April 29, 2021

Maybe it’s best not to meet or read about your idols

Idol is a strong word, and I’ve never actually met them, but you get my point. However, over the past few months I’ve read biographies from Richard Garriott, Ken Williams, Steve Wozniak and a few others. While there is no denying their contributions to the computer industry, they share a common trait. They come across as arrogant jerks. We owe much to the Apple I and II, but reading iWoz was hundreds of pages of Woz patting himself on the back and expecting praise for every single thing he did. Every other page is reaffirmation that he’s an engineering genius. If he did something good, he wanted everyone to stop what they’re doing and recognize the effort. Every page reiterates how shy he is and how, “he could never do that.” Garriott spent the entirety of his book lavishing himself with praise and showboating about his accomplishments. Every chapter should have been titled, “Look what I can do.” No disputing […]

April 26, 2021

Learning Windows All Over Again

Well, this is a strange place I find myself. Six years ago I ventured into unknown territory with OS X. After using Windows for decades, I found the landscape foreign, although a little bit familiar. Getting past several rookie mistakes, I got the hang of things and found myself quite smitten with macOS. As I’ve said, I really enjoy macOS and the way it works. Now the other shoe has dropped. With the change in job, there needs to be a slight change in OS. It’s back to using Windows during the work day. I find myself completely confused by Windows 10. History repeats itself. I’m still going to use Mac at home. And quite frankly, I plan to use Windows in a VM on my Mac if I can get away with it. It will save space and monitors. But seriously, Windows 10 has me absolutely confused. The only thing that’s slightly familiar is the Start button. How times […]

April 23, 2021

A few quick thoughts on the Apple Spring Loaded event

I thought the Apple Spring Loaded event delivered quite a bit of excitement. The new M1 iMacs are very nice entry level machines. Some like the new design. Others don’t. I’m a fan of the new look and colors. I hope those color options actually carry over to the 27 and possible 30 inch models. A yellow or red iMac would be awesome. The cabling, matching keyboard and mouse, and external power brick make for a nice package. It’s a well rounded machine that will handle all the same tasks we’ve seen benchmarked with the MacBooks. It might go even more due to the cooling. The fact it’s actually thinner than an audio connector jack is quite amazing. It will be interesting to see if the chin sticks around for the larger models. I wouldn’t be surprised if that disappeared. With the iPad Pro getting the M1 chip, the bridge to the MacBook Air has been crossed. The latest M1 […]

April 22, 2021

Open Source Software I support

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m a big fan and supporter of Open Source software. I like the idea of many hands working to complete a project. That leads to lots of useful features rather than marketing bloat. We also get frequent releases, and lots of code reviews to keep things working smoothly. Since Spring is here, it’s a good time to show projects some support. Other financial commitments have tapered off and if you get a tax refund, you have a few extra coins to spread around. If everyone put $1 in the hat, it would be overflowing. While it’s not an open source project, I’m a huge fan of Wikipedia. I use it daily. I know lots of other people pick a subject and just follow the links to see where it leads. It’s always fun to look up companies to see who actually owns them or what has become of them. LibreOffice is another project I really like. […]

April 19, 2021

Position and Resize Windows with Keyboard Maestro

There are dedicated tools like Magnet and Display Maid to position and resize windows. However, if you have Keyboard Maestro you can emulate that functionality. It takes a small amount of effort and two simple macros. The first step is to arrange windows in the desired location and at the correct size. That done, it’s time to create a simple macro to record the window locations so they can be used in another macro. Keyboard Maestro has built-in commands to display the window name, position, and size. We’ll use these to capture the coordinates of the window. Top: %Calculate%WinFrame.Top%Left: %Calculate%WinFrame.Left%Width: %Calculate%WinFrame.Width%Height: %Calculate%WinFrame.Height% This macro will trigger when the window focus changes. As you click different windows, the name and position are displayed in a Keyboard Maestro result window. This is a macro you will want to turn off once this bit of testing is complete. With all the window positions recorded, the next step is to use the Move a […]

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