Apple

Non-Destructively Convert an Existing Drive to CoreStorage

October 3, 2012 by Stephen 2 Comments

The first step to storage bliss is conversion: Mac OS X can non-destructively convert an existing drive to CoreStorage! From there you’re free to resize it, create new volumes, and pretty much anything else you’re interested in doing to your drives!

Fun Mac OS X Storage Tricks with CoreStorage

October 3, 2012 by Stephen Leave a Comment

Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” added a volume manager called CoreStorage, a development I was gleeful to report last year. But what can you do with CoreStorage? Here are some examples.

Mac App Store Error: “You have updates available for other accounts”

October 2, 2012 by Stephen 1 Comment

This has got to be one of the most misleading error messages in Mac OS X: Open software update, try to update an app, and get the message,”you have updates available for other accounts”. This message does not mean what it says, but I found a way to fix it when it appeared on my iMac!

Connect Your AppleTV to Any VGA Projector or Monitor with the Kanex ATV Pro

September 7, 2012 by Stephen 2 Comments

I love my Apple TV, but hate that it’s HDMI-only. That’s why I’m so enthusiastic about the Kanex ATV PRO, a self-contained HDMI-to-VGA converter that does it all, connecting any modern HDMI video source to VGA!

How I’m Auto-Posting To Google+ with LinkedIn, IFTTT, Apple Mail, Google Voice, and SMS

August 2, 2012 by Stephen 5 Comments

Google went through extraordinary efforts to keep users from posting to Google+ from outside their approved app ecosystem. I’ve cracked that nut (for now, at least) using a very roundabout method. Here’s how I did it.

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GPS Time Rollover Failures Keep Happening (But They’re Almost Done)

This is week “1111111111” in the GPS system. Tomorrow morning it will roll over to week “0000000000”. How well will various systems handle this change? Not well, judging by what we’ve seen so far!

Ranting and Raving About the 2018 iPad Pro

I remain enthusiastic about the iPad Pro, despite getting a scratched screen and my concerns about durability. It’s a worthy successor to the original and offers enough improvements that I’d recommend the upgrade for just about anyone who uses their iPad for serious work. It’s still not yet a laptop replacement, but this is due more to a lack of desktop-class software for iOS than anything in Apple’s control.

Review: Blue Snowball USB Microphone

March 31, 2010

I’ve really jumped into recording podcasts, and am also an avid audio and video conference user. Wanting better sound, I upgraded my Logitech microphone to the highly-regarded Blue Microphones Snowball desktop USB microphone. Here are my initial thoughts.

My Core i7 Macintosh SE

May 25, 2017

I recently built the biggest, clunkiest iPad mini case ever, transforming my old Macintosh SE case into an iPad stand. But what to do with that empty case? Why, it’s the perfect size for a custom Mini-ITX PC! Introducing my liquid-cooled Core i7 monster Mac SE!

A High-Tech Water Heater? Yep! Introducing the A. O. Smith Vertex

November 15, 2012

I justify spending six times more on the Vertex 100 for a simple reason: It’ll keep up with the heavy water use in my house. I’m hoping I’ll never have to worry about hot water as long as I live here. The fact that it saves over $100 per year due to energy-efficient design is just icing on the cake.

It’s Time To Move Beyond Passwords (Especially On Web Sites)

January 8, 2016

Sure, single sign-on puts all your eggs in one basket. But this is vastly preferable to trusting that hundreds of third-party baskets are secure, especially when they prove on a weekly basis that they aren’t! It’s time to put distributed passwords behind us and switch to systems like SAML, both for businesses and consumers.

Review: American Standard’s Champion 4 Toilet Flushes Almost Anything

July 31, 2012

Although most crappers are crap, plumbing companies like American Standard are hard at work innovating to eliminate the excrement. The current champion is fittingly called the Champion 4, and I have purchased, installed, and tested two examples of the type. The Champion is engineered to reduce the most common causes of clogs, and it has proved effective and “hands-off” in my real-world testing.

From LAN Manager and SMB to CIFS: The Evolution of Prehistoric PC Network Protocols

March 22, 2012

Computers aren’t much good on their own. This simple fact was evident even at the dawn of the microcomputing age, and has never been more true today in the “post-PC” world. If the standard microcomputer is the “Wintel” box (Microsoft’s Windows, Intel’s CPUs, and all that implies) then the standard network services protocol is SMB. So let’s take a nice deep dive into SMB, past, present, and future!

Free as in Coffee – Thoughts on the State of OpenStack

May 2, 2016

Last week I headed to Austin, Texas to attend the semi-annual OpenStack Summit there. Along with the usual socializing, I was looking to understand the current state of the technology: What does OpenStack really mean these days, and where is it going? Let’s start with “free”. As “the Internet” is quick to point out, this critical word has multiple […]

How Will Cisco Recover From The Consumer Strategy Blunder?

January 2, 2013

Cisco made a massive strategic blunder in the last decade, aggressively moving into consumer devices rather than focusing on their core enterprise and service provider markets. It seems that Cisco is now in the process of rectifying this mistake, but charting a path to growth is an entirely different matter!