Archive for March, 2022
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/14
After years of use, the cooling fans of my 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro 2015 model got quite a bit dirty, causing them to run louder and louder.
The video below the fold shows how to clean them: 11 screws, some isopropyl alcohol, (dry!) compressed, and caution for the connector-clips connecting the bottom plate.
It helps having a:
- pentalobe P5 screwdriver
- plastic spudger so separate the bottom plate (especially be careful with the connector-clips)
- magnet to stick the screws to, as they are really tiny and it is easy to loose them
I got the pentalobe screwdriver with some spare screws from the German Amazon: [Archive.is] Kricson Ersatzschrauben MacBook Pro – 4 Pack Gummi: Amazon.de: Computer & Zubehör
You can get a similar one from the USA Amazon site: [Archive.is] Amazon.com: 8 Pack Rubber Case Feet + Set of 20pcs Repair Replacement Screw + 1pcs 5 Point Pentalobe Screwdriver for Unibody MacBook Pro Retina A1425 A1502 A1398 13″ 15″ Bottom Case(Retina): Computers & Accessories
Two important tips:
- After using isopropyl alcohol, let the parts dry
- Hold the fans when spraying compressed air (to prevent the fan-motors to create over-voltage, and to prevent the fans spinning faster than they are rated for)
The iFixit pictures for replacing the SSD help greatly to see how to remove and re-attach the back-cover, and where the various parts are inside the machines.
Note the screws differ between the 13-inch and 15-inch models!
–jeroen
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Posted in Apple, Mac, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/11
The below cartoon is way more important than many think, because in discussions, often “public transport” and especially “automobility system” are replaced (for instance by “culture”, “climate change”, “entertainment”, “education”).
It is important to think about and understand why you call something subsidy or investment (or maybe even both).
[Wayback] Cycling Professor on Twitter: “Money for the public transport system is called SUBSIDY Money for the automobility system is called INVESTMENT ¯_(ツ)_/¯… “, originally from [Wayback/Archive.is] Dan Wasserman for March 02, 2012 – GoComics:

–jeroen
Posted in About, FoodForThought, Personal | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/11
Note just because of a Mac being incompatible, but also because of 32-bit apps being incompatible ruling out Cataline (10.15) or newer.
[Wayback] How to get old versions of macOS – Apple Support
If your Mac isn’t compadmgtible with the latest macOS, you might still be able to upgrade to an earlier macOS, such as macOS Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, or El Capitan.
…
Download macOS
It takes time to download and install macOS, so make sure that you’re plugged into AC power and have a reliable internet connection.
Safari uses these links to find the old installers in the App Store. After downloading from the App Store, the installer opens automatically.
- macOS Catalina 10.15 can upgrade Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks
- macOS Mojave 10.14 can upgrade High Sierra, Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion
- macOS High Sierra 10.13 can upgrade Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion
Safari downloads the following older installers as a disk image named InstallOS.dmg or InstallMacOSX.dmg. Open the disk image, then open the .pkg installer inside the disk image. It installs an app named Install [Version Name]. Open that app from your Applications folder to begin installing the operating system.
- [Wayback] macOS Sierra 10.12 (InstallOS.dmg) can upgrade El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, or Lion
- [Wayback] OS X El Capitan 10.11 (InstallMacOSX.dmg) can upgrade Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard
- [Wayback] OS X Yosemite 10.10 (InstallMacOSX.dmg) can upgrade Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard
links for 10.13 and newer on the Apple site are App-Store only, so you need to download, then save the installer in a safe place.
Alternative download methods and notes on certificate expirations:
–jeroen
Posted in Apple, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, macOS 10.12 Sierra, macOS 10.13 High Sierra, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/11
Basically: just because.
[Archive.is] Why 42 ? – Google Groups where Douglas Adams gave the answer himself:
The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an
ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations,
base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk,
stared into the garden and thought ’42 will do’ I typed it out. End of story.Best,Douglas Adams
The full thread is a nice read (:
Via many sources, including [WayBack] Why 42? Reported wrong, again and again, but … The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number,… – Jürgen Christoffel – Google+ which has a comment pointing to the below brilliant video.
–jeroen
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Posted in Fun, History | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/10
I had a vague recollection of this was possible, so I was glad to find it back after having recovered from all cancer treatments at [Wayback] Use a second laptop as an extended monitor with Windows 10 wireless displays – Scott Hanselman’s Blog.
The feature is called “Miracast” and has a built-in Windows 10 implementation for both sending and receiving not just over WiFi, but also over the local fixed ethernet network: [Wayback] Miracast on existing wireless network or LAN – Surface Hub | Microsoft Docs.
With such support, I’d expected an “it works out of the box” experience. It is far from that, so let me show what I bumped into and how I finally did not get it working.
TL;DR
- Windows will tell you when it doesn’t work
- Windows won’t tell you why it doesn’t work
- The tooling to try to find out why it doesn’t work is not sufficient: documentation is scarce and far from complete
When out of luck
I tried two machines with Intel processors having built-in graphics engines.
Thinkpad T510
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Posted in Power User, T510, ThinkPad, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/10
Windows 10 on desktops still defaults to the Sleep option to be available in any Power action while the Hibernation option is unavailable.
This is odd now that most systems have fast and sizable SSD options: from a power loss perspective, Hibernate is much safer than Sleep on desktop machines.
[Wayback] How To Fix Missing Hibernation Option On Windows 10 explains how to restore the Hibernate option.
It is a three step process, partial on the Administrator elevated command-line, part in the UI. I wish all could be done on the commandline
- Enable an hibernation file:
powercfg.exe /hibernate on
- Start the “Power Options” control panel applet:
powercfg.cpl
- In the UI, under “Choose what the power buttons do”, disable “Sleep” and enable “Hibernate” (you might need to “Change settings that are currently unavailable” first), then press “Save changes”
I have not tried yet, but these Registry Values under [Wayback]HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FlyoutMenuSettings might just cut it, but I am not sure it is complete:
ShowHibernateOption with values 0 and 1
ShowSleepOption with values 0 and 1
There is also a value ShowLockOption that defaults to 1.
Two git places where these registry values are mentioned:
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/10
When writing this, [Wayback/Archive.is] ftfy · PyPI:history indicates ftfy was already at 6.0.3.
It is still my goto tool for figuring out the cause of Mojibake. I remember writing about it the first time in 2016 (see the ftfy category) when it was already at version 3.0, discovering it after a few Mojibake posts.
By now it even understands right-to-left Mojibake garbage:
[Archive.is] Elia Robyn Speer on Twitter: “ftfy 5.8 is out! … A user reported that Hebrew text wasn’t being fixed, and this made me think about how to expand some of the trickier cases to non-Latin alphabets.”
Mojibake mishaps still happen a lot, so by now I hope I will have done a Mojibake themed Delphi talk at one or more conferences.
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Posted in !!con (bangbangcon), About, Autistic Spectrum/Autism, Cancer, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Encoding, Event, ftfy, Mojibake, Personal, Python, Rectum cancer, Scripting, Software Development, Unicode | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/09
Not sure why, but most of my Visual Studio configurations have the “PowerShell: Launch Current File w/Args” debug configuration template. So here is the JSON you need to add in your launch.json configuration file.
{
"type": "PowerShell",
"request": "launch",
"name": "PowerShell Launch Current File w/Args Prompt",
"script": "${file}",
"args": [
"${command:SpecifyScriptArgs}"
],
"cwd": "${file}"
}
The trick is the bold part that prompts Visual Studio for the arguments.
Note: in order to have such a file, you need to have opened a folder in Visual Studio Code first, then open a PowerShell script file from that directory second.
Related:
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »