April 2021 – Page 3 – Macinations

April 10, 2021

Diablo II is still shockingly good after all these decades

It’s hard to image that Diablo II, is 20 years old. While setting up CrossOver and VMWare Fusion, I decided the ultimate game to go back and play was Diablo II. That would be the perfect nostalgia game, and there is so much information on getting it running. Turns out I didn’t need CrossOver at all. Instead of using the install discs, there is a Mac downloader on the Battle.net site. All I needed to do was convert my old 16 digit CD key to the new format. That can be done on the Battle.net site itself. From there, it just took time to download the entire game, including Lord of Destruction. And it was absolutely worth it. Even though the screen resolution is only 800×600, the game still looks and sounds great. Within a few minutes, the intro was playing, and I was immediately drawn back into the story. Going to the Rogue Encampment and hearing those first few […]

April 9, 2021

Playing games on a Mac?

Unlike a few years ago, there’s not much need to run Windows on a Mac. With tools like Remote Desktop and compatible IDEs for Microsoft SQL, there’s much more compatibility. The main reason comes down to playing games that don’t have a Mac equivalent. For example, Dorfromantik. What if you want to play Dorfromantik, Banished, Carcassonne, or something similar? Actually, it’s not that hard using either a Virtual Machine or Wine. Keep in mind, a virtual machine requires a copy of Windows. You also need a fair bit of ram to pull this off. I’ve got the older Mac Pro on Mojave, so I’ve got plenty of ram and processors, but no more OS updates. It’s not the end of the road for this machine, but it’s on the horizon. If I can do my main work and play some casual games that’s a win. I have a Windows machine for games, but if I want to play something for […]

April 9, 2021

Well, that two weeks’ notice was awkward

I didn’t want or expect much when I gave my notice. However, getting the cold shoulder and silent treatment from my manager, the leads, and even HR, was a little surprising. I figured there would be some sort of communication about what needed to be done before everything got shut off. After 6 years, I thought there would be a bit more to leaving than this. Apparently not. Confirms the idea this isn’t the company for me.

April 8, 2021

Generating random passwords with Keyboard Maestro

Even though there are a dozen tools and a dozen ways to generate a password, it’s possible to do that very thing using Keyboard Maestro. Why use Keyboard Maestro? Don’t be silly. The answer is obviously, well, why not? This is a simple macro that uses a dialog to get the length of the password, uses a List (Array) to set up the password, the RAND function to pick a letter, and indexing the List to find characters. It may not be practical, but it’s educational. I use this for generating test passwords. I test account generation on a regular basis and this makes sure we can handle special character and passwords of a certain length. It automates the process so I don’t have to switch apps, copy, then paste. As you can see from the example, the first step is to prompt for the length of the password. This is stored and used in the Repeat function later on. […]

April 6, 2021

My follow up to using WordCounter

Time to check in on WordCounter. As I look at the stats for the last 15 days, I’ve written 28,590 words, with most of those in Scrivener. A fair bit comes from Slack with 5,000+. TaskPaper has around 2,000 and Hemingway Editor gets some play with 1,500. That is a good amount of writing for 15 days. 30k words is well on the way to a decent novel. I believe 50k is the goal for NaNoWriMo. Some interesting data, but where to go from here? I like the idea of tracking my writing across multiple apps. It shows me where I am working, and which apps gets more use than others. That is beneficial when it comes to upgrades or new purchases. There are plenty of tools to “count” words, but they require some sort of copy/paste, which is pointless. WordCounter tracks words across apps as you type. And you can add the apps you use. From that standpoint it […]

Diablo II is still shockingly good after all these decades

Playing games on a Mac?

Well, that two weeks’ notice was awkward

Generating random passwords with Keyboard Maestro

My follow up to using WordCounter

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