Kibbles & Bytes Blog

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  • Expanding Your View

    As I mentioned, I am using two displays now so I thought I would write up a short article on just how you can set up a multiple display situation. There are three different ways that you can use multiple displays:

    *Expand Your Desktop*
    This is what I am doing and I have one continuous desktop that stretches across two 27-inch monitors and my MacBook Pro display. Move your pointer past the edge of one display and it appears on the other display. At first, your primary display has all of your desktop icons and open app windows. You can drag them to the other display as needed.

    *Set Up Mirroring*
    Video mirroring shows the same desktop and windows on multiple displays at the same time. You can use it to view content such as photos or videos on a larger display or HDTV.

    *Closed Laptop Mode*
    You can use an external display or projector with a Mac notebook while its built-in display is closed. This is known as closed-clamshell or closed-display mode.

    I will go over each of these but will concentrate upon the extended desktop. I often have two browsers, an email client, Messages, Skype, Numbers, Pages, our K9 database and other windows open when I am working. It does get crowded, especially if I am working on the 13-inch display on my MacBook Pro. Setting up an extended desktop allows me to spread out the work in a much more organized fashion.

    Here’s how to set up an extended desktop:
    Connect and turn on your additional display or displays. I have mine connected to two of the USB-C ports on my MacBook Pro.

    * Open System Preferences.
    * Choose Displays.
    * Click the Arrangement tab.
    * Make sure that the Mirror Displays checkbox isn’t selected.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5164.jpg!

    * Each display has a menu bar.

    * Each display can have full-screen apps. To take an app full screen, click the green button in the upper-left corner of the app window. Or press Control-Command-F.

    * You can use Mission Control to organize windows and full-screen apps across your displays.

    * If the Dock is positioned at the bottom of your screen, you can view it on any one of your screens by moving your pointer to the bottom edge of that screen. This one had me baffled for a long time as my dock would end up on the wrong display and I could not figure out how to get it back. But moving the cursor to the bottom of the display where you want the dock works every time.

    *Arrange your displays*
    I don’t think I have the ultimate set up yet but I am playing with positioning my displays. Using the Display pane of Systems Preferences you can tell your Mac where your displays are in relation to each other. Use this feature so that your connected displays match their real-world location when you move between windows.

    You can select which display has the Finder’s menu bar and arrange them just right so that mouse movements are smooth from one to the other. In the picture of my setup here you will see that I set the MacBook Pro display much lower than my others. This makes it so when I am a moving between displays it is totally fluid.

    The blue boxes in the Arrangement pane represent all displays that you’ve connected to your Mac. The size of each box represents the current resolution of each display.

    The white bar at the top of the blue box identifies your primary display. The primary display is where your desktop icons and open app windows first appear. To make a different display your primary display, drag the white bar to the box that represents that display.

    *Setting up Mirroring*

    Video mirroring shows the same desktop and windows on multiple displays at the same time. You can use it to view content such as photos or videos on a larger display or HDTV.

    Here’s how to set up video mirroring:
    * Connect and turn on your additional display.
    * Choose System Preferences.
    * Choose Displays.
    * Click the Arrangement tab.
    * In the lower-left corner of the Arrangement pane, select “Mirror Displays.”

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5165.png!

    In OS X Mavericks or later, you can add a status menu bar item to make it easier to mirror your displays. Use this menu to select an Apple TV or television to use as a display. It appears when you connect to an HDTV, or when an Apple TV is available on your network. To add the menu to the top of your screen, select “Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available.”

    *Closed Laptop Mode*

    To use closed laptop mode you need:

    * An AC power adapter
    * An external keyboard and mouse or trackpad, either USB or wireless
    * A USB-C to USB adapter if you’re using a USB mouse or keyboard with MacBook (2015 and later) or MacBook Pro (2016 and later)
    * An external display or projector

    Use these steps to enable closed-display mode.

    If the external display isn’t recognized when it’s connected and your Mac is powered on, try connecting the display while your computer is asleep or off. Then wake or turn on the computer after you connect the display.

    If you’re using a USB keyboard and mouse:
    * Make sure that your Mac is plugged into AC power
    * Connect a USB keyboard and mouse to your Mac.
    * With your Mac turned on and the display open, connect the Mac to the appropriate port on the external display or projector and turn the display or projector on. Use an appropriate Apple video adapter if necessary.
    * After your Mac laptop’s Desktop appears on the external display, close the computer’s lid.

    When you close the lid:
    In OS X Lion 10.7 and later, the external display changes to a blue screen, then shows your Desktop.

    You can now use your Mac laptop as you normally would with a USB keyboard and mouse.

    If you’re using a wireless keyboard and mouse:
    * Make sure that your Mac laptop is plugged in using the AC power adapter.
    * Verify that Bluetooth is turned on
    * Pair your Bluetooth keyboard or mouse with your Mac.
    * In the Bluetooth pane of System Preferences, click Advanced and make sure the checkbox next to Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer is selected.
    * With your Mac turned on and the display open, connect the Mac to the appropriate port on the external display or projector and turn the display or projector on.
    * After your Mac notebook’s Desktop appears on the external display, close the computer’s lid.

    You can now use your Mac notebook as you normally would with a wireless keyboard and mouse.
    It’s best to put your Mac to sleep by choosing Apple menu > Sleep before disconnecting your display

    This new BenQ display has a little shelf for the MacBook Pro to sit on when using closed mode but I find it convenient to have that third display as even more desktop.

    With all these displays I must look like my friend Larz Barber at Merrill Lynch.

  • Delete Files In Terminal

    **Warning this is permanent**

    You CANNOT RECOVER FILES with method. So you have a file that you don’t want anymore, you can skip the steps in the GUI (graphic user interface). In terminal it is one command, but there is no “Trashcan” you can recover from.

    To do this open up terminal and type:

    rm {file path of file you want to delete}

    Or is this is not enough you can remove entire directories. “rm-r” stands for remove directory and the syntax looks like this:

    rmdir {the file path itself}

    Now before you even just play with this command, make sure you have a Time Machine back up. It’s always just good to have a Time Machine back up, but if you make a mistake with this command, a backup may be your only way to recover data.

  • Breathe Life Into Your Old Mac

    It’s always a sad day when you realize your older Mac isn’t quite performing how it used to. Perhaps it’s a bit sluggish to open certain applications. Perhaps the time it takes to boot seems to be getting longer and longer. And perhaps all that data you’ve accumulated over the years has almost filled up your storage space. It’s realizations like this that can sometimes push users to prematurely purchasing a more up to date model. Fortunately, there are a few ways to breathe a bit of “life” into your older machine.

    First and foremost, performing backups is always recommended before making any significant changes to your machine. 

    If your machine has accumulated some desktop or toolbar junk seemingly inexplicably, you may have unintentionally acquired some malware. Tracing back to the genesis of this malicious software can be difficult, especially with older Macs, but luckily there’s a free application out there called Malware Bytes that does the hard work for you. Malware Bytes scans your hard drive for any traces of this malicious software and walks you through the removal process step by step. After the removal process you may notice your computer runs much more smoothly than it did before. 

    Having a lot of files on your desktop can be convenient, but when you boot your machine it can certainly bog down to the startup time, as your machine will have to load all of those items, one by one in order to complete the startup process. Instead of having a lot of files all neatly organized on your desktop, I recommend creating a folder called ‘Desktop’ and storing all your most frequently used or opened files there. 

    And speaking of storing files…

    Having your files just a few clicks away is great, but keeping too many files on your hard drive is a surefire way to keep your machine sluggish. In this case, an external hard drive is your best friend. I personally keep my Photos library and iTunes library on two separate external hard drives. Granted, doing this is also a bit of a process worthy of some research before deciding to do so, but it’s definitely kept my Mid-2012 MacBook Pro trucking right along in its oncoming golden years. 

    Along those lines, a few times a year I’ll go delving into the contents of my hard drive and do some manual housekeeping to keep things tidy and running smoothly.

  • Too Many Passwords!

    Most of us have been using the Internet for many years, and have created accounts with hundreds of different Internet services. After a certain point, one cannot reasonably be expected to remember the passwords to all of their different accounts, especially since many websites have different requirements for password complexity. Having to remember too many different passwords is a common frustration we see here at Small Dog.

    This is a problem inherent in the username/password system. When the system was introduced decades ago, no one anticipated having to remember hundreds of different usernames and passwords. Other methods for authentication, like biometrics, have slowly become supported by more and more hardware and software developers, like Apple’s Touch ID, however there is still no viable system for authentication that can be used by virtually any device, so username/password has remained the most dominant method.

    The best solution to the problem of having too many passwords is to install a password manager. A password manager is an application that securely stores a users passwords, so that only one password is required to access any of them.

    The password manager I would recommend is LastPass. LastPass offers a desktop application, a browser extension, and a mobile app. A premium account is only $1 per month, and all of the core features are available with a free account. With LastPass, any time you see a password prompt, you only need to enter your LastPass password, and LastPass will find, decrypt, and enter your password to that service.

  • The Boston Celtics got their man when they signed Gordon Hayward as a free agent. I have been sneaking off to watch the NBA Summer league games (Grace disapproves) and our newest rookie Jayson Tatum is looking great, too. I see banner #18 in the future!

    Meanwhile, Grace and I are planning our annual pilgrimage to Wrigley Field in Chicago. We are celebrating our 50th anniversary this October and with any luck the Cubbies will be there in the post-season but we are heading there for a couple games in August. Anyone know anyone with awesome tickets? We went on one of our first dates at Wrigley Field and we are both fanatical Cubs fans so we go every year. Does anyone remember “Riverview Park”:http://www.defunctparks.com/abandoned/il/chicago-illinois-riverview-amusement-park/ – that is where we had our first date and of course, the park closed forever shortly after that.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_

  • Tasty Waves, Cool Buzz

    The waves I’m going to talk about here are a little bit different than the “tasty” waves Jeff Spicoli was looking for in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but they’re still interesting and crucial to modern technology. First though, I need to distinguish what kind of waves I’m talking about. In previous articles, I talked about the electromagnetic spectrum. That spectrum itself is composed of waves too, and we describe electromagnetic radiation waves using wave terminology, such as frequency, amplitude and wavelength.

    The waves I want to talk about here though are different. These waves are more accurately described as “electronic signals”. A very basic and simple example of this kind of wave is AC electricity. The voltage varies according to a perfect sine wave up and down, positive to negative. It has a frequency (in the US, 60Hz). It has an amplitude, which is 170V for 120VAC. So this signal is a wave, a sine wave, but it’s not really inherent. We can (and do) create AC electricity with all sorts of frequencies and amplitudes. These waves can also be highly irregular and change over time rapidly.

    AC electricity is typically a sine wave because of the rotational methods by which most AC electricity is generated. Any time you have rotation and you’re stretching it over time you’re likely going to see something that resembles a sine wave somewhere along the line. The fact that our normal electricity comes in the form of AC isn’t wasted. We use the sine wave all the time. Induction motors for example use the rising and falling pulses of the wave to “kick” the motor armature into motion. The proper function of the motor depends on the sine wave input. We also use the frequency of the AC signal as a way for certain electronics to keep time.

    Sine waves aren’t the only signals we create and use. In fact, while sine waves might be ubiquitous in industrial operations where AC electricity is being used directly, in the consumer world, the square wave dominates. A square wave looks exactly like you’d expect, a square. Unlike the sine wave which gradually increases over time, the square wave goes from one extreme to another almost instantly. Then it holds at some value before dropping back down again. Computers would not function without square waves. A square wave clock signal is like the ultimate orchestral conductor inside of every CPU. Without that signal, the 1s and 0s would be in chaos. Every time the square wave clock signal pulses, one step of the computational cycle can occur. When I built a computer from scratch in college, keeping the clock signal at a reasonable speed was critical.

    Another huge use of square waves is in something called PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). PWM can be used to encode a message into a pulsing signal (like a clock signal) and then be transmitted via conventional means. This has applications in telecommunications, though it’s used less today with the advent of digital communications. PWM is also used in photovoltaic charging algorithms. When a battery is depleted, the pulses will be long in duration since the battery needs to be charged. As the battery becomes more charged, the pulses become shorter, thereby delivering less average current to the battery. PWM also has applications in just about any instance where precise motor control is required. Servo motors rely on PWM to function and normal, spinning motors can be adjusted for speed and torque with digital controllers. All CPU fans are controlled by this mechanism. Even my sewing machine relies on PWM. When I press on the foot pedal just a little bit, the motor only spins very slowly. Before PWM, this would’ve been accomplished using a variable resistor. A variable resistor would basically “burn off” excess power in the form of heat. This is wasteful and dangerous. If it got too hot, you could start a fire, or burn your foot. PWM simply sends shorter pulses of power to the motor causing it to spin more slowly. There’s no dangerous “burn off” of excess power. In fact, it’s only using the exact amount of power it needs.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5148.png!

    Square waves aren’t even the end of the story. There are triangle waves, and sawtooth waves and just about any other shape you can imagine (though they might not have any practical use). As an amateur composer of electronic music, the square, triangle and sawtooth waves are the bread and butter of synthesized sounds.

    I’m not sure if I’ve changed Jeff Spicoli’s mind on these waves, but hopefully others have found this explanation of waves and signals to be interesting.

  • Heading into the Library Stacks

    I remember way back when, that Grace and I would go to the Chicago Public library to “do our homework”. When we actually did some homework the reference section was my favorite. That and looking at the huge microfiche library of old copies of the Chicago Tribune.

    Did you know that Apple hid a huge reference library in your Mac?

    You’re probably used to Mac apps using red underlines to mark misspelled words, but did you know that macOS has long included a fully-featured Dictionary app as well? It provides quick access to definitions and synonyms in the New Oxford American Dictionary and the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, along with definitions of Apple-specific words like AppleCare and MacTCP. But that’s far from all it can do.

    First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Launch the Dictionary app from your Applications folder and then type a word or phrase into the Search field. As you type, Dictionary starts looking up words that match what you’ve typed so far–you don’t even have to press Return. If more than one word matches what you’ve typed, click the desired word in the sidebar.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5150.png!

    Notice the lozenges below the toolbar, representing the references that Dictionary can consult, and no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you–Dictionary can look things up in Wikipedia if your Mac has an Internet connection. In short, Dictionary gives you instant access to a dictionary, a thesaurus, and an encyclopedia containing over 5.4 million articles in English alone! You can click a reference’s lozenge to limit your search, or select All to scan all of them.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5151.png!

    If you want to look up words in another language, or even just British English, Dictionary has you covered, with a long list of other reference works. Choose Dictionary > Preferences and select those you’d like to use. You can drag the selected entries into the order you want their lozenges to appear below the toolbar.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5152.png!

    Once you’re in a definition, note that you can copy text for use in other apps–always helpful when wading into grammar and usage arguments on the Internet. More generally, you can click any word in Dictionary’s main pane to look it up instantly. If dictionaries had been this much fun in school, we’d have larger vocabularies! Use the Back and Forward arrow buttons to navigate among your recently looked-up words.

    As helpful as the Dictionary app is, you probably don’t want to leave it running all the time. Happily, Apple has provided quite a few shortcut methods for looking up words:

    * Command-Space to invoke Spotlight, and enter your search term.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5153.png!

    * Select a word, and then choose AppName > Services > Look Up in Dictionary to launch Dictionary and search for that word. This trick should work in most apps, but won’t work in all. If the Look Up in Dictionary command doesn’t appear, make sure it’s enabled in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, in the Searching category.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5154.png!

    * Last but best, hover over a word or phrase with the cursor and either press Command-Control-D or Control-click the word and choose Look Up “word.” If the app supports it, macOS displays a popover with the definition or Wikipedia article. If you have a trackpad, you can also do a force-click or three-finger tap on the selected word–make sure the “Look up & data detectors” checkbox is selected in System Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click.

    Now that you know how to take full advantage of the reference library that Apple has built into macOS, it’s time to get in touch with your inner logophile (feel free to look that one up).

  • Stay Cool

    Summer officially started this week. Has anyone checked with Mother Nature? Are we sure she got the memo? Seriously, sometimes I can’t tell…

  • All of us at Small Dog Electronics send our best wishes for a safe and happy Independence Day. I’ll be under the Prickly Mountain float in the parade pushing our people-powered creation just as I have done for 4 decades! Then it is the traditional strawberry daiquiri party with mountain croquet and bocce at my house. My fingers are red from cutting up strawberries by the end of the day!

    ??We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…??

    The most powerful statement ever on human rights and the relation of government to the governed. We celebrate our independence on Tuesday, keeping these sage words in mind.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_

  • Hot and Cold

    Last week’s article on cooling got away from me a little bit. I had actually intended to discuss a very interesting, lesser known cooling method but it was necessary to lay the groundwork of how temperature works. That’ll make this article a bit shorter and to the point.

    If you want to cool a large area, like a server room, a conventional air conditioner will always be your best bet. For the job, they are the most efficient. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to refer to air conditioners by a more technically accurate name: heat pumps. This is what air conditioners are actually doing. They are pumping heat from one area to another. Equipment in our server room generates heat, and the heat pump effectively absorbs that heat and pumps it outside. The heat in the server room heats up the cool decompressed gas and then this warmed, decompressed gas is directed outside, where its acquired heat will be dumped by a heat sink. Heat pumps can also work in reverse to warm an area. If our server room was an iguana habitat, a heat pump would take the small amount of heat present in cool, outside air, and compress the gas causing it to heat up, and then vent this heat, via a heat sink, into our iguana habitat.

    Generally speaking, any cooling mechanism has a heating component to it. This type of heating/cooling all works by moving heat energy around. Other types of heating and cooling are called exothermic and endothermic chemical reactions, respectively. An exothermic reaction converts potential chemical energy into heat energy. An endothermic reaction requires more energy input (in the form of ambient heat) so the result is the reactants become cool because they’re absorbing the heat. The applications for this type of heating and cooling are limited, but specific. For example, chemical hand warmers that heat up when you break them, or ice packs that cool when you break them.

    What if you had a small area, or even a small device that you needed to precisely cool, to within fractions of a degree? Chemical reactions and compressed gasses cannot be controlled precisely enough for this task. Enter the solid state Peltier effect. Any time you have two different types of metals joined together, heat energy can be generated or removed at the junction when electric current is passed through it. This will work with any two metals, but for high performance, useable cooling, Peltier devices normally use P N semiconductor junctions, and there are often dozens of them all packed into single wafer. When current is applied, one side of the wafer will become hot, and the other side will become cool. If left this way, the device can eventually self-consume. However, if you place heat sinks on both sides, the heat being “pumped” to one side of the wafer can be dumped. A heat sink on the cool side will allow for better cooling by providing more surface area for heat energy to pass through the device, to the hot side. Remember, heat energy is everywhere. What we call “cool” is just less heat. Unless “cool” is absolute zero, there’s still heat energy there.

    Because these junctions can be manufactured at virtually any size, and current through them precisely controlled, they can create extremely precise temperatures. They have no moving parts, no refrigerant gas, compact and flexible shapes, can be used in almost any environment and have far, far longer service life than a refrigerant-based heat pump. Their disadvantages are that they are not very energy efficient in terms of cooling/heating performance vs a refrigerant-based system and they are unable to create large temperature differentials. A typical device will only be able to create a temperature difference of 70 degrees celsius between the hot and cool side.

    Disadvantages aside, these Peltier coolers have many applications. Any small device (even USB-powered) that advertises cooling ability, will be a Peltier device. Small 12V coolers for vehicles often use Peltier elements. Spacecraft use them to reduce temperature differences on the spacecraft itself by pumping the heat generated by exposure to the sun to the shaded side of the craft. Some lasers use the coolers as part of the laser circuitry to maintain a precise temperature to stabilize the laser wavelength. Sometimes the coolers are even used as active (as opposed to passive) cooling devices for computer equipment.

    I think this about wraps up most of the heating/cooling methods I’m aware of. If there are any that I’ve forgotten about, or anything else you’d like to know about, send me an email.