I like to run Onyx (https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html) every few weeks to clean up all the little dingy spots that can build up in my MacBook Pro. If you have an Apple computer, I really recommend it. Just be careful, there are specific versions of Onyx for each release of Mac OS X. You can find your version in the Apple Menu, About This Mac.
I just had a devil of a time with my Ulysses to WordPress integration. Something underhanded happened on the way to the Forum. Either it was something that WordPress tweaked in 5.4, or my host did something clever to get in the way and didn’t tell me. Someone left a very important bit out, which broke Ulysses, my editor of choice for blogging.
The solution was to be found in these two sites:
David Bosman’s Blog – Ulysses and WordPress and
Hans Bruins’s Medium Post – Ulysses and WordPress
So if you were using Ulysses all along, and it suddenly crapped out on you with WordPress, these instructions seem to do the trick, it did so for me!
It doesn’t take much for a technology to excite me and then subsequently fail me. Case in point, a YubiKey 5 NFC security key. I bought it on November 6, 2019 for $51.94. I was excited to use this new bit of technology, thinking that it would at least be a valuable experience for me when it came to 2 factor authentication and honing my security skills. The NFC bits were very attractive and the website clearly displayed iPhone as compatible, so why not? Chip in all the way, it’s only $50!
What I got did not at all match my expectations. The NFC doesn’t work, or at least required at the time a different kind of iPhone than the one I had, which was an iPhone 6S Plus, so that was deceptive advertising leading me nowhere. The NFC part works nowhere, so it’s just marketing mumbo-jumbo for me. I then plugged it in to my USB port on my MacBook and was dismayed to see that it doesn’t really do what I thought it would, no way to get any of my TOTP settings onto the device, no applications to make it convenient to use on my MacBook Pro, but there was a way that I could put my GPG Key for my main account on there. So I did that. Then after doing that I realized that the private key had been moved onto the Yubikey and a stub left on my MacBook Pro, meaning any time I wanted to decrypt anything I needed the YubiKey. I didn’t have a choice when it came to having it in both places, and I accepted that because I rarely if ever use my GPG key since it’s a dead-on-arrival technology itself.
All of this was an immense flash in the pan. I did learn a lot, and I guess it was worth the $50 I spent on it. Maybe I can return it to the manufacturer, as I have returned it to factory specs. If they don’t allow that, then I’ll likely put it up for sale on Facebook, Craigslist, or eBay.
What I got out of Yubico and their Yubikey is that it is like a lot of other security tools, pretty much meant for a very niche marketplace where people who would buy into these sorts of things are sold on the how, just looking for the what. I wouldn’t recommend Yubikey to anyone, it is not easy to use and completely unreliable. A little sidebar to mention here as well, if you wanted to use a YubiKey to secure your desktop or laptop computer, which you could do, they strongly recommend you buy two of them, in case you lose one or one gets stolen. The all-or-nothing deal is a huge cold shower.
Ever since COVID-19 started spreading around the world, there has been mutterings that an anti-malarial medication called hydroxychlorquine had some benefit to people with the virus. Perhaps it is with viral replication or viral implantation it is unclear to me, but the drug did bear a mention by scientists and doctors. I did a little reading and quine, chloroquine, and then hydroxychloroquine all seem to be fully synthetic versions of a very old drug, quinine.
This was exciting, because I knew full well that I had quinine in my house already. It’s an ingredient in Tonic Water. So when COVID-19 was spreading, people were panic buying left and right, and I was buying liter bottles of Tonic Water and a giant bottle of Gin.
I figure that I don’t want hydroxychloroquine, leave that to the FDA, the doctors, and scientists to argue over. I could very well dose myself, very low-dose, with quinine every day in a collins glass filled with ice, a splash of Gin, and top it off with Tonic Water. What is the damage? It’s a very low dose, its a delicious cocktail with only maybe an ounce of Gin per drink, and I spritz it with a little lime juice as a flavor addition when I like. Because the Tonic Water is cheap, $1.89 per liter, has the chemical that seems to work against COVID-19, maybe a regular micro-dose of quinine has some effect either in preventing COVID-19 from infecting me, killing it off when my immune system notices it, or quite possibly I haven’t been exposed to COVID-19 yet. Either way, liters of Tonic Water are very easy to find, making two or three glasses of Gin and Tonic go really well with lunch or dinner, and it can’t really hurt me. So, why not?
So I started to muse to myself on the topic of micro-doses of quinine for COVID-19. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor, and there aren’t any studies. Chances are it’s all placebo, but if it isn’t? What if three doses of Tonic Water, say 100ml each, with ten of these doses in a liter bottle – what if my daily Gin & Tonic drinks are helping?
Maybe it is helping, it certainly isn’t hurting me. What if this was the answer all along and it was in your liquor cabinet this entire time?
For what seems like ages, I have been on the witless search for the best text editor for my MacBook Pro. Trying BBEdit, TextWrangler, Atom, MacVim, Pages, TextEdit… the list just goes on and on. Along with this fools errand, I’ve also been searching for the best font to use. What a pile of wet monkey spit this entire task has been.
So enter Ulysses. I was interested in this a while back, but the app wouldn’t function on my system at the time because I was living in denial about Mac OSX Mojave. I was happy with Yosemite and I was going to be damned if I was going to upset every apple cart I had and upgrade to Mojave. But then app after app started to upgrade on me, and over time it was easier to capitulate to Mojave and upgrade to it. Now that I’m using Mojave, I decided to give Ulysses another shot. So far, I don’t hate it, which is about as much as I was expecting honestly. It’ll take more time to actually see how it works as a new text editor, so right now I will just say that the jury is out.
Next to that is the font issue. There is a theme that covers editors, fonts, and even can be extended to movies, music, and comic books, and that is that there are so many options that someone who is on the outside looking in simply cannot choose one place to start. Websites are full of suggestions and sometimes those are handy, you can spot a font that you’ve seen in your application and you can try it out, while other times you get advice that Font XYZ is really quite amazing and then you discover that you have to pay for it, or the application you want to use simply won’t let you use that font. So instead of fretting over endless font choices I just threw a dart and ended up with Open Sans. Maybe it’ll work for me, maybe it will drive me bananas. Although maybe the editors will do that first.
So we’ll see just what we have in store for Ulysses in the days and weeks to come. This editor also comes with a method that might be able to publish to my WordPress Blog, and that will be the next test, to see if it does what it promises.
MERCURY RETROGRADE DATES IN 2020
In 2020, Mercury will be in apparent retrograde motion during the following ranges of dates:
February 17 to March 10
June 18 to July 12
October 14 to November 3
I started Witcher on Netflix. It is a remarkable telling of an anti-hero against grime, mud, and perpetually cloudy skies. A dystopian high fantasy that is dark, dim, dank, and heaping shovels of grit. So much grit. Seems that both casting, scenery, clothing, and writing were performed by a shovel-full of grit. So so gritty.
The post-Christmas reflex is upon us. I slept in, then was bracketed by two cats, Bailey and Keely who thought that wedging themselves up against daddy was simply the best thing ever. So, I woke up with twin purring motors in full effect up against my back as I came to. The house was a little bit of a wreck so I did some vacuuming which made every cat scatter. Behold! Lord Vack-Ooom!
Now we have the onerous task of eating through food that is perhaps too carby or too starchy, poor us. I needed half a cup of Dr. Pepper for the Ham glaze, but the cheapest I could find at the market was a 2 liter bottle, so I have to defeat that enemy, golly, Challenges.
I drove Scott to work at the bookstore to help him not get dinged by angry shoppers, as today the second wave of crazies hit the streets looking for after Christmas sales and bargains.
I’ve got two books that I’ll be reading from Christmas. The first is “The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse” by Charlie Mackery. Then the other is TS Eliot’s “Old Possums Book of Practical Cats”. So expect some stories coming up based on those two books. Scott suggests that the first one will make me cry. Ha ha! Being emotionally victimized by a book! Bring it on! 😉
After Christmas Dinner, which was more than we ever should make, comes the romantic Christmas movies. Love Actually and Serendipity. At some point we’ll forget we just ate a feast and want dessert. Cookies, Christmas Breadies, Egg Nog. So many ways to just keep on trotting along and squealing like little piggies. LOL.
Got a slow start this very merry Christmas morning! I hope everyone is safe and warm, enjoying a wonderful Christmas!