Kibbles & Bytes Blog

We are living in a century unlike any other. There are countless examples of modern tech that have reimagined and rebuilt the way we create, calculate, share and store information, stay connected to countless types of electrical current (both wired and wireless), precisely and efficiently measure/record, organize and shape materials and even automate processes in our daily lives and on larger scales. With such rapid and diverse expansion in the power and capabilities of our machines and the evolution of the industry of mass-produced highly-integrated systems that are more powerful every year, how can we be expected to stay connected to our natural world?

Many have tried to argue that technology is natural, and in some sense of the word that’s very true; all equipment is made from natural resources after all. That said, there is quite a lot of processing and refining that occurs between the mining of precious minerals, oil fracking and harvesting of legitimately natural resources in the creation of new hardware. How many people and machines alike have contributed to the long production line to enable this amount of complexity in what should be very simple devices. My point is that we cannot consider ourselves sustainable as a species if we are this dependent on highly refined and proprietary tech. I hope for a world where we don’t have ports, there are no operating systems and we have no need for software updates or integrated hardware replacement. It’s fully unrealistic to even hope for a full return to our natural roots, so I won’t recommend that. Instead, can we find a compromise? How about tech that integrates more seamlessly with nature, using trees and their leaves for solar power, storing data and power in resources like water or some kind of abundant and universally-occurring source?

I am very excited about our “**GoalZero Solar**”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?search=goal+zero power devices as well as the “**OutdoorTech**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/?mmfg%5B0%5D=Outdoor+Tech lineup has some great rechargeable products. Apple is doing what they can to simplify computer use and they’ve made huge leaps and bounds in the past 10 years alone, the question really is – where do we go from here?

Never forget that technically all we need to survive is shelter, food and water. Entertainment, creative expression and social connection are of course hallmarks of a good life, and use of technology to help make our lives more enjoyable, efficient and fulfilling is only natural. We must always ask ourselves – is our technology living up to those goals? Come in and let’s philosophize about it. We are living in the future and we have the power to change the world and support a truly sustainable lifestyle. I know it’s possible to integrate nature and tech in ways that we cannot even fully conceptualize yet, so if you’re an explorer like me, let’s work together to rethink the way we connect with electronics.

One of the most common repair symptoms we see at Small Dog is “My computer is slow.” Slowness can have many different causes, and it’s not always easy to figure out which one it is. However, it is also important to understand that a certain amount of software performance degradation over time is normal and expected.

Every time you use a computer or other device, its operating system is modified. You may not always be able to see it, but most OSes have many background processes that keep logs of system errors, even invisible errors, and other types of data that it can use for troubleshooting. If you open an application and it crashes, it’s a pretty safe bet that a line of text was added to a log file somewhere on your computer.

Installing applications on a computer or downloading files to it also will have a tiny impact on performance and system stability. Each impact is typically negligible, but over several years, it can add up and create noticeable slowness. This is not something that can ever be fully eliminated by an operating system, due to the basic principle that as the complexity of a software system increases, with no change in hardware, the performance will always decrease. The phenomenon is similar to the fact that if a vehicle has a small amount of weight added to it, it will require slightly more fuel in order to travel the same distance as before.

There is a common misconception that computers can easily be “cleaned up” to eliminate software performance issues. It is true that in some cases there are startup items that can be disabled or storage space freed if it is almost full, but in most cases the performance issues are so deeply embedded into the system that the only real solution is to erase the computer, reinstall the operating system, and restore the critical applications and data.

I personally do a full restore of my operating system at least twice per year, even if my computer is not having any problems, as I want to be sure that it is running as efficiently as it can. You can do this on your own Mac by following Apple’s instructions “here”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 or we can perform this service at any Small Dog location for **$45**. As always, make sure you have a full backup of any important data before attempting to perform any repairs or maintenance.

“**GeekTool**”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geektool/id456877552?mt=12 is an awesome application for your Mac desktop that lets you configure and style widgets with various information to display directly on your desktop. It’s a bit like Dashboard only far more versatile.

Despite its name, you don’t actually have to be a geek to use geektool, although if you already know or are willing to research some console commands, it can become a very powerful productivity tool. Unlike Dashboard widgets, which are configured mainly by drag-and-drop, GeekTool’s “Geeklets” often require some coding or manual configuration to perform more advanced tasks.

Fortunately, if you just want to play around to get a taste of what’s possible, there are many, many pre-configured geeklets out there that can simply be activated by downloading them and putting them in the position you desire. This is a great way to start, because you can see how they are configured and with a little reverse engineering, you can customize them to your liking.

As you can see from the main configuration window, there are 4 types of Geeklets that you can create.

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* Shell geeklets let you display the output of just about any UNIX shell command directly on your desktop. You can create a time and date widget by dragging the shell icon to your desktop and configuring it with the terminal command “date” which will output the current time and date, depending on the flags you provide it. For example “date ‘+%A, %b %d'” will display something like “Monday, May 01”. From there, you can configure the font, color and position of the text and its background. More advanced users can use applescript to retrieve Reminders and display a handy “To-do” list or to fetch unread mail and display it directly on your desktop. The possibilities are merely limited by how savvy you are.

* Image geeklets will display a local image or an image URL anywhere and in whatever size you specify. This is handy for displaying a daily cartoon or perhaps your local weather map. You can set the image to refresh at whatever interval you like, so if you simply want a cute photo of your dog in the corner of the screen, it’s as easy as entering the location of the file and setting the refresh to 0 and dragging it to where you want it. Conversely, if you want to see your security camera feed in the corner of your screen, figure out the URL of the image feed from the camera and set it to update every 5 seconds. You’ll have a slick little window always on your screen so you know who’s at the door.

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* Web geeklets will display just about any web content from the URL that you enter. You are able to scale an entire website to fit in a smaller window so you can monitor the news or perhaps a game you’re following in a discreet out of the way thumbnail. Like the image geeklet, you are able to set the refresh interval, but keep in mind that you will not be able to interact with the website once the geeklet is created so if it requires a login or any links to be clicked, you’ll have to do that interaction first and get your URL from there.

* Log geeklets lets you display system logs such as “/var/log/system.log”. This will show live log files with the latest content at the bottom. Using “regular expressions”:http://userguide.icu-project.org/strings/regexp, you can tailor the log output to only the information you want.

If you want to simply get started with some pre-made geeklets, there is a huge “repository”:http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/geeklets/ as well as a huge community to help you start learning and creating your own and to allow you to showcase your desktop creations. With a little artistic ability and some strategic Geeklets, your desktop can be anything you want it to be.

It’s been a busy few weeks in our South Burlington service department. We’ve added two new team members in the last few weeks, “Justin Pryce”:http://blog.smalldog.com/authors/justinpryce and “Jordan Hoekstra”:http://blog.smalldog.com/authors/justinpryce. Justin is working on his certifications for Apple and Jordan is one of our front-line service employees working at at the service counter. We are very excited to have these two new members on our team. As I’ve mentioned in previous issues of Tech Tails, we spend a lot of time working with our new hires on trainings and certifications. These two team members have a lot of work ahead but they are taking on the challenges with ease.

In addition to our regular staff trainings, communication is also a key component to our service department. We have weekly meetings and e-mails within the service department. It’s important to us that the entire team is kept up to date on any changes to Apple service guidelines as well as our own internal processes. A lot of effort goes on behind the scenes everyday to ensure customers and staff have a seamless and cohesive experience when entering our service department.

I hope that everyone is getting their spring projects wrapped up. Spring is in full bloom around my house and the list of chores both inside and outside seems never ending this time of year. I’m determined to keep up my momentum this year. It seems each spring we start two or three too many projects before summer hits and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that unfinished spring projects quickly become last minute fall projects. I’m hopeful and optimistic that this year I’ll break the cycle.

Thank you for reading!
Emily Dolloff
“emily@smalldog.com”:mailto:emily@smalldog.com