Hacks on The Dangling Pointer

Pinning Safari Tabs for Mental Focus

Tue, 01 Dec 2015 13:51:27 +0000

Have you heard about pinning tabs in Safari? If you have Mac OS X El Capitan then you have Safari 9 which includes tab pinning. From Apple's Support documentation:

Pin Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Gmail, or any other website you visit frequently throughout the day. Pinned Sites stay put on the left side of your tab bar so you can easily get to them at any time.

I frequently keep several tabs open on my work computer - the three Gmail instances I'm in and WordPress.com's Reader. Battling with my attention requires me to analyze my behaviors and continuously adapt to prevent problems. I recently discovered I frequently flip back over to Safari to look for the unread count in the tab titles and will derail my current thought process to read the email. My solution? Pinned tabs.

Apple TV + Infrared Remotes

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 01:20:57 +0000

I have one of the new Apple TVs and I really do enjoy it. Having been a Roku-only house its nice to be able to get to some of the things only in the Apple world. I have AirPlay on my Pioneer receiver but it doesn't work quite right all the time - but it works great on the Apple TV!

So there is one annoyance I can't get around easily. I use a Mac mini in my entertainment stand as a server, my DVR (with EyeTV & HDHomeRun tuners), a webcam server (EvoCam) and a weather station data collector. When I watch DVDS and recorded TV through EyeTV I use the "old" Apple remote. The problem? The new Apple TV responds to the infrared from the old remote!

Home Hacks - DC Blower Motor

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 13:10:26 +0000

A couple days ago we had to replace the air conditioning condenser and evaporator units in our home's central air system. The unit was 21 years old and was leaking coolant slowly throughout the last summer. It was just time. The new unit is much more efficient, handles more air, and should be quieter even though it's physically larger.

We had been talking about another item in our furnace and that was replacing the A/C motor with a D/C motor. The A/C motor is called a PSC or permanent split capacitor motor and they are largely inefficient over time. The Nest Thermostat allows you to schedule your fan to be on for time periods in the day. We've been running our fan for 15 minutes every hour during the daytime to keep air circulating to reduce warm/cool spots and to help reduce dust. Running the fan that much with a standard PSC blower is expensive and taxing on the motor itself.

Mounting Wires Under a Standing Desk

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 12:30:30 +0000

I purchased an UpDesk PowerUp Series I (original) last year and love it. I got the standard maple-colored desk top and am very happy with the density of the wood, quality laminate and curved front edge. The one thing I was not very satisfied with was the mounting option given for the clasps keeping the wiring under it from hanging. I was given a good amount of these self-adhesive twist plastic cable ties:

Mac Screen Sharing (VNC) & White Screen

Sun, 02 May 2010 14:10:32 +0000

I've had problems connecting to my Ubuntu 9.10 server via Mac OS' built-in VNC client, "Screen Sharing". Frequently when I connect, I get a white screen with no indication that the connection is working. If I type characters or click the mouse, it does actually send those events to the remote side. My only option was to use Chicken of the VNC (which sucks) to connect to my server. Finally, I did some digging and found the solution/workaround.