Reading visual art: 91 Markets A

Goya’s crockery salesman, Lhermitte’s Les Halles in Paris, a trio of specialist markets, Rosa Bonheur’s horse fair in Paris, and the last hay market in London. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 44 minutes ago

Scheduling and dispatch of backups and other background activities

Automatic Time Machine backups aren’t scheduled to run at precise times, but when it’s convenient. This explains how, and what to do if goes wrong. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 hours ago

Arthur: 12 Division and treachery

When the queen is abducted, Lancelot rescues her, only to see her prepared to be burned at the stake. Arthur and Lancelot go to war against one another, and Arthur against Mordred, the usurper. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 day ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 231

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 231. Here are my solutions to them. 1: From a nutshell to create a collection of papers to store your data. Click for a solution FileMa… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 day ago

Evaluating M3 Pro CPU cores: 1 General performance

Using assembly language test loops to understand the differences between M1 Pro and M3 Pro CPU cores casts new light on their differences. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 day ago

Paintings of Honfleur: Seurat to Vallotton

The forgotten French Impressionist Félix Cals, Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat, and two former Nabis, Félix Vallotton and Édouard Vuillard also painted this coastal town. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: Leaking like a sieve

How to get an app to leak memory, what a leak does, how to mitigate against a leak, and how an engineer should fix it. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 days ago

Paintings of Honfleur: Corot to Monet

Richard Parkes Bonington, Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet and Johan Jongkind all painted this small town opposite Le Havre. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 231

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: From a nutshell to create a collection of papers to store your data. 2: First a beagle then a… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 days ago

A short history of Recovery in macOS

From blessing Classic Mac OS, through SUM and the first Recovery partition in Mac OS X Lion, right up to 1 True Recovery on Apple silicon Macs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 days ago

Celebrating 300 years since the birth of Gavin Hamilton, Scottish painter in Rome

Born in Scotland, worked much of his career in Rome, he mentored Benjamin West, worked with Piranesi, and bought Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

Red menu bar in Sonoma

Occasionally, switching apps in Sonoma’s Stage Manager sets the whole menu bar to red, and loses menus on its left. What’s the cause? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

High: Haute Route in the Alps

A journey from the southern shore of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc, travelling east to the Zugspitze, highest mountain in Germany. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Viable, ViableS and Vimy updates to fix a bug

These fix a bug when restoring a VM window that has been minimised to the Dock. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Another Finder memory leak in Sonoma

With one leak in the Finder’s Gallery view, it’s time for another, in Icon view. This is an old leak, that has affected older versions of macOS too, but still hasn’t been fixed. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Reading visual art: 90 Oil lamps B

In chiaroscuro, for enlightenment, at the centre of family and friends at dinner, and in special safety lamps carried underground by coal miners. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

What has changed in CPU cores in M3 chips?

Little seems to have changed in CPU cores in M3 chips, if you read reviews. Dig a bit deeper and there are major changes, as explained here. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

Reading visual art: 89 Oil lamps A

the personification of vigilance, Mary Magdalen, in shadowplay, held by Florence Nightingale ‘the lady of the lamp’, and associated with overwork and tiredness. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

iCloud Drive in Sonoma: FileProvider and eviction

iCloud Drive in Sonoma has changed beyond all recognition, and is now closely integrated with the FileProvider API. This has important effects, including how you can diagnose problems with the log. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

Arthur: 11 The Lady of Shalott

Cursed to be confined to weaving images on her loom and forbidden from looking directly at the outside world, she breaks that to look at Sir Lancelot. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 230

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 230. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Prepares a play text for publication and runs your code. Click for a solution Script Editor Prep… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Finder memory leak in macOS Sonoma 14.1.1

Select groups of many JPEG images in Finder’s gallery view, and the Finder’s memory grows steadily until you’re forced to relaunch it. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Gérôme’s Vision: Paintings about vision, truth and photography 2

Paintings in which he helped set the thumbs up and down sign, and painted himself making a sculpture he had previously painted in a painting as a sculpture. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 9 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: Over the Rainbow

My MacBook Pro 16-inch is on its way. Why is it coming with an M3 Pro and not an M3 Max? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 9 days ago

Gérôme’s Vision: Paintings about vision, truth and photography 1

From an early painting of the blind Michelangelo to that of a nude courtesan before a Greek court, vision and visual fidelity was his recurrent theme. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 230

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Prepares a play text for publication and runs your code. 2: Otto’s icon brings actions … | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Are we running out of panaceas?

We used to reset the Desktop, the SMC, and NVRAM, install the Combo updater, or perform a clean install. Now there's only Safe mode left. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Painting on the edge: Overview and contents

How some landscape painters blurred the view to paint, while others have depicted motion blur, depth of field effects, or an edge hierarchy. Links to each article in the series. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 11 days ago

Time Machine in Sonoma: strengths and weaknesses

What is Time Machine best at doing? What are its current limitations in macOS Sonoma, when backing up to APFS? A draft list. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 11 days ago

High: Hot and cold in Spain’s Sierra Nevada

Artists who flocked to the Prado in Madrid often visited Granada, where the towers of the Alhambra rise to compete with the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

Game Mode revisited: why E cores are so important

Once you know how to configure an app to be able to use Game Mode, you can run better tests. Here are measurements of CPU and GPU performance for comparison between Full Screen and Game Mode. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

Reading visual art: 88 Rope B

Shackles of the night, in a well, as a rope ladder how Romeo meets Juliet, trussing up a robber, or hanging John Brown, the abolitionist. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Backup errors, iCloud Drive and the limits of APFS

Two different errors when backing up two different Macs, a recursive RTFD document, and APFS path length limits. But what’s this about FileProvider? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Reading visual art: 87 Rope A

How ropes form a thread running through these four paintings of the Passion and Crucifixion Tintoretto painted. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Time Machine in Sonoma: Back up and restore external volumes

How well can Time Machine back up other volumes, such as those on external drives? Can it restore them when the original disk fails or goes missing? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Arthur: 10 Elaine of Astolat

She fell in love with Sir Lancelot, nursed him back to health after he was badly wounded, but he refused to marry her, or even take her as his lover. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 229

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 229. Here are my solutions to them. 1: On-camera preview shows you files. Click for a solution Finder On-camera preview (a viewfinder) … | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

SilentKnight 2.7 is more tolerant of error

If you want to install some updates but not all, this version adds two improvements to help you do that without unintentionally downloading what you don't want. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

Who had John the Baptist killed? 2 Salome

In 1876, Moreau recast Salome as the author of John the Baptist's execution, amplified by Oscar Wilde, Richard Strauss, and the Dance of the Seven Veils. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 16 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: Scary hasty

Sonoma 14.1.1 and Ventura 13.6.2 apparently contained ‘important bug fixes and security updates’, although Apple provides no further details. What is going on? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 16 days ago

Who had John the Baptist killed? 1 Herodias

The original Biblical account of the martyrdom of John the Baptist says that Herod's wife Herodias ordered it in revenge, as seen in these paintings. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 229

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: On-camera preview shows you files. 2: Cover for loose papers as a directory metaphor. 3: Wort… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

It’s all about reliability and contingency

Apple silicon Macs are designed and built for reliability. Using old techniques to safeguard from disaster isn’t wise: they need to be reappraised, and contingencies planned accordingly. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

Painting on the edge: How do you blur an edge?

Painting with an edge hierarchy requires fine control over paint viscosity and drying time, and a deep understanding of technique. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago

Time Machine in Sonoma: How to restore from a backup

How should you restore a whole volume, or an old version of a document to a different folder? Includes details of backup structure. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect

Apple has overnight released an update to XProtect for all macOS from El Capitan or so, bringing it […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago

High: Ascent

An illustrated account of the 14th successful ascent of Mont Blanc, complete with champagne and red wine, and two oil paintings of other climbs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 19 days ago

Should you make an emergency disk for an Apple silicon Mac?

Many of us keep an emergency external drive at the ready by our Mac, in case we need to use it to recover from problems. What’s the equivalent for Apple silicon? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 19 days ago