Thanks to Howard Oakley’s article Has Apple fixed recent Software Update problems? – The Eclectic Light Company I can confirm that no, Apple’s Content Caching service is not fixed. All Macs on my local network had out-of-date versions of XProtect. Content caching now disabled.
Great episode of Really Specific Stories podcast with @manton hosted by @martinfeld
Choosing a Twitter Client
This article was originally written for the February 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus
Update as of August 2022: I have basically settled on Twitterrific on iOS/iPadOS and Twitter on macOS.
I don’t love Twitter, but I use the heck out of it for one reason only: following the Australian National Basketball League (@NBL) and the community of passionate fans around it.
For a normal person with this use case, they would use the company-issued Twitter app and be done with it. But you know that I’m not normal (and not Martin Feld) so default apps are not generally in my wheelhouse. So it is with Twitter.
The best thing about a third-party app is the lack of in-line ads, and the chronological timeline. They bring other benefits (and some deficiencies) but these are the two reasons why I don’t accept usage of the Twitter app.
For the past year I’ve been using Tweetbot, but as is my wont, I elected not to auto-renew my subscription. They got a year of income from me, but the implied agreement with a subscription app is that I can (and should?) walk away at the end of the term to consider my options and assess the broader market.
A couple of months ago I purchased Spring. I like that this app is a one-time purchase, and it unlocks the app on all platforms (iOS, iPadOS, macOS). I’ve been using it in tandem with Tweetbot to see how it works. It’s… fine? I don’t like the way it shows the thread of a retweet within the context of the main timeline. I end up seeing the same tweets over and over, and it bloats the timeline. This is probably because I’m a timeline completionist. I can imagine that if one was dipping in and out, the additional context might be welcomed. I also struggle with the UX flow of the app. I think I understand its logic, but I find myself having to think about it. I don’t want to think that hard about Twitter.
My next option is Twitterrific. I used this many, many years ago. I’ve once again downloaded it for iOS but have yet to buy the subscription. I don’t like that the subscription doesn’t unlock the macOS version. That seems less than ideal. I have a memory of developers Iconfactory saying this was going to change, but I can’t confirm that, and as at the time of this article, it isn’t the case. So I will judge based on what is in front of me.
I like the airy, spacious feel of Twitterrific. Its big thing is the unified timeline where it puts replies and mentions inline with everything else. This seems less revolutionary these days.
I honestly don’t know what to do. Are there other options out there that I’m neglecting?
Which app do you use? Which one should I use?
Help!
And if you want to see lots of random comments about NBL basketball, follow @andrewcanion.
Adventures in SoftRAID
I’ve had an adventure with my OWC Thunderbay 4-disk drive array this week. I’ve emerged the other side, ultimately unscathed, but the journey certainly could have been easier. Let’s take a look.
It all started when I reached the capacity of my RAID-5 formatted array of 4 x 2TB drives. The 6TB of storage this provided me was almost full. This array sits in a cupboard connected to a headless M1 mac mini, so all operations need to be managed through screen sharing with Screens or SSH.
Incidentally, for many months now this RAID-array, with SoftRAID as the management software has been causing hardware panics and reboots on the M1 mac mini it’s connected to. My winding adventure has also been able to resolve this problem - although word is Ventura will eliminate some macOS bugs that were the root cause.
Preparing the Way
Back to the story… the SoftRAID software has a neat feature within it that allows the user to resize a RAID volume if the disks have additional capacity than is used by the volume. RAID 5 allows any one disk to be removed at a time and continue to operate. This feature I would use to my advantage to grow the size of my array.
I bought four new 4TB disks. One at a time, I removed an existing 2TB disk - setting the array to a degraded mode. I dropped in a replacement 4TB drive, and the Thunderbay took a day or so to rebuild the array using 2TB of the new 4TB. I did this same thing four times. It took days, but I ended up with my existing array of 4 x 2TB but now it was on 4 x 4TB disks.
No Resize for You ⛔️
Now I could use that nifty feature to upsize my volume to 12TB. I happily clicked the button and tried to enter my new volume size. Nothing. Nada. Zip. It wouldn’t let me go beyond the current 6TB. Oh no.
Off to the SoftRaid website and support forums I go. I eventually find a support note - and random threads in the forum - that there is a known bug in SoftRAID 6.3 that prevents resizing and growing RAID arrays. The solution? Use SoftRAID 6.0.3. Cool! I’ll do that. But SoftRAID 6.0.3 is only compatible with Big Sur. Not Monterey. Hmm. All my Mac’s are upgraded and I don’t fancy trying to downgrade any of them.
This is a dead end. There is no resolution. Except one. Erase the RAID array and start again, formatting the drives and going from scratch. ARGH! On the bright side, by formatting the drives I could select a 64kb stripe size instead of the recommended and preferred 16kb stripe size the RAID array was using now and that was causing the kernel panics on any macOS version less than Ventura for M1 Macs.
Belt and Suspenders
So I needed to find a way to backup 6TB of data.
I bought a USB 3.1 hard drive caddy. My friend Nick allowed me save some dollars by lending me two 6TB drives which I could use as backup media.
So now how to actually undertake the backup in a way that was resilient to failures, kernel panics and restarts? Running rsync from the command line was one option - but I’m not a command line guru and was worried I’d get my flags wrong and not properly copy metadata. Aha, I have a license for SuperDuper! That’ll do it! Except my license had expired so I couldn’t use it. Before I bought a new license, I checked in on Carbon Copy Cloner, which I know other people praise. Not only does it feature a more up-to-date (and informative) user interface, it offers a fully-featured 30-day trial. Brilliant!
I setup CCC to create a clone of my RAID. Off it went. It took about 24 hours. This was extended because what I did forget to do was erase the Time Machine backups that were on the array. I shouldn’t have kept them, but oh well, I left it alone.
Nick recommended I actually make two backups, because he couldn’t verify the quality of the disks he’d lent to me. Despite no errors being reported from the first backup, I did as suggested - setting CCC to do a repeat backup (but this time I deleted the Time Machine backups first). Another almost 24 hours passed.
Erase and Restore 😱
Now, onto erasure of the RAID array itself. This was the ‘gulp’ moment of the process. No going back from here. I re-initialised the drives and reset the volume, and thankfully, was able to choose a volume size of 12TB. And, as mentioned, I went with the 64kb stripe size to avoid kernel panics (even though I will probably regret that once Ventura is released with support for 16kb stripes).
RAID array ready, it was time to restore from my backup. Queue another long process. The next day, I check the completed restore, which… had errors. Nick, this is where I thank you for suggesting the ‘double backup’ strategy. While the backup drive had no errors writing content, it had troubles reading it. This is also where I was very thankful to have chosen Carbon Copy Cloner which offers a clear and helpful log file showing the failed files. There was only about a dozen that didn’t work, so I was able to restore all of these successfully from the second backup.
With this done, the RAID array was back! And almost everything picked up from where I left off. As I had transferred some invisible BackBlaze configuration files, I had to re-associate the new drive with my account, which was an easy toggle. I had to reset the Time Machine settings in the MacBook Airs that back up to it, so they would find the new drive. Finally, I had to reinitiate Content Caching on the mac mini by turning it off and on again.
After a week, I’m up and running once more.
Will I do all this again when Ventura is released and I want to leverage 16kb stripe sizing? I don’t know if it’s worth it, to be honest.
Lightyear, 2022 - ★★★½
Incredible animation and a non-stop action adventure, with just enough Pixar feels added.
I am loving Arc Browser, and I’m not even using the fancy “new” stuff it contains. Just it as a browser is a great experience.
I’m not an academic but that is not stopping me from futzing around with Zotero.
Enjoying a holiday read. A View to Die For by @cheri
Finished reading: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande 📚 I didn’t want a story justifying the use of checklists; I wanted a book providing a guide to the development of best practice checklists.
Still Loving Logseq
My love affair with Logseq continues unabated. I enjoy using the software - even through the weird and buggy bits. There is an immediacy to it that I like, which Craft has been unable to match. Craft was always too fussy, and I found myself becoming distracted by fonts and styles. The best comparison I can make is that Craft is the modern Microsoft Word, while Logseq would be BBEdit.
In E063 of @hemisphericviews we talk to @ericmwalk to find out how he is so good at Arcadia. Plus we pontificate profusely pertaining to Podcasting 2.0.
I made a caraway seed cake. When I was a schoolboy, my Mom would sometimes make one of these during the day. When I got home we would eat it alongside a cup of tea using our fancy tea cups. This cake today has provided me with both deliciousness and nostalgia.
Scotty Jackson has been working hard and putting up with my bug reports regarding his Shortcut to create a daily note in Agenda with links to calendar events and OmniFocus tasks. The Shortcut is now flawless - and amazing!
Logging into Agenda.app with Shortcuts
I’ve been getting back into Agenda as a work diary and daily tracker.
The app is brought to a new level of usefulness thanks to the ingenuity of Shortcuts developer Scotty Jackson.
This is all about my Rapid Log Shortcut, for use with the Agenda app … and my Agenda Daily Log Shortcut. The basic conceit of this Shortcut is that it appends provided input to note in Agenda.
Scotty works wonders with Shortcuts. This is a new version of his Rapid Logger that ties in with his also new Daily Log shortcut.
Check them out, they’re excellent examples of the power of Shortcuts as a programming application.
I’ve discovered another Read-it-Later service, Omnivore. Hard to find out much more about it though - has anybody else heard of it?
Console Games are Fun; Mobile Ones Aren't
Matt Birchler writing on his blog makes a succinct point.
Mobile games are a shit industry with shit companies making shit games that don’t exist to entertain, they exist to extract as much money as possible from a few whales who will spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
Fun is not the point.
Matt nails it. This is why I enjoy playing games on Xbox and Switch, and get nothing from mobile gaming.