Reading visual art: 54 Music B

More paintings of music, from the Aesthetic watercolour of Marie Spartali Stillman to folk dance, and Vuillard's friends playing in his apartment. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

COW and clones: how they save space and SSD wear

How does copy on write work, and how do clones grow apart? What effect do they have on the use of space and performance? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 53 Music A

Evoking music from a painting is a serious challenge, yet many artists have tried it. See if any of these work for you. From Lavinia Fontana to Degas. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Safe mode, caches and CacheDelete

What does Safe mode do to all those service caches managed by CacheDelete? Does it still check your boot disk too? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has just released an update to XProtect Remediator

Apple has just released an update to XProtect Remediator security software for Macs running Catalina or later, bringing it to version 97. This should supersede both versions 95 and 96, depending on… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

LockRattler 4.37 fixes a crashing bug

When run on Intel Macs without a T2 chip in Ventura 13.3.1, LockRattler may crash because of a bug in macOS. This update fixes it. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ukrainian Painters: Serhii Svitoslavskyi

A prolific landscape painter who taught key members of the avant garde. He was also a founding supporter of Kyiv Zoo. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

What is a Rapid Security Response (RSR)?

Intended to be lightweight, timely and quick to install, the first RSR has now been provided for Ventura. Did you know you can also uninstall it easily? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has just released the first Rapid Security Response for Ventura

Apple has just released the first of its new Rapid Security Responses (RSRs) for macOS 13.3.1 Ventura. This is indicated as macOS Rapid Security Response 13.3.1 (a), and is just just over 300 MB to… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Trojan Epics: 10 The death of Achilles

First, Achilles kills Penthesileia, an Amazon, whose great beauty fills him with remorse. Then come Memnon, who proves Achilles’ undoing by Paris’s arrow. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 201

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 201. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Show in the atelier that vanished for 18 years until 2022. Click for a solution Macintosh Studio… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

SilentKnight 2.5 and XProCheck 1.5 are better focussed

These now analyse log reports from XProtect Remediator more robustly, and are more discerning in ranking them, so clearer to use. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Into the Arctic: A celebration of the paintings of William Bradford 2

In 1869 he sailed on board 'Panther' on an expedition to Greenland and the Arctic. Among his subsequent commissioned paintings was one for Queen Victoria. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: Secret security

An update users didn’t know about might have installed a security tool they don’t know about, whose reports they can’t see. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Into the Arctic: A celebration of the paintings of William Bradford 1

In the 1850s and 60s he was a successful marine artist, working in whaling ports such as Fairhaven, before moving to Boston. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 201

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Show in the atelier that vanished for 18 years until 2022. 2: Exhibition for movies until str… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Coonecting to the Internet via a phone 21 years ago

Follow along as we connect to the Internet 21 years ago in Mac OS X 10.2, using a Bluetooth dongle and a mobile phone, at 28.8 Kbps. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Hard reality: 2 Shade and shadow

Explaining shade, attached and cast shadows seen in paintings. While the first two have been generally painted faithfully, cast shadows are more complicated. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

APFS hard links, symlinks, aliases and clone files: a summary

Similarities and differences, how to make each in the Finder and Terminal, how much space they use, and how they work in APFS. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has just released an update to XProtect Remediator

Apple has just released an update to XProtect Remediator security software for Macs running Catalina or later, bringing it to version 96. Apple doesn’t release information about what security… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 52 The capital crime of cross-dressing

One of the charges leading to Joan of Arc being burned at the stake was that she cross-dressed in male military clothing. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Where does macOS get its volume free space figures from?

After studying thousand of log entries in less than 2 seconds, this is how macOS updates its values for purgeable and available space. But who uses them? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 51 Hercules and changing gender

The curious myth of the swashbuckling hero Hercules dressed in women's clothing and forced to serve Queen Omphale. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Freeing space on your boot disk

Free that space before macOS has to purge it for you. Using housekeeping, moving Documents and media libraries, but not relocating Home folders. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ukrainian Painters: Mykola Burachek

Trained in Kyiv, Kraków, and with Matisse in Paris, he is best known for his virtuoso Impressionist oil sketches. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ventura 13.3.1 can’t change the password of sparse bundles

hdiutil chpass, the only means of changing passwords for sparse bundles, doesn’t work in macOS Ventura 13.3.1. The workaround requires a VM and 13.1. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Trojan Epics: 9 The death of Hector

The river runs red with the blood of Trojans before Achilles gets his chance to fight Hector, and kills him. Then he dishonours the Trojan's body. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 200

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 200. Here are my solutions to them. 1: The first, for the rest of us, but needed to gain weight quickly. Click for a solution Macintosh… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How Ventura space management tracks changes

Deleting two large files from a volume triggered the updating of figures for purgeable and available space within 9 seconds. Yet 6 minutes later, the Finder didn’t show those updated figures. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of the flatlands of England 2

John Crome, a quiet innovator and founder of the Norwich School, Frederick Sandys, Thomas Girtin and others in Norfolk and Lincoln. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: When the numbers don’t add up

One volume has 60 GB of purgeable space, giving 295 GB available; the other has only 15 GB purgeable, so 250 GB available. How can they be in the same container? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year ago

Mints version 1.13 fixes a crashing bug

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


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year 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 | 1 year ago