As I already mentioned, the Mac Pro 2008 (10.10.5) I’m running the Retrospect server on, dropped its network connection for the first time in nine years (that I’m aware of) after installing Retrospect. Since then, it’s happened more than ten times, three times just during the last 24 hours.
Retrospect setup, tips and tricks
While setting up Retrospect, I ran into a number of problems, most of which I think I solved. I’m just noting some of them here, so I can find them again. Or so you can find them, perhaps. I’ll add to this post as I encounter more oddities.
Is there life after Crashplan?
Now that Crashplan for home is gone, or at least not long for this world, a lot of people will need to find another way of backing up their stuff. It’s tempting to get angry, and there are reasons to be, but in the end you have to forget about all that and move on. Even though you may have months, or even a year, before Crashplan stops working, there is another reason you have to get something up right now, namely file histories.
Parallels protects us from Microsoft
I just discovered that Parallels v12 has a really nice feature, namely to stop Windows from doing updates except for a predetermined period. Brilliant! It’s also a sad testament to what Microsoft has done when it comes to respect for the user’s time and work.
“App translocation”
When applications are in “quarantine” on OSX after being downloaded, they are run in a kind of sandbox; they’re “translocated”. You don’t really see this, but weird things then happen. For instance, Little Snitch won’t let you create “forever” rules on the fly, claiming your app isn’t in “/Applications”, which it clearly is if you check in Finder.
The problem is that the extended quarantine attribute is set, and needs to be reset (at least if you trust the application). Too bad Apple didn’t provide a GUI way of doing that, so here goes the magic incantation (assuming WebStorm is the problem in the example):
First check if the attribute is set:
xattr /Applications/Webstorm.app/
com.apple.quarantine
Then if you see that it is, reset it:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Webstorm.app/
…and there you go. Life is good again.
Static route on OSX
I have this 2008 Mac Pro running 10.10 connected to two networks, one from each interface. Now, number 1 is connected to a slower WAN, but is the route I need to take to cross a VPN tunnel to a customer site. Number 2 should be used for everything else.
The benefit of quality
35 years ago, I bought a Fluke 77 multimeter (series I), which was pretty expensive by the standards of the day. I’ve used it with moderate intensity since then, changing the battery every couple of years, but not having it repaired or calibrated. I never had anything to calibrate it against, anyway.
Checking phone status
Just found out about two services where you can check if any mobile phone is lost or stolen by entering the IMEI:
That includes Trump himself
A number of tech companies have filed an amicus brief in a suit against Trump’s executive order:
“Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list, including Apple, Kraft, Ford, General Electric, AT&T, Google, McDonald’s, Boeing, and Disney,” it said. The briefing also notes prominent immigrant and refugee writers, scholars and Nobel Laureates.
Now, that actually includes Trump himself. His mother and all his grandparents were immigrants.
(I’m talking about “immigrants or their children”, not “scholars and Nobel Laureates”, obviously.)
Walleräng M.01
After pining for it for half a year, I finally got my courage (and credit cards) together and bought the Walleräng M.01 electric bike (the 2017 model; yes, even bikes have model years now). The closest store carrying it is almost a 100 km away, but that’s ok. They only had one, but that’s ok, too. The price is a hefty 31,900 SEK (around $3,400), but considering the build quality and the components, it’s not remarkably high. We’re not in eye-watering territory, at least.
