I thought I would check out my old home page using the new version of Safari. I really still enjoy the clean look of the site. Maybe it's because I'm old and remember the old table and frames websites of the past.
Plus I don't need to make an money from it so there aren't any ads or banners.
I've fully committed to doing all my blogging on Micro.blog at this point. The only thing left is to make sure that I do something with my old blog that was using Pelican1.
I'm going to miss hacking on it, but I've decided that I'll focus on one technical project at a time.
So, if you're following me the best place to go is still mandarismoore.com but if you want to see the old site it's mandaris.github.io.
I almost got swept away with wanting to do some more to make the older blog work better with the newer release. ↩
I spent some time going down a rabbit hole this evening. I've been putting the time in so that I can learn how to program with SwiftUI when I came up with the idea of putting things on my site so that I could show the world my progress.
When I thought about that, I was reminded that I wanted to spruce up the css on the site so that it would look nice.
So, I took some time to load up the static version of my site so that I can see what changes would look like when I update it without regenerating the whole thing with a build of pelican.
I notice that I didn't have an example of several blocks of text (like what you see now).
Sooo...
I spent 5 minutes getting a copy of lorem ipsum because I always think "This is going to be the last time that I'm going to need that. I spent 5 more minutes adding emphasis, bold, links and code to it when I realized that I should have something a little more familiar.
That's when I looked up alternatives to "The quick brown fox".
I created a new paragraph using it and then placed that in both my test information and my static site.
Whew...
Ultimately, I spent more time just setting up this demo information for the site then posting about my iOS development.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to make that App that I've always been placing in the background.
This is the year that I finish what I started and make the move.
When I got on my computer this morning, I saw the dialog that I wouldn't be able to update the Safari Preview that I've been using as my default browser.
I'm not too surprised as WWDC is next week and my Mid-2010 iMac cannot run Mojave and certainly won't be able to run whatever else is coming down the pipe.
I had just hoped that I would have more time to enjoy the new features since I can't get it running on my laptop.
For me, this is a causes a wedge between me and Apple.
Other browsers, such as Firefox1, allow you to have access to newer builds regardless of what OS you are running.
I'm not a chrome hater but I just feel that we are in danger of having another browser monopoly situation. It's not "web-standards", if only one company is setting the rules. ↩
I want to get back into basic writing again and I feel that one of the great topics to write about is to write about my writing.
In the past, I've written about what things I've accomplished with the theme for my blog.
What I would like to focus on, finishing up the JSON plugin that I started working on a year ago and placing this theme in a grid.
There are still a couple of accessibility questions regarding how I'm supposed to get the index page to work with a screen reader that is boggling the mind. I'm hoping that by making the json feed work correctly long time readers1 will prefer it.
I don't think that I have any at this point. ↩
I've been working in a development environment called Pega for the last couple of weeks and I kind of like it. It's software that is specialized in handling case management. It's fast to get up and make changes with. It is focused on moving a case through a particular life cycle.
I think the biggest competitor is SaleForce at this point.
To be honest, I'm very cautiously optimistic.
On one hand, this is development work that I'm getting paid to do. I'm excited by it.
On the other hand, this is another proprietary system that I'll learn without knowing if I'll be able to take the techniques to other places.
I'm going to roll with it for now.
I decided to do this for a couple of reasons.
I've grown a little tired of DropBox taking a lot of resources to sync files that haven't changed. Sometimes, I'll see my computer seemingly ground to a halt for while as DropBox tries to re-index everything. I use it on my families computer and they are already not a fan of the other little utilities that take up resources.
I want to experiment with some other tools. DropBox is still the defacto tool for sync for a lot of people. I still have it installed on my devices1, but I see a lot of new applications that would allow me to be a lot more flexible. For example, if I place the files in a git repo, I can have more control of sharing and version history.
It's where I currently place my resumé and other related stuff to easily send to others. ↩
Last month, I saw a deal for the setup mac software subscription. I had originally signed up for it when the service started but didn’t continue with it because I was trying to save money and a lot of the applications that they were promoting were things that I had already purchased over the years. Since the deal was essentially %40 off, I thought give it a shot.
So far, I’m really enjoying that it allows me to experiment with different software. In fact, I’ve been writing on the mac power users discourse forums about it and I wanted to put those stories on my blog.
I really like the idea of SetApp, but I just feel like it came around too late. I am sure that there are gems in there that I don’t know about, but I really wish it was around before I bought Ulysses, CleanMyMac, ForkLift, etc on their own. I really want to subscribe, but feel like it is a waste due to all the apps I already own. Anyone else? By Bodiequirk ( link )
I kind of feel the same way when I tried it when it first came out. There were a couple of apps that I kind of wanted to try but I couldn’t justify the cost. At the time, I already owned most of the key software that they had because of different bundles and needs that had come before that.
But then the sale came and I was able to jump on for about $70. I figured this would give me a chance to try out Ulysses and others. The funny thing is that my wife was using our mac to scan something and the software was spitting out a huge pdf. Preview has an option to make a pdf smaller but the quality is unusable. I right clicked to open it up in pdfpen, when I saw that PDF Squeezer was there.
A couple clicks and boom, I was a hero.
One of the few times she’s complemented me on spending money on software. Link to post
I thought that the one time would be good enough to warrant subscribing for next year, but then another incident happened.
Ok, another story of how setapp has really saved my bacon and I’ve only had it for about a month.
I’ve given my wife the bad advice of just pulling her thumb drive out of the computer. Well, it just happens that this time it actually became corrupted.
She was furious.
She said -to paraphrase- “only this stuff happens on the mac!”
I know… some of you are thinking that’s grounds for a divorce.
I started to panic, I started questioning all my life choices.
I did a search using Bing! and found some links on how to fix a corrupted USB drive and most of them were to re-format. I didn’t want to take the chance that I’d lose her data, so I did a search for “drive” in the setapp library and saw “Disk Drill”.
It was able to find the files on the usb drive and I restored it to the desktop for my wife to look over.
Marriage saved once again. Link to post
With the release of Mohave, I no longer have a desktop computer that can run the latest version of the operating system. Part of me is sad because of the feeling of missing out and that I'm unable to afford a new computer.
Another part of me is relieved in the knowledge that I don't have to worry about my current software not being able to run, having to wait for 3rd to bring support the OS, or further fractioning of what I can and (increasingly) can not do.