be able to modify it to dynamically check the dimensions of the display so that this will work on a laptop, too.

tell application "System Events"
    set frontApp to name of first application process whose frontmost is true
    tell application process frontApp
        if (count of windows) > 0 then
            set win to front window
            set winPos to position of win
            set winSize to size of win
            set winWidth to item 1 of winSize
            set winHeight to item 2 of winSize

            -- Set your screen resolution here (adjust if needed)
            set screenWidth to 3008
            set screenHeight to 1692

            set newX to (screenWidth - winWidth) / 2
            set newY to (screenHeight - winHeight) / 2

            set position of win to {newX, newY}
        end if
    end tell
end tell

Window Management and a Large Display

A funny by-product of being a laptop user for many years for me was that I really never worked with multiple windows on my Mac. I was a PowerBook (and then MacBook) user for over a decade before I introduced a desktop computer back into my setup. My laptop usage effectively looked like full-screen (but not zoomed) windows, and I’d command-tab between active applications. On a 13” Air or 14” MacBook Pro, this makes a lot of sense. But on a big display, there’s really no reason to run Safari that big (Logic or iMovie, sure).

Here’s today’s ham recipe on my laptop’s built-in display, centered using macOS’s Window > Center command:

There’s a fair bit of white space, owing to the webpage’s design, but it’s readable and doesn’t really ask for resizing.

Here’s the same page on my Samsung display:

In this way, a smaller MacBook ends up being used, for me, a lot like an iPad: pretty much full screen in every app. It’s a lot of fun to be able to plug into a larger display and have a different experience with windowing, and I can totally see why multiple monitors or large ones really do improve productivity. There is a cognitive cost to all of that context switching.

In the vein of “sometimes the goal is not to have a goal,” I did not start “season two” of my rowing obsession/practice with the intention of beating my meterage from 2023-24. If anything, I would have gracefully allowed myself to have lost some distance, considering a started a job with an earlier start time, longer commute, and longer overall hours.

But I noticed fairly close to the end of my second season that I was close to hitting the same distance I logged in 2023-24, and was happy about that. By looking at my daily average, I knew I’d meet-and exceed-last Year’s distance.

Hooray for all that.

That’s 20 to 30 minutes a day, most days of the week.

Here’s a fun screenshot: the notoriously inaccurate calorie meter in the PM5 reports that as of today, I burned 238,821 calories rowing. Roughly speaking, that’s 68 pounds. I lost more than that but that’s pretty close.

Rhonda is delightfully attentive to our local Shop Rite’s sales on beef rib roasts. They reliably put these on sale peripheral to holidays. She got this one for around 40 bucks.

I always cook them the same way: about six hours in the sous vide at 130, then a sear on the charcoal grill (lump usually, but I’m catholic about it). I rubbed this one with a prepared mix Aaron brought home from a local business.

It probably took about 20 minutes on the grill.

I never remember to take a pic once I get inside. I let this rest for at least ten minutes and it was still nice and warm. And pink.

I wanted to get all of the peripherals that I could share using the OWC Dock set up over spring break, so I worked on that today. I plugged my Focusrite Scarlet Solo and Razer webcam into the dock, and moved the Samsung T5 drive I split between Time Machine backups, and Steam, Epic, and Blizzard game libraries closer towards the center of the port array on the Mac Studio. This will make plugging the Thunderbolt cable into the Studio much easier than threading between other peripherals’ plugs.

I haven’t tried plugging another device in the dock yet, but at least it’s set up. I’ve been using my iPhone as my web cam at work using continuity camera, and don’t do many meetings from home such that I’ve needed the camera. But the Razer Kiyo Pro really looks nice, I have to say.

HDMI vs DisplayPort 1.2

I was rearranging cables to make all of this magic happen and I saw a nice thick braided cable snaking up from the side of the desk. I followed it to a DisplayPort plug, which I’ve been using for Aaron’s old Alienware from my Windows phase. I remember reading before that DisplayPort may be favorable to HDMI before when messing with the KVM switch, so I asked ChatGPT about it. Since my Samsung U32J59x supports DisplayPort v 1.2, ChatGPT thought it might be beneficial, too. So I unplugged HDMI from the display and replaced the cable with the DisplayPort cable. And that worked just ducky.

Display sleep Issue

The switch from HDMI to DisplayPort resurrected the ghost of a familiar bug: the Mac doesn’t sleep the Samsung after a period of inactivity when it’s connected via DisplayPort (or the other way around), but things work as expected over HDMI.

ChatGPT informed me that this was a known issue. The current workaround is a Launchbar action that fires a simple script: pmset displaysleepnow, which is self explanatory. It’s an extra step for me and I’d have to know that I’m not coming back to my desk for a while (which doesn’t always happen… you get pulled away).

Scripting

I asked ChatGPT about possibly scripting something to check if I was using the Mac, and after a certain interval of the computer being idle, run pmset. So maybe I’ll fart with that next.

The Marginalian:

Loneliness is the fundamental condition of life — we are born by another, but born alone; die around others (if we are lucky and loved), but die alone; we spend our lives islanded in our one and only human experience — in these particular bodies and minds and circumstances drawn from the cosmic lottery — amid the immense ocean of time and chance teeming with all possible experience.

See also “Walt Whitman.”

3 Kinds of Loneliness and 4 Kinds of Forever

Via LD Stephens:

It’s great to have a place to share your thoughts. A place you can go back to when you want to remember something you had written or thought about before. A place you can refer people to when they have questions you’ve answered in the past. A place to be you. So, get a blog, and put all the things there.

Just Put It On Your Blog.

After Monday’s quick (read:impulsive) setup of my OWC dock, I was briefly possessed by an idea that would allow me to send the dock back to Amazon for a refund, and that made me smack my forehead due to what I perceived as an oversight.

Having set up the dock with my desktop Mac first, I tried plugging my older M1 iPad Pro into it. It worked great, and I was excited to get this rig up and running, buoyed by the successful first run.

I plugged my MacBook Air into it next, which also worked well… mind you, I had the keyboard and trackpad plugged in via USB (lightning and USB-C, respectively, on the device end). I didn’t bother unpairing the peripherals from the Mac Studio, because I knew that the cabled interface would take priority. But at some point, I realized that, after I disconnected the cables, the keyboard and trackpad were still working … with the laptop.

That was the forehead-smack moment. I did in fact know that this worked; I have an iMac in my office from the previous occupant, and at some point it suggested that it could share its keyboard and mouse with my laptop or iPad (I can’t remember which). But it worked, and it was, at the time, to my mind, a good example of what makes Apple’s ecosystem interesting.

The feature is called Universal Control and it works pretty great. And I thought for a moment: I don’t need a dock. I just need the HDMI-to-USB C Anker cable I ordered with the dock. I could just as easily plug and unplug the display, and use the peripherals wirelessly. I don’t like the cables coming out of the backs of the devices anyway.

But then I tried to log into my Mac Studio; I plugged the dock into the Mac and the display lit up with macOS’s login panel, but neither the keyboard nor trackpad were recognized. And I realized that the feature works great–when you’re logged into two devices with the same iCloud account. But the Studio had logged me out.

And I also realized that the benefit of the Thunderbolt cable that connects the dock and the Macs/iPad provides power to the iPad, which is always a challenge with using it as a docked device: there’s one and only one port. So anything that involves a monitor and a lengthy sit on your ass in front of it will also need power. So you need a hub of some kind, and Thunderbolt fits that bill nicely (cheaper powered hubs are, of course, available).

So that’s a lengthy summary of days one and two with the dock; I’m looking forward to having next week off work so I can fart around with it a bit more.

I think a preview of future posts will involve the iPad: it was really nice running it on a 32” 4k display with a keyboard and trackpad. I was doing this the other day at work and I really was digging it. I do hit a productivity wall the with the iPad, though, and when it’s time for a computer, it’s time for a computer.

I make these so often they barely merit a post, but they are good. I made them this morning.

One of the features I was missing in a Mac OS utility was the ability to trigger commands without mousing, but still interacting via the GUI. The utility I used to rely on for this was MaxMenus by Proteron software, which is no longer (I see that I purchased it in October of 2002 for about thirty bucks).

I would create menus/palettes with commands to common actions, and I’d trigger the menu to pop up with a keystroke or mouse click (I can’t remember… It might have been hot corners).

When I first tried Pieoneer, it was in the spirit of replacing Max Menus. I used it solely as an app switcher, which is not this app’s marquee feature. If you only have a few apps running at any given time, you might be able to live with Pieoneer as your app switcher. But it’s not better than the default macOS app switcher. Or Launchbar, for that matter. It is cool if you prefer moused-based navigation, though.

There is an app-specific mode, however, called Controller, wherein you can assign commands to a radial menu that is specific to the active app (the one you’re using). The defaults include Safari and Finder, and they’re both examples of how you can use Pieoneer to great effect. In Safari, you can open up the sidebar, tab overview, and more. It’s great for exposing features in the application for which you often forget the keyboard shortcut.

I do think that my long-standing setup, which generally features Launchbar to do almost everything, is muscle memory and I’m not going to stop using it. Launchbar launches apps, starts web searches, organizes files, and navigates just about everywhere. It’s a piece of infrastructure that I absolutely rely on. It’s simple to start using but has true depth.

Maybe Pieoneer is a mouse-driven version of Launchbar?

Logitech MX Master

One of the features of Logitech’s excellent MX Master mice is the LogiOptions software, which I was loathe to install but find useful in setting up custom commands for the mouse. One of my favorite buttons on the mouse is the thumb button, which was programmed by default to show Mission Control on the Mac. I like Mission Control to some degree, but I often find the tiles to be too small to be useful when I’m running a bunch of apps (which I usually am).

I set up Pieoneer to show the Launcher feature when I shift-click the thumb button, and to show the application-specific controller menu when I click the thumb button without a modifier key.

Here’s this week’s list of things to check out. It’s been a long extended winter, and I hope everyone is seeing the promise of greener days ahead. This weekend has certainly not been an indicator of green things to come.

Cambozola Brie with Bleu

Aaron and I stopped at Bagliani’s on the way home from his Rutgers visit last Saturday, and in addition to a big salami (the cashier described it unfavorably as “extra slimy”), we got his favorite cheese, an asiago with black pepper, and this camembert-ish bleu cheese. I like a little stank on my cheese. We’re having spritzes and cheese as I type this.

Bellview Winery’s Hyacinth

Rhonda and I alighted for Bellview Winery today, having reservations about getting a good seat and decent service because of a spring fling event. (I can’t begrudge the business for participating in revenue-driving activities, but they’re a drag for us regulars.) Because of the weather, ti wasn’t crowded, but we were not able to avail ourselves of anting more tasty than some janky buffalo chicken tater tots. We prefer wine and salami with our wine to teenager food. Ahem.

Anyway, we got a bottle of rosé and a growler fill of their Hyacinth. It’s a dry white, less sweet than the Perseus, but lots of pear and melon.

MacBook Air M4

The MacBook Air has been a good choice for anyone needing a Mac for regular productivity for over a decade now. It’s the default for most needs. This one I’m rocking has 512 GB internal storage and, of course, 16 GB RAM. It does it all. This pic is a good example of the Midnight color in bare light.

There’s probably not much to say about the M4 that’s interesting here, but I’ll endeavor to in the future. Having experimented with a KVM switch so that I could run Aaron’s old Alienware PC for a while and switch between it and my Mac Studio, I realized that the M4 Air would be a fine machine for me for all of my needs. To that end, I ordered a dock to keep here at home so that I can dock whatever machine, iPad included, and use it with my Magic Trackpad and keyboard.

More on that later for sure.