Recent content on UKmac.net - Apple news, tech views
Yesterday was fine and sunny but a little windy, today looks like being a little calmer. Again we have been lucky enought to bag a cottage with amazing views of the sea and as a result spectacular sunsets.
Our cottage is at the bottom of a seriously steep hill and yesterday I decided I was going to try to ride it (despite the gearing on my road bike not being particularly low). For a change I mounted my GoPro to the handlebars to record the event and set off… After a lung bursting and very slow climb (with two short stops to get air into lungs) I reached the gate to the gravel road at the top of the hill. When I stopped to open the gate my Wahoo decided to take that moment to remind me that I hadn’t yet pressed start ! Annoying…
Like everyone I am spending a lot of time in here these days so it makes sense to get it how I want it.
Living in England you learn to take advantage of the good weather when it presents itself. Today is Bank Holiday Monday and as usual it’s pouring with rain. Yesterday however was perfect for an early morning bike ride so I made hay and got out first thing for a quick 50k around the Weald Moors.
It was a very cold start but I soon warmed up and was enjoying the clear air, lack of cars on the roads and the beautiful Shropshire countryside. Not a bad start to the day.
So you make the decision to abandon Whatsapp and want to move to Signal, but how do you convince family and friends (who perhaps aren’t as concerned about Facebooks control of the Internet as you) to move with you ?
Anyone have any convincing arguments that they have made to encourage their friends ?
I’ve been debating dropping Whatsapp and this announcement is definitely pushing me to make the move !
UPDATE: So it takes an insurrection to finally kick Facebook and Twitter into action to do what they should have done months ( if not years ) ago !
Twitter suspends Donald Trump Jr. for posting COVID misinformation
Facebook, Instagram ban Trump through at least Inauguration Day
Mac menu bar utiities are great for quick access to apps that perform simple tasks and that don’t need to sit in the dock or occupy space on your desktop however they do tend to proliferate and before you know it the list of little icons at the top right of your menu bar can get out of control.
There are a couple of utilities that aim to help with this. Hidden Bar is a simple and free to download app that allows you to quickly hide menu bar icons that you don’t want on the screen all the time but still want access to. Bartender is a pay-for app (currently $15) that goes quite a bit further in features but for my money (ahem) the free Hidden Bar app hits the spot. Worth a look.
I have seen this guys Strava rides online before and am amazed at how he manages to “paint” pictures by cycling routes on Strava. Very cool.
This would look really nice alongside all my old Macs…
New MacBook Air ( M1 Edition ) arrived this afternoon and just wow…. I am so glad I was tempted by the Amazon Black Friday £100 off and 5 months interest free credit deal now. Before I saw the Amazon deal I had been toing and froing for a few weeks since the new M1 Macs were launched.
Now I am setting it up and synching photos etc and after an hour and a half on my lap its not even warm ! Amazing stuff.
Of course its hard to say anything that hasn’t already been said far more eloquently that I can. Universal acclaim has been laid on these new Macs from all corners of the Internet and it really does seem like a new standard has been set, it just remains to be seen if anyone is capable of meeting the challenge of creating machines that come anything close to what Apple have done with their new Macs.
Interesting times indeed.
Don’t you love remote support ? Today I have spent a couple of hours on and off trying to identify why a copier at one of our sites had suddenly stopped sending scans to email. The configuration on the copier was all ok and there had been no changes to our network so I was more than a little stumped until I finally got the user who had reported the issue to admit they were trying to scan a large pile of pages and that the one page scan they had tried had worked.
Lightbulb moment, checked the copiers maximum attachment size that was set to 2Mb, changed to 8Mb, asked user to retry and hey presto 3Mb attachment arrived in their inbox. Hurrah !
| Link | Description |
|---|---|
| https://oliverkieselbach.com/2020/11/03/new-edge-sync-policy-in-action/ | Intune - Manage Edge sync settings |
So last nights announcement by Boris of Thursdays national lockdown has probably scuppered our chance of re-scheduling the sponsored bike ride for next weekend. Instead I think Dean and I have agreed that we will both do a solo ride in our local area on Wednesday this week. I have planned a route on Komoot of around 112km which goes from home, out to Ellesmere Lakes (not Ellesmere Port) and back. The weather is currently expected to be ok but I will aim to do it regardless as I would be embarrased to re-arrange yet again.
This weekend I was supposed to be taking part in a 65 mile sponsored bike ride from Stourbridge to Lydney in Gloucestershire as part of the 65th anniversary celebrations for The Camphill Village Trust, the charity that I work for. Unfortunately the event was cancelled due to the arrival of Storm Aiden and the remnants of ex-Hurricane Zeta.
Hopefully we will make the trip next weekend instead.
This actually looks pretty nice. Expensive but nice….
One more Zwift route complete tonight, this time the New York route Knickerbocker
At just over 22km its not a hard ride but it does include the fairly painful New York KOM that tops out at 17% right in the middle of it, so there is that ! Fairly sure I have ridden this route multiple times before as well though seemingly not to the end as I hadn’t got the achievement in the trophy cabinet but now I do.
Yesterday was a big day on Zwift for me. Finally after about 18 months of rides I passed the 50,000m climbing needed to be awarded the Zwift Concept Z1 better known by Zwifters as the Tron Bike !
Prior to my ride yesterday I had around 800m of climb left to do so decided what better way to knock off those last metres than to do it on Alpe du Zwift. I was about 3/4 of the way up when the notification popped onto the screen to say I had been awarded the Tron bike. As you can see from the picture I took the opportunity when I got to the top to quickly change over to my new steed for the ride down again (with suitably large smile on my face!)
Happy cyclist :)
Now I have got a barebones Jekyll site running, DNS sorted and old Wordpress posts migrated its time to do a bit of personalisation. Like a lot of Jekyll blogs I have started with the Minimal Mistakes theme which is a nice starting point.
As a non-expert in the field of web development I know what I want to do and roughly how to achieve it but working out the detail of how to make the changes I need, especially where the theme is a remote Jekyl theme, is a challenge. This post includes a number of sites that I have found that have helped me to find the solutions to this.
UKMac.net is now live on Github Pages !
If you are lucky enough to be reading this post today (21st July 2020) then you may have received warnings that the page is not secure from your browser. This should clear itself within the next 24 hours as Github Pages sets up https on my custom domain.
My current Wordpress site hosting renewal was due in August so this seemed a sensible time to move the blog over and save myself some money.
Cheers
