textutil -convert html *.webarchive && for i in *.html ; do cupsfilter "$i" > "$i".pdf ; done-- Keep code for Safari separate from the code for System Events.
tell application "Safari"
activate
-- Tell Safari, as the known frontmost application, to display the 'choose folder' dialog.
set SaveFolderPath to POSIX path of (choose folder with prompt "Select Folder to Save PDF Files")
tell window 1
set current tab to tab 1
set ctabs to (count tabs)
end tell
end tell
repeat with i from 1 to ctabs
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Safari"
click menu item "Show Reader" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
click menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
repeat until exists sheet 1 of window 1
delay 1
end repeat
-- The sheet opens alread primed with a file name based on the tab name.
if (i is 1) then
-- Make sure the file gets saved to the folder chosen above.
-- This is only necessary first time round the repeat, as the folder becomes the default next time.
keystroke "g" using {command down, shift down}
repeat until exists sheet 1 of sheet 1 of window 1
delay 1
end repeat
log "passed delay"
tell sheet 1 of sheet 1 of window 1
set value of combo box 1 to SaveFolderPath -- NB. the folder path here, not the file name.
click button "Go"
end tell
end if
click button "Save" of sheet 1 of window 1
click menu item "Close tab" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
end tell
tell application "Safari" to display dialog "Close after 1 second..." giving up after 1
end tell
end repeat/mac | Oct 11, 2020
Before iOS 9, iOS apps could be backed up to Macs and PCs via iTunes1:
"If you try to transfer purchases from an iOS 9 device in iTunes, you may notice that apps won’t transfer to your hard drive. Similarly, when backing up an iOS 9 device in iTunes, the 'Backup Apps' dialog will simply not appear. App data will be backed up, of course, just not the application themselves."
Adding insult to injury, iTunes 12.7 removed the App Store, closing the door on downloading/backing up iOS apps from there:
"If you own a Mac or even a Windows PC, you will no longer be able to download iOS apps to your desktop to sync to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch."
You may want to back up an app before it disappears from the App Store or preserve an older, better version, e.g.,
MiniKeePass - final version only added an EOL nag on every launch
Insight Timer - mutated from a simple meditation timer to a social media saturnalia
Milebug - perennial mileage-tracking favorite pulled by developer, despite it continuing to work as originally designed (i.e., completely offline) even in later iOS versions (tested in iOS 13 & 14)
iOS apps can still be downloaded via iTunes 12.6.3 (does not run on Mojave or higher), Apple Configurator 2 (with some caveats), or iMazing:
To back up all apps on your iOS device to apps/ in the current directory of your Mac, jailbreak your device, install usbmuxd, start iproxy, then:
$ scp -P 4444 -r root@localhost:/var/containers/Bundle/Application apps/$ mkdir Payload
$ cp -R appname.app Payload/
$ zip -r appname.ipa Payload/iTunes 12: click iOS device icon → drag appname.ipa under "On My Device" section
Apple Configurator 2: double click iOS device icon → drag appname.ipa onto "Apps"2
Xcode 11: Windows → "Devices & Simulators" → click iOS device icon → drag appname.ipa into box under "INSTALLED APPS"
iMazing 2: click iOS device icon → Apps → Copy to Device → browse to recovered appname.ipa → "Select"
Apple Configurator 2 also allows installing an iOS .app via Actions → Add → Apps... → Choose from my Mac...
/mac | Sep 28, 2020
The auspiciously-titled Safari hogging up storage on your iPhone? Here's the fix! exhorts users to tap Settings → Safari → Advanced → Website Data → Remove All Website Data (mgmiller68 wonders in the comments how this differs from Settings → Safari → Clear History and Website Data); alas, neither method proved efficacious.
Others advise waiting days for the issue to clear; sadly, not even weeks availed.
Still others recommend a draconian backup, wipe, and restore approach.
Macworld's Documents & Data: A mysterious black hole of data storage in iOS concludes unpropitiously:
"At a minimum, I’d like to know what’s taking up all that space. Those 7GB of Documents & Data probably include something that’s gotten stuck, that can’t be deleted, such as an old iOS update perhaps. But it would be helpful if every app had to offer a feature to delete its caches, or if there were a global Clear Caches feature in iOS."
Found the offending files by jailbreaking and SSHing into the device then:
#cd /var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/#find . -name Safari./{GUID}/Library/Safari #cd {GUID}#du -h... 4.0G ./tmp/Download-tCA2Caas ... 3.7G ./tmp/Download-UT0Nlzkj ... 7.8G ./tmp 8.0G .
Emptying the tmp directory did the trick:
| Before | After |
|---|---|
|
|
|
|
H/T jareehD for the filepath hint.
/misc | Sep 26, 2020
Delete the divers subdirs which appear between "/blog/" and the filenames in this example:
$ cat index.rss
...
<link>https://tinyapps.org/blog</link>
...
<link>https://tinyapps.org/blog/misc/202009080700_usbimager.html</link>
...
<link>https://tinyapps.org/blog/mac/202009070700_2011_mac_mini_snow_leopard.html</link>
...
<link>https://tinyapps.org/blog/windows/202008200700_vostro_2420_lines.html</link>
...
with GNU sed:
$ sed -i -E 's (tinyapps.org/blog)/[a-z]+ \1 ' index.rss
-i = edit file in place-E = use Extended regular expressions in the scripts = substitute the replacement string for the first instance of the regular expression in the pattern space. (Where are the forward slashes ("/") you ask? Replaced with whitespace! since sed accepts any single-byte character as a delimiter.)(tinyapps.org/blog) = capture group (or, as the GNU sed documentation has it, subexpression)/[a-z]+ = a forward slash followed by one or more lower case letters\1 = back-reference referring to the subexpression aboveor Perl:
$ perl -pi -e 's|(tinyapps.org/blog)/[a-z]+|\1|' index.rss
-p = print lines (more precise explanation)-i = edit in-place-e = enter one line of program/nix | Sep 13, 2020
Keyboard Cleaner 1.2 [137k] Disables keyboard input (well, most: Command+Shift+3 worked and Command+Tab switched focus to the next app (though the black screen obscured that fact)) until Command+Q is pressed. 📺
UPDATE: Michael Leddy kindly wrote in to suggest KeyboardCleanTool, which does a more thorough job of blocking keyboard input (including the Function keys, which Keyboard Cleaner does not). He has written more about the tool here.
/mac | Sep 13, 2020
H/T HN
/misc | Sep 08, 2020
(See also Downgrading from Lion to Snow Leopard on the latest Mac hardware)
Install Snow Leopard via a 10.6.7 universal installer disc (a MacBook Pro or iMac 10.6.7 "Mac OS X Install DVD" can be made universal via Joel Bruner's bash script 💾).
Install all updates*
From a Lion install, copy
/System/Library/Extensions/: AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext
and
/System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/Contents/Plugins/ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext/Contents/Resources/: Macmini5_1.plist Macmini5_2.plist Macmini5_3.plist
into the same locations on the Mac Mini.
Run this script as root and reboot:
cd /System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext/Contents/Resources
chown root:wheel Macmini5*
chmod 644 Macmini5*
cd /System/Library/Extensions
chown -R root:wheel AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext
chown -R root:wheel AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext
chmod -R 755 AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext
chmod -R 755 AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext
kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
kextcache -system-caches
exit
echo 'Finished'* Deuced civil of Apple to keep the old servers humming along:
/mac | Sep 07, 2020
who, as Arnold relates, "with equanimity surveys
Lustre of goodness, strife of passion, sloth
Of ignorance, not angry if they are,
Not wishful when they are not ... who sits
A sojourner and stranger in their midst
Unruffled, standing off, saying—serene—
When troubles break, 'These be the Qualities!'"
| Title | Character | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Salvor Hardin | Asimov |
| A Gentleman in Moscow | Alexander Rostov | Towles |
| Knight Without Armour | Ainsely Fothergill | Hilton |
| Leave it to Psmith | Ronald Psmith | Wodehouse |
| A Man in Full | Conrad Hensley | Wolfe |
See also Descriptive book titles that obviate the need to read the book.
/misc | Aug 26, 2020
Four years ago, RockNir posted Weird Lines and color changes suddenly appear on screen. What's happening? to the Dell laptops general forum. It read in part, "[My] Dell Vostro 2420 has been behaving weirdly at times ... pink and grey lines suddenly appear and cover the entire area of the screen, generally when I am not plugged in ... This problem started after I upgraded to Windows 10..." and included this image:
Sadly, the forum has since gone read only, so I am posting the solution here in hopes that RockNir (and anyone else facing this issue) finds it:
Verified both the problem and the solution on a Dell Vostro 2420 running Windows 10.
See also:
/windows | Aug 20, 2020
Some options for cloning a Bitlocker-enabled system drive:
Decrypt, clone, encrypt
Use dd or similar to clone sector by sector
Boot into Windows, clone live system, encrypt
Boot from TBWinRE1, unlock via manage-bde.exe, clone2, encrypt
Boot from Casper Secure Startup Disk3, unlock4, clone
TBWinPE does not include manage-bde.exe.
Select "Read from Volume", which "allows things like the ability to see BitLocker volumes unencrypted" (if unselected, a sector-by-sector clone will be made, even if the Bitlocker partition was unlocked). Other options worth considering: Scale to Fit, Scale to Target, Align to Target, and Remove Gaps on Copy. Could not find an option or set of options that correctly resized a larger target; fixed with Paragon's Partition Manager Community Edition.
A number of useful tools lie hidden beneath the surface: Explore > Quick Access Toolbar arrow > Save As > click the now-showing Save As button > This PC > X:
right click desired tool > Open. You can also reveal the Menu Bar in the main menu via F10.
If you missed the GUI prompt to unlock, make it reappear by clicking the SmartStart Wizard icon in the upper right hand corner (alternatively, run manage-bde -unlock inside cmd.exe).
While testing TBWinRE, the source drive's Windows install became unbootable (Error code: 0xc000000e), despite issuing no write operations to the drive. As always, backup beforehand and ideally use a hardware write blocker on the source drive.
Acronis True Image's rescue boot disc does not support cloning an encrypted drive, even when unlocked: "encrypted and unlocked disks cannot be read by Acronis Bootable Media". Further, "This is expected behavior, current by-design limitation."
/windows | Aug 19, 2020
