Day: May 8, 2021

How email works

Here’s a brief explanation of how email works. When you send an email to a friend, it has an address like user@domain.ext.  The email you’re sending goes to an outgoing mail server (a computer) via Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The SMTP servertries to figure out where to send it, but It doesn’t understand people’s names […]

ATV 4 Apple TV HD image is faded; washed out; no contrast; foggy… a fix?

My Apple TV 4 (ATV4) hooked up to a 4K TV looked like everything was filmed thru fog. “Shot through scrim” as they say. No contrast, no vibrancy. Well, looking around, as you likely have, this is hardly uncommon. I tried the whole range of adjustment, (as you likely have) without any luck. Last night […]

Permissions “fetching…” – the FIX!

Permissions: “fetching…” the fix. So you’ve checked your permission on a problematic file, and discovered that that first entry is for a user named “fetching…” More than a little trouble, especially if you just migrated 1.2 million files from one machine to another. You can’t move or delete almost anything at all without having to […]

USB device won’t mount? Is your hub powered or not?

Here’s something I just discovered. Maybe it’s “old news” or maybe it’s “just me” but FWIW Based on my own experience, there is a subtle difference between powered and unpowered USB 3.0 hubs: sometimes a powered-hub device is not recognized. Specifically I have an external USB 3 trayless enclosure that I use for swapping in/out […]

Tired of trying to remember passwords?

Tired of trying to remember website passwords? Does the thought of long, complex passwords intimidate you? Are you using “IL0VeYou” as your main password? Does the thought of a different password for every site bring up images of the Spanish Inquisition? How would you like to be able to choose (say) your banking website from […]

Safari won’t play some videos

  If you are using a recent version of Safari web browser, you’ll notice that some videos will not play. This is true not just on one site, but on all sites that embed videos. Here’s the fix: The problem with videos is a “feature” of Safari. The recent versions have autoplay turned off. To […]

safari won’t play cinemagraph

Here’s the code to play a video MP4 Cinemagraph on Safari (as well as others, of course):   <video style=”width: 100%;” preload=”auto” src=”https://yourSource.mp4″ autoplay=”autoplay” loop=”loop” muted=””></video>   Obviously, you replace the URL with the once to your cinemagraph.

Moving away from webmail and/or archiving your emails

On using email: Today I was backing up my server, and noticed that some clients have over 1 Terabyte of email. Honestly, I’m surprised their email has not slowed to a snail’s pace, and been kicking up all kinds of errors. What happens is this: every email you get is stored on the host’s email […]

fixing the color on Roku TV : the TCL49S403

The TCL49S403 Roku TV is a heck of a deal for less than $340: 4K and almost 50″. But it comes with flaws. First is the limited viewing angle: you need to be sitting nearly  directly in front of it to get any pop to the image at all. 30 degrees off center, and the […]

Print to PDF: Command-P Command-P

Yup: two command-P’s in a row, and you’re printing to a PDF. No more hunting thru menus! Cool!     How? You have to put in some effort one time. Here’s what you do: Just add the second command-P as a short-cut: System prefs/ keyboard / shortcuts / App shortcuts / + You have be […]

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