Update My PreviewMarkdown app, which provides Markdown file previews and icon thumbnails in Catalina, is now available from the Mac App Store.
macOS Catalina introduces a new mechanism for providing file previews and content-based file icons. The system for doing this is still QuickLook, but the standalone or app-hosted QuickLook generators that have been in use for some time have been deprecated in favour of delivering this functionality through app extensions.
I’ve just released version 1.1.0 of pdfmaker. You can view the source code here, and download an installer package here.
You can now select a single source file, not just a folder of files, and you specify the output PDF’s filename as part of the specified destination path, rather than separately (so the --name switch has been removed).
For a more detailed post about pdfmaker, click here.
Has iCloud and/or Safari just borked your bookmarks? This happened to me yesterday; here’s how I fixed it…
Google the title of this post and you will get plenty of results, but all almost all of them steer you toward opening the image or images in macOS’ Preview app and exporting to PDF. Yes, this method works, but it doesn’t give you much control over the process, and it’s not scriptable.
macOS has long included a command line tool called sips. It’s a comprehensive image manipulation tool that can also be used to apply ColorSync profiles. Being a command line tool, it’s available to be used in scripts written to perform repetitive tasks.
A case in point: I regularly apply a fixed set of attributes — height, width, format, dots-per-inch (DPI) resolution — to batches of image files, and sips allows me to do that without firing up Pixelmator or Gimp to change each image individually.
Continue readingI like solid-state storage, but there’s a time when you want the storage capacity that only a hard drive can bring — at least until SSDs become much, much cheaper. Of course, SD cards are pretty cheap to buy and to support in hardware which is why the format was chosen for the Raspberry Pi in the first place. At high capacities, the price:gigabyte ratio isn’t as attractive as that of a hard drive, but you get a single point of access for all your computer storage just as you do with any modern laptop or desktop.
Continue readingAdditional Check out how to view a Pi desktop on an iPad in this post.
I typically connect to my Raspberry Pis via SSH from my main machine, a Mac. This is fine for pretty much all of the tasks I perform on the Pis, but it only provides access to the commmand line. That’s not a problem for me, but I nonetheless wondered whether I might be able to access the Pi’s desktop UI remotely too.
Continue readingHere’s a very neat solution to the Raspberry Pi Zero USB ‘problem’: an add-on board that provides a pair of full-size USB ports. Yes, there are a number of small USB hubs you can disassemble and attach to your Zero, but this one has one smart advantage: you don’t need to solder it to your Pi.
Continue readingUpdate There’s now a new post containing revised, working instructions for this project.
Note This article was written some time ago, and the libraries used do not work with recent versions of macOS.
I regularly back-up my Raspberry Pi storage card because it’s so easy to damage the card with an improper shutdown or some such. I back up to a Mac, and you can read how I do it here. This wasn’t much of a chore in the early days when I was working with 4GB cards, but now I use 16GB Micro SDs and I know of folks who have much, much larger storage capacities thanks to never-cheaper cards. All this means the back-up takes a long time. So I wondered if I could create a gadget to tell me the task was done, allowing me to get on with other jobs in the meantime.
Continue readingThe Raspberry Pi Zero may have been out for a while, but it’s proving perishingly hard to get hold off. Unless, of course, you’re right at the head of the virtual queue when the online retailers put their latest batches on sale. Still, the little micro’s scarcity isn’t stopping hackers from coming up with ingenious solutions to its other limitations — too few USB ports, primarily — and accessory suppliers from issuing add-ons.
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smittytone messes with micros 