Richard Freeborn

Fiction and Non-Fiction

Category: Other Applications

Change for the sake of Change

March 11, 2024 /

Have you had those nagging little pop-ups and messages from Dropbox?

They started with me last week. First about upgrading to the next level, and secondly performing a reinstall for the new version of Dropbox. I ignored the first as I’m barely using half of my current space allocation. I did accept the second, and then the fun began.

Dropbox shut down and went through the usual install and relaunch cycle I expect when installing new versions of applications on the Mac. This time there was a wrinkle. I got the message Dropbox was moving my files to a “secure” location.

What? Where?

Previously the Dropbox folder was located in my Documents folder, and now appears in Finder under the Locations heading. No indication of where, if anywhere, it resides on the hard drive and all you see in Get Info is Dropbox. Not exactly helpful.

Fortunately my technical skills haven’t completely rusted away, so it was into Terminal. A search through the hard drive found Dropbox and all my files in the folder Library -> Cloud Storage.

Satisfied, I had my files somewhere I could find them, I forgot about it until I accessed one of those files. I think it was a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. At that point I got a warning message and the request to allow the application to access Dropbox files. And this has been a consistent event when I first open a file for the first time in the new Dropbox structure. Grrr!!!

I expect there’s a reason for this change, but it would be nice if Dropbox explained what they were changing and why the need to move all files to some obscure location.

Or it might be some tech-weeny’s bright idea of cool where no-one thought to question the consequences.

Another Upgrade

February 13, 2024 /

Back in July of last year (System Upgrades – Richard Freeborn), I detailed the results of changing out our router and the improvements we had as a result.

Since then, I’ve been working around increasing issues with my MacBook Pro. The speakers died some time ago, and plugging in an external speaker wasn’t too much of an issue, especially as the general sound quality was much better.

The track pad and bluetooth were another problem. The track pad developed a mind of its own, sending the cursor all over the screen, or just not responding. That meant a separate wireless mouse. Again, not a big problem. What did bother me more is that the bluetooth keyboard would for no reason stop working. When I investigated further the MacBook had turned off Bluetooth, and the only way to get it back was to shut down and restart.

And then there were the software updates. About a month ago, Microsoft informed me they couldn’t upgrade Word and Excel because the operating system was too old. Can’t be, was my first thought, and then I did some research.

The MacBook Pro was nine years old, which explained the pieces failing every so often. I really didn’t really want to buy more hardware at the moment, but hardware has a mind of its own, so I was back at the Apple store looking at options.

My first thought was an iMac, but it looked to be older Apple technology. I didn’t want to bite that hook, and a few months later see the release of a whole new iteration. I’ve experimented with using the iPad on travel trips, and it works well, so I didn’t see the point in another laptop, which led me to the Mac Mini.

The immediate drawback appeared to be no keyboard, mouse, or monitor. Wait – I’ve already added those onto the laptop, and one thing we have in the house is plenty of spare monitors. No camera? Again, we have those sitting on a shelf not being used. So I ordered the Mac Mini. It arrived two days earlier than scheduled and as soon as I plugged in the keyboard, mouse, and monitor, it asked me if I wanted to connect to another Apple device and copy from that.

Now, Apple has tricked me before this way with my iPad, but I was prepared to give it a try, and surprisingly the Mac Book and Mini talked to each other and about five hours later everything was up and running on the Mini. I had some problems with license counts on some applications, and the Mac Book Pro NTFS app doesn’t work with the Apple M2 chip. Both took a little time but were easily resolved.

Total time to upgrade and iron out the kinks? Less than a day. It’s the easiest upgrade I’ve ever done.

Meaningless Error Messages

February 5, 2024 /

This past weekend was a catch up on the many admin tasks put aside while we were out of town for most of January. One of those catch up activities is to scan and shred documents. I moved to electronic storage for copies of bills and invoices about ten years ago and managed to retire and remove a full four-drawer filing cabinet.

Despite this, and having multiple backups, both on a physical hard drive and in the cloud, I still keep hard copies of some documents – contracts, and the final versions of manuscripts spring to mind immediately.

As you’re probably suspecting, there was quite a pile of paper to scan, and as I got through the pile, the Epson printer/scanner barfed. That’s not unusual as pages get caught and jammed every so often. This was different though. There was no paper jam icon. Instead I had an Epson error 100069 and a message telling me to restart the printer. Easy enough, and for good measure, I checked nothing was caught in the scanner feed.

Restarting went straight to the same error message and a suggestion to contact Epson technical support. So straight to the browser and a search, and a discovery.

There is nothing on the Epson site that acknowledges printer error messages, let alone a list of what they might be, and how to resolve them. Buried deep in the results of another search I found the title Epson’s triple secret error codes. Now that seemed promising.

And it was.

The 100069 message essentially means the scanning function has serious issues. It could be the scanner motor pulley (checked it and looked okay), or a failed scanner motor or scanner sensor or . . . Given the amount of scanning I do, my guess is it’s the sensor or motor, which almost certainly means a new printer.

I don’t begrudge the cost of the new printer (actually, yes I do 🙂 ). What does frustrate me is how hard it was to diagnose the problem. I love the printer, and will replace like with like, but come on Epson, you’re better than this.

Managing Chaos

March 30, 2023 /

It’s been a while since I posted, and directly related to the way my world seemed to spin out of control in February and March.

As well as closing down one project, and starting another, I was asked to help manage the response to an RFP. It didn’t sound much, but these things never do. Suddenly I found myself juggling three projects across three time zones and trying not to double or triple book meetings. It’s all very well to suggest using an online calendar, or paper to manage this all, but the overhead is horrible. I know, I tried both and I wanted a simpler option.

I’ve written about the Obsidian application several times on this blog, and no surprise, we’re going there again. One of the three projects I mentioned is tracking the progress of several thousand line items on a shared Excel spreadsheet. I got a handle on my piece of that by building a quick tracking board using the Obsidian Kanban plugin. I have about twenty distinct items in flight at any one time and finally I know the status of each one.

The calendar was a little harder. Eventually, I went really basic. Using the Obsidian Canvas feature, I built a column for each day of the week, then added a note for each meeting with the time, description, and a color code for the type – client or personal. Because Obsidian synchronizes seamlessly across all my devices, it’s a quick glance to see if a specific date and time are free.

For the moment, I think the chaos is under control. One of those three projects finishes at the end of March so the need for coordination should become less. Except you know how it is with chaos. It’s never completely tamed.

A Brave New World

May 13, 2022 /

Just over a week ago, I finally took the plunge, and ordered myself a new iPad, even though there wasn’t much wrong with the one I was using. It’s an iPad Air with 128GB of storage.

Even with Scrivener, and a whole bunch of other apps loaded, that iPad never quite made it as a secondary writing device. However, the iPad has done sterling service as a surfing and reading device. As time has progressed even that became suspect. Over the past few months, an increasing number of apps have failed updates because they need more recent versions of iOS. My iPad was running 12.5.5, and the latest is 15.4!

So I ordered a new iPad PRO with the Magic keyboard. When it arrived, I fired it up, started the side-by-side synchronization, and waited less than a minute before it failed! iOS 12.5.5 is too old to automatically sync with 15.4.

Well, the air was pretty blue for a few minutes as I wrestled with how to synchronize manually. The biggest time-sink was manually syncing Music, Books, and Kindle, but once that was done, and Dropbox and iCloud were configured, I realized one benefit of manual synchronization.

Over the years I’ve downloaded and tried several dozen apps. Some of them are no longer supported, and some I discarded after a few weeks. Clearing those out has certainly kept my home screen less cluttered, and helped me focus on the apps I use most frequently. That list has turned out to be Scrivener, Obsidian, Aeon Timeline, and the Office 365 Mobile apps. Plus of course Music, Books, and Kindle! I haven’t configured email, which was a deliberate decision.

The keyboard has also been a revelation. Over the years, I’ve experimented with several keyboards with various iPads, and they’ve never quite worked for me.

The Magic keyboard took a while to get used to, but once I did, it’s turned out to be all I could ask for. I’ve already written two stories mostly on the iPad, both in my office, and at various other locations.

Not having email or any messaging apps immediately available, has really helped reduce distractions, and my iPad is finally realizing the vision I had for it several years ago.

April Recap

April 26, 2021 /

I know we’re not quite at the end of April, but it seemed a good idea to put this together as I started some of my planning for May.

This week sees the publication of my second collection – A Frailty of Heroes, and I’ve worked out an efficient way to generate the covers etc. for paperbacks, so both Tales From the Puzzle Store, and A Frailty of Heroes will be out in paperback quite soon.

And Promise in the Gold, the anthology containing my story Searching for Dave is scheduled for release on May 4th.

It’s been a quiet writing month, but I did come across a note taking app called
Obsidian

I downloaded Obsidian just to look at, and after dabbling with it for an hour or so, browsed the forums. There’s quite an extensive section with discussions on knowledge management and Zettelkasten in particular. I’ve not mentioned Zettelkasten on this blog before. It’s a knowledge management system that’s intrigued me for some time but I’ve never quite grasped the concept.

I do now!

The phrasing in one of the articles just connected with the way my mind works and it all came together. I’ve got less than a hundred notes in the repository but I’m already seeing the potential. It’s certainly worth a look.

Now into May, and the next collection!

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