Derek Peden

Queen Elizabeth Forest Park

Last night my parents showed my newspaper articles from 1922 written by great great grandfather. This has started me down the rabbit hole that researching the family tree. I’ve made it as far as William Lamb, born in 1677.

Another example of academics and politicians feathering their own nest over COVID

Being a reluctant user of Microsoft products, I’ve found that at least on macOS I can automate may way around the bugs using Keyboard Maestro. I’ve already automated a daily restart of OneDrive, and automated document saving. I’m now considering automating the running the ResetOneDriveAppStandalone.command on timed basis to keep the MacBooks fans below 2500rpm! After 40 years of writing software you’d think they’d have learned to right reliable code by now but instead they follow the ship it now and fix it later mentality. But when is later?

Storm Francis lashes UK. BBC News On the global scale this is a light breeze and hyperbole aside it’s not the “UK” but rather a corner of the England.

This week’s edition of Week in pictures from BBC News encapsulates all of 2020.

If micro.blog took YouTube’s approach to advertising their would

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be an advert slam in middle of the post. Mid sentence.

Brilliant piece by BBC News on the explosion Beirut.

For American’s interested in an outsiders perspective this BBC podcast has got this covered.

I’m one of those people who still doesn’t fully get the Apple Pencil. I know this is as I’ll frequently pick it up to find it’s battery complete discharged and they removes any utility in that moment. I appreciate the chemistry, that the battery will discharge and that there’s no off switch but this simply dilutes the experience and likelihood that I’ll rush to pick it up. It’s a vicious circle.

Lost another hour trying to make the Raspberry Pi 4 boot from USB. This is like owning a Windows PC in the 90’s. It’s far from the “stable” release it claims to be.

Alan Parker RIP. Given that my hard drives take movie director names it was only yesterday that I decided my devices should follow the same pattern and named my MacBook Parker. What a great body of work he left use with.

It seems that Microsoft’s version of copy and paste is pressing the delete key after a copy replaces the clipboard with deleted content. It’s mind blogging that this company is still in business.

End of the “The laminated book of dreams” reports BBC News. Before the internet this contained all my shopping wish lists.

Found the Stilord leather bag range. Nice bags but they haven’t grasped the concept of Youtube, posting 30s “videos” which are basically still images like this.

I seem to have a fallen into the trap laid by the world of mechanical pencils…. how did that happen?

Olivia de Havilland, Golden Age of Hollywood star, dies at 104, BBC News

Olivia de Havilland, one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood, has died at the age of 104.

Software fails when it presents the a dialogue to an alert that software failed to complete its task. Don’t create an alert, do the job.

The interview with John Lewis on BBC News is especially powerful.

First world problems: when you go downstairs and back but your watch didn’t recognise this as a “stand”

Combing through my parents digital “library” to try and make sense of it. Duplicate images and folders, across multiple devices, and in most cases the EXIF Date Taken is “1st January 1980”. It never occurred to them to set the actual date.

Simpsons ends use of white actors to voice people of colour, www.bbc.co.uk. Was only a matter of time. They’ve only got away with it until now by making fun of everyone, regardless of age group, gender and skin colour.

I think the large radii round rectangles look less professional than, for example, the small radii on the CPU graphics used by Apple. I’d rather see them adopt this design language in the future than the floating dock with fisher-price icons.

Yet again I find myself victim to online abusive language. A response only solicits further rancour, insults and accusations. The internet is a wonderful place but it’s users are very human.

We didn’t know it at the time, but 10.14 was and still is the last stable and usable release of the Mac OS, for the time being at least.

Catalina’s bombarding the user with notifications was reminiscent of Windows Vista-style, together with reliability and usability issues. This week’s “BS” announcement subjects the user to additional “chrome”, moves windows into floating pallets, and turns up the transparency dial all the way to 11, macOS 11.

For those unwilling to suffer the transition until Apple dials back down the interface Mojave is the stable, safe choice. I find this incredibly and increasingly disappointing. I need the “it just works” dependability, which is why I’m using Apple products to begin with. “It kind of works, now and again” doesn’t have the same tone or the same impact.