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/ACPISMCPlatformPlugin.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 but unlocked drive: "encrypted and unlocked disks cannot be read by Acronis Bootable Media". Further, "This is expected behavior, current by-design limitation."
/windows | Aug 19, 2020
via USB generally fails using the native Windows (Import Pictures and Videos wizard, File Explorer) and macOS (Image Capture, Photos) tools with errors like "Error Copying File or Folder - The device is unreachable" or "The operation couldn't be completed." In a recent case, these MTP-compatible Windows apps did not avail either:
nor did iMazing under macOS ("Operation Failed - foo.JPG is locked by iOS." within the first few minutes). Happily, iExplorer did the trick, successfully importing close to 40,000 photos and videos (though the batch delete process failed, necessitating a workaround).
/misc | Aug 13, 2020
when handling digital photos and videos: Phil Harvey's sedulously-crafted ExifTool, "a platform-independent Perl library plus a command-line application for reading, writing and editing meta information in a wide variety of files".
That description hardly does it justice; here's a taste of what's possible from the Renaming and/or Moving Files section:
By writing a new value to the FileName and/or Directory tags, files can be renamed and/or moved to different directories. This can be a very powerful tool in combination with the -d (date format) option for organizing images by date/time. For example, the following command renames all images in directory "DIR" according to the individual file's creation date in the form "YYYYmmdd_HHMMSS.ext".
exiftool "-FileName<CreateDate" -d "%Y%m%d_%H%M%S.%%e" DIROr a new directory can be specified by setting the value of the Directory tag. For example, the following command moves all images originally in directory "DIR" into a directory hierarchy organized by year/month/day:
exiftool "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d "%Y/%m/%d" DIRRead here for more details about this powerful feature.
For Windows users who prefer a GUI, check out Kim Jensen's Advanced Renamer which includes ExifTool among a host of other renaming tools.
/misc | Aug 13, 2020
To batch delete all photos and videos without a third party app or a PC or Mac:
Video of the process. H/T MacObserver.
/misc | Aug 11, 2020
