My trusty mid-2012 MacBook Pro running Catalina got an upgrade by replacing the integrated SuperDrive with an OWC Data Doubler and SSD, moving the SuperDrive to an OWC SuperSlim external enclosure. Everything went great except they don’t tell you make it clear that the DVD Player app will not play DVDs from an external SuperDrive.
Progressive Enhancement
I learned about progressive enhancement as a way to take a simple html site and add styles and scripting to enhance its appearance and functionality, as needed, without interfering with the basic purpose of the site. This keeps it simple, fast, and compatible. If bandwidth and browser supports a feature, it will display it, but these enhancements should never interfere with the basic purpose of the site.
[Read more…]Keychain Password Search
Recent security breaches at online companies large and small has been making the news and becoming disturbingly routine. Now we’re starting to get spam that shows a real password from these old security breaches. It would be handy to know all of the places where I’ve used this old password so I can update it. Since I use the macOS and iOS keychain to store these passwords across all of my devices I wanted to search all of my saved logins but Keychain Access doesn’t let us do that.
Smarty preg_match
This was not obvious to me nor apparently anyone else trying to use preg_match in Smarty so I thought I’d share the solution. Given $href=’home.php?cat=1′ and trying to get 1 out of it:
{if "/cat=(\d+)/"|preg_match:$href:$match} {$href = "My-Page-`$match.1`.html"} {/if}
iPhone Plus Experiment
When the iPhone 6 Plus introduced the massive new screen option four years ago, it came with compelling Plus-only landscape features that were heavily promoted. This seemed like a great new option that should only get better as its features would surely be enhanced over time. With the iPhone XS Max debut, the experiment is over.
Time Machine Speed-Up Tip
If you’re like me, Time Machine tends to run slowly most of the time, or maybe you are trying to do a large initial Time Machine backup and want to squeeze some more performance out of it. A simple tip: Quit the Finder.
Sync Bookmarks Across Browsers
Testing web pages in different browsers is part of my daily routine and I start with Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. It’s handy to have the same set of bookmarks always at-the-ready no matter which browser I am using at the moment. This used to be done simply with the Xmarks browser extension but after that service went away I could not find a simple replacement. With a little work you can use iCloud bookmark syncing to do this for you.
Spot the Malware Challenge
As somewhat related to last month’s Malware checklist, I thought this would be a good follow-up about spotting malware on an infected site. Maybe yours.
Malware 2018
Someone very close to me who is computer adept was tricked into downloading and running a sneaky Flash installer that actually installed malware. This exercise was a good time to review my checklist for finding and fixing this situation. I was pleasantly surprised to discover some new useful tools and updated my checklist for 2018.
Don’t think you are immune because you know more than others. If your computer is connected to the internet and you use a web browser it can happen to you, especially if you use Outlook (aka Lookout!).
FileVault Undo
When I upgraded to High Sierra, I thought it was time to try a semi-clean install since I had done many years of upgrades. After wiping the drive and restoring from a Time Machine backup, it was time to enable FileVault as I had done for years. It did not go so well this time.