The coldest winter I ever spent
I switched to using Google Password Manager today, changing the most 100 out of 600 passwords to be random strings of characters. I also use Authy, a great Mult-factor authentication tool, on the most important sites. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe I’ll upgrade to Lastpass or similar soon.
After 19 years of amazing shows and dedication to kids, I am crestfallen to report that The Bay Area Children’s Theatre has closed its doors last week.
I’m terribly saddened. Our family attended several really terrific shows and events of theirs over the past several years. It is a really great institution!
Megan, Abigail and I went to the Contra Costa County Fair this weekend. Abigail’s first county fair was a blast! See the vid…
I recently converted the OrbSWARM Blog and Mediawiki to static websites. Here is how I did it.
Download the entire wiki, minus the “Special” pages and “Help” pages
wget -k -p -r -R ‘*Special*’ -R ‘*Help*’ -E http://wiki.orbswarm.com/
-k –convert links – edit each page so the links on it link to the new static site instead of a website
-p –page-requisites – fetch all the support files too, like .css and javascript
-r –recursive – download the whole site, not just one file
-R –reject – don’t download pages with these names in them
-E –adjust-extension – make all files end in “.html”
Download the entire WordPress blog
wget -k -p -r -E http://blog.orbswarm.com/
Then just upload all those files to a web server!
In 2007, Michael Prados, Jon Foote, and I co-organized the OrbSWARM art project along with 25 amazing mechatronic artists, it was a blast!
The project was active from 2007 to 2012 but the orbs are still out there, rolling somewhere! I just reorganized all the content: turned the wiki and blog into static sites, put all the sound files into one neat pile, and such.
Find the project at OrbSWARM.com
I’ve got some portable monitors: AOC I1659FWUX 15.6″ USB-powered portable monitor
The image quality of the monitor is pretty good (update 5-17-23: my new Macbook Pro screen is much more crisp than the AOC screens!), though you can’t adjust the colors.
In Windows, you can adjust the brightness with the open source software ScreenBright or my favorite ClickMonitorDDC 6.0 or some others. :-) You can’t directly change the brightness or colors in Windows 10 or 11.
To get it to work on my Macbook Pro 2019 16″, I needed to install a driver. Without it, when I plugged it in, the startup screen would flash for a moment and then nothing.
– Go to https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics which is the former Displaylink.com. Download and install the driver
– plug it in and go! I’m using an Anker USB C Hub to convert the USB-A on the monitor to USB-C
To be able to adjust the brightness, I went to the Apple App Store and got the free and open source MonitorControl Lite.
Done!
After 31 years of Windowsness, I’m I am officially a Macadoodle! I just got a Macbook Pro 2019 16″. I wanted a machine that I could happily listen to music and watch TV on (a great screen and sound) in addition to being portable. And I was kind of fed up with my long hunt for a new Windows Laptop:
The notion of getting a machine that “just works”, really excited me. In recent years, Windows has changed so much that it’s not like I can fix any problem without googling for it. And Windows is this cranky hodge-podge of legacy systems and new. When Windows got rid of uncombined taskbar icons last year, I was so pissed. I started using an open source tool that rolled back the interface to something more usable. But you know that at some point it’s going to stop working. I’m starting to appreciate Apple’s attitude of stopping support on old machines and jumping to new technology every so often.
I couldn’t conscience getting a new Macbook for $2500+ so I spent $950 all in on a used one on Backmarket.com. 1TB SSD, 16 Gig of RAM, a beautiful screen and sound, the slick Macbook Pro Touchbar…
Set up was quite pleasant, video sounds and looks fabulous (OMG, Youtube videos are defaulting to play in 4k! (sucking up 20mbps, but hey)), and migration has so far gone very well! I got my second monitor set up easily enough (needed DisplayLink and MonitorControl Lite from the App Store but it took 10 minutes. I’m writing this while listening to the best sounding music I’ve ever had on a computer. Yes, it “just works” and I like it.
Every 10 years or so I check the MissingMoney.com website to see if I have any lost money. If a company owes you money but can’t find you for whatever reason, it ends up there. Yes, it’s legit. :-)
This time I found several small piles of money and a few large ($500-$1000) ones related to family! I spend the afternoon filling out forms and should get some cash in a few months. Take a look for yourself!
If you were asked to send the full contents of an email (AKA the source or the original contents) to someone, this is how you’d do it in Gmail.
OMG, seriously?
Passwords must be between 16 and 26 characters and contain at least: one uppercase (‘A’-‘Z’), one lowercase (‘a’-‘z’), one digit (‘0’-‘9’), and one special character (e.g. $,\&.#!)