Paintings of the flatlands of England 1

From Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, via the wooded countryside of Gainsborough and Constable, to the coast of Philip Wilson Steer. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Saturday Mac riddles 200

Almost four years ago, on 29 June 2019, I posted my first Saturday Mac Riddles. To mark their 200th edition, here are this weekend’s four special riddles to entertain you through family time,… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Should you remove duplicate files?

Save space on your storage and backups by removing all copies. But does it work if they’re APFS clone files? And does that housekeeping utility detect clones for you? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Hard Reality: 1 Surface textures

Key factors making oil paint most suitable include its slow drying, wide range of viscosity, and robust paint layer. But it has its rules too. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

When it doesn’t work, try it again in Safe mode

A simple task: deauthorise an M1 Mac mini to hand on, then use EACAS to wipe it ready for its next user. But deauthorisation wouldn’t work. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Reading visual art: 50 Hell

Depicted as a physical place full of demons, torment and eternal suffering, and a deterrent to all those who commit sins on earth. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Which files are purgeable? Look with new versions of Sparsity and Precize

Where are all those purgeable files? Two updated utilities to help you find them: Precize and Sparsity, which will crawl folders checking which files are purgeable, sparse or clones. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Reading visual art: 49 Heaven

Christian visions of Heaven or Paradise are usually less of a location than an array of figures. Examples from 1475-1916. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Ventura space management: what gets purged and how?

Performed by CacheDelete, it first looks at a wide range of macOS caches, and only at the end purges snapshots, to free up space when it runs short. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Ukrainian Painters: Khariton Platonov

Although born in Russia, he moved to Kyiv in 1877, and for 30 years was a key figure in art education there, teaching several of the important painters from the early 20th century. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Mints version 1.13 fixes a crashing bug

Fixes a crashing bug in the Disk Check feature. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

How well do USB 3 SSDs work on a Thunderbolt hub?

How well do USB 3.1 Gen 2 SSDs mix with Thunderbolt 3 SSDs when connected to the same Thunderbolt 4 hub? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Trojan Epics: 8 Achilles returns

With Greek defeat imminent, Patroclus dons Achilles’ armour and puts the Trojans to rout. He chases them to the city’s gate, where he’s killed by Hector. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 199

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 199. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Folder for arched roof locks your data securely. Click for a solution FileVault Folder (file) fo… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

The Finder confuses with wildly inaccurate figures for available space

Good space management doesn't bring new emoji, but it makes a big difference when the Finder doesn't give completely inaccurate figures for Available space. A practical demonstration of its gross errors. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Painting Pandora’s story 2

The modified myth of Pandora remained popular well into the 20th century, when it must have seemed even more appropriate with war and pandemic. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Last Week on My Mac: Finder or loser?

Can we trust the figures the Finder provides for used and available space on a volume? What does it count as purgeable? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Painting Pandora’s story 1

The original Greek myth was almost unknown in paintings until the mid-19th century, then, slightly changed, it became one of the most popular myths in paintings. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Saturday Mac riddles 199

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Folder for arched roof locks your data securely. 2: Links for unlocking and a store for passw… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

What is purgeable disk space?

When the Finder works out how much space is available on disk, what does it count as being “purgeable”? The answer may surprise you. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Hard Reality: Introduction to the development of realism

The hard road to realism: development and propagation of knowledge, how to apply it in paintings, and its benefit on visual art. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Will your new SSD support TRIM and SMART?

If you want it to have full TRIM and SMART support, it’ll need to have an NVMe interface and a Thunderbolt connection. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Reading visual art: 48 In the spotlight

Examples of putting figures in the spotlight from paintings of Tiepolo, David, Goya, Gérôme, Thomas Eakins, and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Mints version 1.12 reveals SMART indicators for some SSDs

Adds the ability to check some key SMART health indicators for Apple Fabric and PCIe SSDs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Reading visual art: 47 Shadow play

Using shadows to tell or add detail to a visual story. Examples by Robert Campin, Gérôme. William Holman Hunt, Lovis Corinth and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

When the Finder’s error exceeds 50%

The Finder reported free space had risen by over 80 GB, that’s more than 50%. It looked like something had wiped some of my media libraries. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Ukrainian Painters: Petro Nilus

Also known as Pyotr Nilus, Piotr Nilouss, and Peter Alexandrovitch Nilouss, he emigrated to Paris in 1920. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Tackling problems with permissions, ACLs and other access controls

What’s blocking you from saving that document: permissions, ACLs, privacy, an extended attribute, or what? Here are some clues. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Apple has released security updates to Monterey 12.6.5 and Big Sur 11.7.6

Apple has just released security updates to macOS Monterey and Big Sur, bringing them to versions 12.6.5 and 11.7.6 respectively. These patch the remaining security vulnerability in IOAccelerator, … | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Trojan Epics: 7 Greeks in trouble

With Achilles out of the war, the Trojan army takes on the Greek expeditionary force. Under the leadership of Hector, it gets the upper hand and puts the Greeks into retreat. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 198

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 198. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Visible vapour after I sync with Liverpool plus. Click for a solution iCloud Visible vapour (clo… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

The app that won’t go into quarantine

How an obscure ACL can prevent a quarantine flag from being attached to an internet download: demonstration and explanation. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

The Resurrection in modern paintings

Paintings by William Blake, William Holman Hunt, Albert Edelfelt, Albin Egger-Lienz and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Last Week on My Mac: Storage stories

There’s a big difference between the storage that’s available, and what’s advisable. Whether it’s affordable is another question. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Paintings of eggs

Long before they were turned into chocolate, they were coloured, and hunted on Easter Sunday. Paintings by Claude Monet, Diego Velázquez, and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Saturday Mac riddles 198

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Visible vapour after I sync with Liverpool plus. 2: Hanging decoration to fascinate an infant… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Thanks for the Memory in Mac OS 8.6

For a while, most users worked in Mac OS 8.6, 9.0 was new and a beast, and there was also the Public Beta of Mac OS X. So how did we manage memory then? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Apple has released macOS Ventura 13.3.1

Apple has just released an urgent security update to macOS Ventura, bringing it to version 13.3.1. This addresses two security vulnerabilities in IOSurfaceAccelerator and WebKit, both of which Appl… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

The Crucifixion in modern paintings

Paintings by William Blake, Elihu Vedder, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Léon Bonnat, James Tissot, Lovis Corinth and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Just which volumes are encrypted?

Here’s an APFS (Encrypted) volume that isn’t encrypted, and an unencrypted volume with FileVault active. Something must be wrong. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Suppers, Veronese and the Inquisition

How Veronese was accused by the Inquisition of blasphemy by painting “buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs” and others in his vast painting of the Last Supper. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

How to check whether an SSD gets trimmed

Why should you trim an SSD? How to tell whether an SSD needs trimming, finding out whether it has trim support, and whether it does trim. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Ukrainian Painters: Mykola Pymonenko

Naturalist views of ordinary people in Ukrainian countryside that use Bastien-Lepage's successful formula with defocussing of the background. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

How Cryptexes are changing macOS Ventura

Details of the three standard Cryptexes in Ventura 13.3, when they can be loaded in the boot process, and where they fit in with Rapid Security Responses. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Not Like That: Lost completely

Apelles, Vermeer, Goya, Hogarth, Courbet, Pissarro, de Haan, and Gustav Klimt: their paintings now lost forever. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Getting more from Disk Utility’s First Aid

Should you run First Aid on every volume, then each container? And why can it return status 65? How can you work around that? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Trojan Epics: 6 Achilles and the princess

Achilles acquires himself a concubine, as does his commander Agamemnon. When the latter is forced to return his, and takes Briseis from Achilles, there’s trouble. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 197

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 197. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Supplies arrive by parachute, unsolicited crypto, or wireless file transfer. Click for a solutio… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 years ago