Just Computers

_Howard wrote:

Without intending any demeaning of your opinion, that article says very close to zero about the device. Nothing whatsoever about performance or capabilities, just some crap about cosmetics. Amazing.

Quote :

Pixelbook Go specs

Processor: 8th Gen Intel Core m3, i5, or i7
RAM: 8GB / 16GB of RAM
Storage: 64GB / 128GB / 256GB SSD
Weight: 2.3 pounds (FHD)
Thickness: 0.5 inches / 13.4 mm
Battery: Claimed 12 hours, with fast charge
Display: 13.3-inch, 16:9 touchscreen; HD (1920 x 1080) or 4K (3840 x 2160)
Camera: Front-facing 2MP, 60 fps, 1080p video
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2x2 (MIMO), dual-band (2.4 GHz, 5.0 GHz)
Bluetooth: 4.2

Sorry, I thought you might take the next step and actually look up the specs yourself. I was just pointing out the availability of a new lappytop.

This would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

HPE warns of impending SSD disk doom

Since I've done so much complaining about crappy software, I thought I'd give a shout out to some wonderful freeware I just found: Fre:ac.

Back story:
I'm making some USB sticks with music on them for my sister for Xmas; that requires creating a lot of MP3 files from other formats. I had a program I liked called AudioConverter, but for reasons unknown it has stopped working. Loads files but never converts them.

Tried another recommendation called Switch Converter, but after the first 100 files it stopped being free and started pinging me to buy it. I could still convert files one-at-at-time, but batch file conversions required the "premium" version. Delete.

So I went looking and found high praise for Fre:ac. It converts batches, it's fast, it does a better job of file structures than anything else I've used, and it preserves the data fields. QUITE impressive. And it's the work of one guy, Robert Kausch. Bravo Robert!

Oh joy.

Windows has a zero-day that won’t be patched for weeks

Quote :

Cybercriminals are exploiting two unpatched zero-day flaws affecting all supported versions of Windows, Microsoft has warned.

Dunno if I've mentioned this before, but some time ago (November/December/January timeframe not sure which) Apple upgraded their OS and in the process broke the ability in their Music App to burn gapless CDs.  Even if you chose "none" for the gap between songs, the software added a 1-second gap.

Not a problem for most CDs, which have discrete songs.

Annoying-as-hell for albums with songs that are supposed to run together, or live albums with applause between songs.

I looked all over the interwebs for a workaround and nobody had one.  I wrote to Apple to complain & never got a reply (unsurprisingly).  I resigned myself to burning my CDs with gaps, and maybe someday reburning them when Apple finally woke up and fixed this rather minor programming error.

Aside: I used to use a CD software on my old Windows box that allowed NEGATIVE gaps, i.e. you could overlap the tails and heads.  That was cool.  I miss it -- and have never seen it again.

Anywho, this morning I got a ping on my big iMac that a new version of Catalina was available (10.15.4) so I downloaded and installed it.  Lo-and-behold, they fixed the gapless problem!  As far as I can remember, the problem arose with 10.15.1 (11/19) or maybe 10.15.2 (12/19) or maybe even 10.15.3 (1/20).  Looking back in my Music software, I can kinda gauge what I burned when, so I made a list of all the CDs I've made so far this year.  It came to almost a hundred(!)

Now I need to review their contents of each one and determine which ones were supposed to be gapless.

Sheltering in place has its advantages, I suppose.

NoCoPilot wrote:

As far as I can remember, the problem arose with 10.15.1 (11/19) or maybe 10.15.2 (12/19) or maybe even 10.15.3 (1/20).  Looking back in my Music software, I can kinda gauge what I burned when, so I made a list of all the CDs I've made so far this year.  It came to almost a hundred(!)

Now I need to review their contents of each one and determine which ones were supposed to be gapless.

Finally today I made it through the list of a hundred CDs burned since 11/19. Found about twenty that had to be reburned, mostly live albums with applause between the tracks.

I decided I won't search back any further. If I run across any more, I'll redo them at that time.

Okay, this is strange.  Apple's current OS is called "Catalina" and the background is a very hi-def photo of the uninhabited northwestern tip of Catalina Island.

I liked that photo so much that I kept it, instead of my usual background of my old property on Camano Island.  Used it for, I dunno, a year.

Then I put another picture in, for a change of pace.  Used that for a couple weeks,  Then an upgrade to Catalina came out, and once that was loaded the background photo was back to Catalina.

Or was it?  It seemed sunnier than I remembered.  Brighter.  The horizon was clearer and more defined.

I'd just about convinced myself it was all my imagination until I rebooted this morning, something I try to do periodically.  And you know what?  Now Catalina is in twilight!  Are they tailoring the background photo to what time of day you launch, I'm guessing?  A changeable background.  I wonder if it lightens as the day goes on?



The top one is the original backdrop.

The one I've been looking at for the past couple weeks looks more like this (the clouds aren't right, but the land is about right). This one is just the top photo lightened up a bit. The one I saw had no clouds, and stormy waters.

Huh, color me impressed.

My Apple Magic Mouse (Bluetooth wireless mouse + trackpad) has been with me since 3/24/2015.  It was battery operated, and went through a pair of AAs every couple of weeks.  That was expensive, but I didn't want a wired mouse.

Over the past month it's gotten more and more fruity.  Wouldn't stay connected, even with new batteries.  Replaced the batteries 3x with brand new yesterday.  This morning, even with a fresh set, it was disconnected more than it was connected.

I said "fuck it" and ordered a new one from Amazon.  That was at 7:17 am this morning.

At 10:44 it was delivered.  That's less than 3½ hours from ordering it!  Certain advantages to being 5 miles from a distribution center.

The new mouse is rechargeable -- meaning no battery replacements.  I didn't even know that was an option!  Whoopee!

NoCoPilot wrote:

The new mouse is rechargeable -- no batteries.Whoopee!

Hope you enjoy your new mouse. Now, please pardon my pedantry: "no batteries" is incorrect. Rechargeable battery[ies] is correct. Is that an improvement? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes meh.

Apple sends out 11 security alerts – get your fixes now!

Quote :

We counted 63 distinct CVE-tagged vulnerabilities in the 11 advisory emails.

We shan’t go over every one of them here, but we’ll note that 11 of these vulnerabilities affected software right across Apple’s mobile, Mac and Windows products.

This is a reminder that vulnerabilities in cross-platform programming libraries may require vendors to put out updates for all the platforms on which that library is used.

My brand new mouse hasn't lost connectivity, but it HAS displayed an annoying behavior of the old mouse, and that is not responding to a particular axis of movement. It'll pick up going side to side, but not up and down, or vice versa. As an optical mouse, it acts exactly like a ball mouse with dog hair on the ball. (Believe me, I know that behavior.)

There does not appear to be anything blocking the electric eye/LED.

Since this behavior is common to the old mouse, but the mouse is new, I decided it had to be the only other element common to both situations, and that is the desktop.

Generally, optical mice are very good at sensing movement even on surfaces with very little texture to reference. This was therefore not my first theory.

However, my mouse area on the desk has become somewhat dark and pitted from years of intense mousing, so what the hell maybe?

I pulled my old mousepad off the shelf, one that always tickled my sense of the absurd. It's a Ouija board.

Mouse likes it better.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Are they tailoring the background photo to the time of day?  A changeable background.  I wonder if it lightens as the day goes on?

The drop-down menu on Catalina dynamic says "light" or "dark" so I suppose there are only two pictures that alternate?  I wonder how often and when?

The ability to change your desktop picture every 5 minutes (or one, of half, or 30,or hour) is new. I'm playing with this now. Similar to the screensaver but easier to control.

It's more than two.

I changed it last night back to "dynamic" before I went to bed.  At that time Catalina was in twilight, with stars out.

This morning when I got at up at 4:30 (and it was still dark out) Catalina was in sunrise, with bright sun illuminating the east side of the island.  A couple hours later it changed to the sun directly overhead, with shadows on what was previously illuminated.

I'll let you know how many more variations there are.  I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat waiting.

WTF, over? I just tried to download Audible for the iPad, because I've heard that Trevor Noah's "Born a Crime" is better in the audible version as his narration takes the book to a whole new level.

Audible in the App Store says it requires iOS version 13.0 or later.

So I updated my iOS. After several minutes it came back, saying I now had the latest version.

Which is 12.4.7.

Audible still won't load. WTF?

Okay, fuck it.  Looks like Audible is $14.95/mo after a free trial, which is about $13.95 more than I'm willing to pay.  PLUS you have to buy the books!

Fuck that shit.

Today Catalina is in mist, with quite a few clouds in the sky.  Yesterday was bright sunlight.

Catalina's in twilight, with the sun setting in the west.  There are at least five different photos:

1. Twilight, sun low in west
   
2. Night time, stars out
   
3. Sun rise, sun low in east
   
4. High noon, sun overhead
   
5. Misty/rainy
   

I have a friend in Portland who's self-publishing his fifth book.  He was having difficulty getting Word to populate the page numbers.  I laid up his first book eighteen years ago, so he asked me to help again.

He has a 2007 Windows box with Word.  I have a 2012 Mac with Pages, a free Word analog that reads and writes Word files.

The Word file he sent opened just fine, but the page formatting was all fucked up.  He'd used a combination of tabs, spaces and page breaks to get all the text and pictures properly aligned.

Something in my computer setup was different -- page size, borders, headers, footers, hard to say.  But what he saw, on his screen, wasn't at all what I saw on mine.

I corrected all the errors and sent him a PDF, which does not change from computer to computer.  At his request I also sent him the background Word file.  When he opened it, the formatting was all fucked up on his computer, and he freaked out.

I talked him down off the ledge, and got him to agree to share PDFs only.  One of us -- it doesn't matter which one -- has to adjust the layout so it looks right and share a PDF with the other.  Once we agree on the PDF, the Word file can be finalized.

But it was a revelation to him that a Word file on a 13-year old Windows box can look completely different on an 8-year old Mac.

I just had to recharge my mouse last night.  First time since May 26.

It's time for a new computer. I have decided on a laptop. There is no longer a reason for me to have terabytes of drives and associated high-power components. Sadly, that age (and others) has passed.

But I know very damn little about the devices, except that they are stupid expensive and can be a nightmare to work on.

So help me out friends. Share your experience with laptops and vendors. Please.

1. What are your criteria?
   
   
2. See the post at the top of this page (22)
   
   
3. If I was buying a laptop it'd be an Apple MacBook Air 13.3" $1000.  But I'm not.  I haven't owned a laptop since my old white MacBook was stolen in 2014.
   
   
4. And you don't care what I think.
   

Ask somebody else.
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/best-laptops-under-1000
https://www.windowscentral.com/best-laptop-removable-battery