Author: John Biggs

The Cutest Letter To The Editor I’ve Ever Received

This came from a nice lady who needs to find better friends. She read this article and then sent me this note:

Hello,

I just read your article “Storing computer data in the ‘cloud’. Here’s a naive question: When you say that it’s a celestial hard drive, a storage medium that exists solely in the electronic ether, do you mean that the information is just stored in the air and not in anything that one could touch or feel?

Thanks.

Lynne

I wrote:

oh wow. No, not at all. It’s stored on hard drives. Although I’d love to see whatever you’re thinking about.

JB

She wrote back:

Hi John,
Thanks for your prompt response. A friend who is much more tech savvy than I am said that our data was just electrical waves and was stored in the atmosphere and was somewhat like radio waves, etc. I was skeptical but when I read your article and you mentioned “electronic ether” I wondered if she was right. That’s how some of those in their 70’s interpret articles when they are much beyond our scope. Thanks for the clarification. I’ll tell her that the info is not stored in the vapor of the clouds in the sky.
Lynne
(A senior citizen. Some places consider anyone over 55 a senior but I’m 21 years past that!)

The Logitech K800 And OS X


The Logitech K800 illuminated keyboard is pretty cool but it has a weird Alt/Windows key behavior that is impervious to changes in the standard Keyboard preferences pane. I downloaded DoubleCommand to simply swap the keys more permanently and it’s been working fine.

Being that I’m a clever girl and decided I liked the “feel” of the Windows key better than the flat feel of the Alt key, I swapped those physically on the keyboard.

ARGH Civ V for Mac Freezes For No Good Reason

So Civ V for Mac just dropped last week and I bought it thinking that hey, why don’t I play a little Civ V now and again on my Mac? Sadly, the version made available to the general public apparently does not work a lick and freezes during cinematics. It’s apparently a problem with 10.6.5 and one of the ways to kind of fix it is to hold down command when you start the game to run it in windowed mode. There are also some goofy suggestions to run the PC version under Parallels. But I paid for the Mac version, people. GOSH!

A Weird Old Trick To See What’s In OS X Folders


Afore


After

This preference allows you to “peek” inside folders when you press space over a folder in Finder during Quick Look. It’s actually quite useful when you try it.
Turn it on:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1

Turn it off:
defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 0

How To Kill Sync Services Agent in Office 2011

If you’re having trouble installing the Office 2011 official install over the beta it could be because you can’t kill Sync Services Agent. It restarts itself constantly. This should kill it permanently and allow you to overwrite it.


$ cd /Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Office/SyncServicesAgent.app/Contents/MacOS
$ mv SyncServicesAgent SyncServicesAgent.hold
$ killall SyncServicesAgent

A Memorial Song For My Neighbor’s Niece

Heartache.jpegMy neighbor’s niece, Brittany Vega, was run down in a Long Island crosswalk last week. Her friends got together to write and sing her a song called Heartache and they’re selling it on iTunes and Amazon to help the family out with expenses during this trying time. You can pick it up on iTunes or Amazon and it’s quite beautiful.