Paintings of 1922: Figurative and portraits

Paintings by Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Dagnan-Bouveret, LA Ring, and others all completed a century ago. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 182

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 182. Here are my solutions to them. 1: This cat with a pride was intended to be download-only and brought AirDrop. Click for a solution… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

All you need to know about Safe mode

Invaluable tool for identifying and locating some problems, for troublesome updates, clearing caches and more. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of Egypt 2: Scenery

Views painted of Cairo and other parts of Egypt, including Thomas Seddon, Alberto Pasini, Jean-Léon Gérôme and the Australian Impressionist Arthur Streeton. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: Bypassing Gatekeeper

It’s well over 4 years since Apple introduced notarization, but many executables still aren’t properly signed, and require the user to bypass Gatekeeper. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of Egypt 1: History

A little of the history of Egypt, from Books of the Dead in 1300 BCE, up to Napoleon’s campaign there between 1798-1801. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 182

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: This cat with a pride was intended to be download-only and brought AirDrop. 2: Hybrid can bar… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Panaceas: which general fixes still work well?

Is reinstalling macOS still a useful solution to problems? What about installing macOS updates, or resetting the NVRAM and SMC? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 20 The face covered

Before we masked up for Covid, covering the face had connotations. Here they’re explored, from the niqāb and widow’s veil to the aversion that makes us voyeur. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Why won’t Ventura let me install that?

Download some vital free software, mount its disk image, run the Installer package there – but why does Ventura refuse to install it, and what you do? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Painted Stories in Britain 16: Open narrative and problem pictures

In the latter half of the 19th century, a new narrative form developed, primarily among British painters: the open narrative, or problem picture. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Building and using a macOS 13.1 VM on Apple silicon

Step-by-step guide to installing, configuring and using a Ventura 13.1 virtual machine on an Apple silicon Mac. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of 1922: Narrative

A glimpse inside Botticelli’s studio, an artist who foresaw his own death, an unusual Birth of Venus, the Ship Fools, and more painted stories from 1922. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Keyboard commands

How the keyboard can be used for commands, from its reserved keys, to key equivalents, interface controls, and keyboard actions. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

What has changed in Ventura 13.1?

Freeform 1.0, the return of network Locations, version change for Disk Utility, Sing in Music, Automator PDF actions, and more. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has released Ventura 13.1 and security updates to Monterey and Big Sur

Apple has just released the update to macOS Ventura 13.1, and concomitant security updates to Monterey (12.6.2) and Big Sur (11.7.2). The download for 13.1 on Apple silicon is around 2.5 GB. As soo… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

In Memoriam John William Godward: Fleeting beauty 2

When he returned to London from Italy in 1921, he became increasingly distressed with the advent of modernism, and died the following year, a century ago today. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Estimating the remaining life of a Mac’s internal SSD

Making sense of the SMART indicators for NVMe SSDs, including all recent models fitted by Apple to Macs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

In Memoriam John William Godward: Fleeting beauty 1

He died a century ago, perhaps the last painter to paint art for art’s sake, avoiding narrative or meaning. Paintings from the first half of his career. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 181

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 181. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Dry for ships, enclosed for prisoners, here for apps and trash. Click for a solution Dock Dry fo… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Keyboard layouts

If macOS doesn’t include your preferred keyboard layout, here’s how to create your own, and put it to work. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Coming home to a real fire in paintings 2

Two paintings by van Gogh, and others show open fires and stoves heating homes and other places up to 1930. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: Similar hardware but different by design

The iPad Pro has the same M2 chip as a MacBook Air, a keyboard and trackpad, and a single Thunderbolt/USB4 port, but there the similarities end. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Coming home to a real fire in paintings 1

Paintings of open fires and stoves from 1565 to 1884 show how we lived through the winter before central heating. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 181

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Dry for ships, enclosed for prisoners, here for apps and trash. 2: Gaps between words for mul… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Explainer: Rosetta 2

Rosetta 2 is key feature for the transition to Apple silicon, and is also available to run Intel x86_64 binaries in virtual macOS and Linux (in Ventura). | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 19 Weaving

Weaving turned yarn into fabric ready to make into garments. Associations include industry, passing time, fidelity, and the myth of Arachne. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Liviable now shares folders in Linux VMs, and should support Rosetta 2

Now feature-complete with support for shared folders with the host Mac, and everything is in place for Rosetta 2 translation of x86_64 binaries within the VM. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has pushed an update to XProtect Remediator

Apple has just pushed an update to XProtect Remediator security software for Macs running Catalina or later, bringing it to version 86. Apple doesn’t release information about what security i… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 18 Spinning

Spinning natural fibres like wool into yarn was “women’s work” and had several connotations, here explored in paintings, and the origin of the word ‘spinster’. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Spotlight problems: mds_stores and mdworker in trouble

Excessive CPU use by mds_stores is a common cause of sluggish performance. Explains what it does and what you can do bring it under control. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Painted Stories in Britain 15: Human panoramas

Two artists painted panoramas full of miniature stories, which assembled into broad summaries of contemporary society: Frith and Ford Madox Brown. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Input methods

How to get your Mac to automatically convert an input string like ‘egrin’ into the grinning face emoji, using an Input Plugin. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Sunrise on Impressionism: 20 Paul Cézanne

He didn’t start painting in Impressionist style until about 1870, and a decade later was migrating towards what became Post-Impressionism. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Viable now supports shared folders, iCloud and more in beta 5

Now fully supports shared folders, on Ventura hosts running Ventura in a VM. This gives access to faster storage, and to iCloud Drive as well. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of William Shakespeare’s Plays 28: The Comedy of Errors

A merchant has a wife and identical twin sons, with identical twin servants. They are separated by a shipwreck. Years later, chaos ensues. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 180

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 180. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Brisk marching pace for media ended three years ago. Click for a solution QuickTime Brisk marchi… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How to estimate an SSD’s working life

The life of an SSD should be more predictable than a hard disk. All you need is its TBW, and the total amount of data written to it so far. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

The Titanic and the Taj Mahal: paintings of Colin Campbell Cooper

On board RMS Carpathia as it rescued survivors from the Titanic was Cooper, the skyscraper painter, already at work on his gouaches of the scene. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: The mobile virtual Mac

Just 4 cores and 16 GB of memory were used for the virtual machine to run Xcode and build apps successfully, but only for local testing. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

The President’s Park and the Titanic: paintings of Francis Davis Millet

Millet was a central figure in American fine arts, as well as a painter in mid-century Salon style. When returning from Europe he and his friend died after the Titanic struck an iceberg. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 180

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Brisk marching pace for media ended three years ago. 2: Silica for the timepiece that renders… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Finder can’t create an alias inside a package or bundle

The Finder is happy to create aliases to most files and folders, provided they aren’t immediately inside a bundle or package. Then it gets all fussy. But why? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 17 Medea as sorceress

The complicated story of Medea, who provided Jason with intelligence and potions to enable him to steal the Golden Fleece. A femme very fatale. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Tracking swap space: is it wearing out your SSD?

In extreme cases, excessive use of swap space on an internal SSD could lead to its premature death, and the end of life for that Mac. How could you assess that? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 16 Circe and sorceresses

Paintings of sorceresses, who combine dark arts and seduction. Circe with Odysseus and Scylla, Melissa, Armida, Morgan le Fay and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Disk performance of lightweight macOS VMs on Apple silicon

Writing to the Data volume in a VM is dismally slow. Is using shared storage any quicker? What happens when you copy a VM to an external SSD, or to another Mac? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Painted Stories in Britain 14: British poetry and Arthurian legend

Two new narrative themes that became distinctive in the mid-19th century were contemporary English poetry, and the legends of King Arthur. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago