First, there are several types, but I’ll point out that they fall into those that produce a “pure sine wave”, and those that produce a “stepped approximation of/to a sine wave.” You pay more for the former, and it’s easier on your equipment. In fact, some of the newer power supplies (APFC) in computers will […]

I was asked about fonts and font-management by someone who “has tons of fonts.” If you really have “tons of fonts” then that could be having an   effect on your system. I personally keep my -active- font   collection pared down to a minimum, and use Font Agent Pro to   activate other fonts as needed. For […]

This is only FWIW. After some time testing various backup techniques, involving everything from Retrospect to TimeMachine, here’s where I’ve landed. This is only best for me… what is best for you is what WORKS for you, and what you’ll actually -use.-   I use SuperDuper to keep clones of my various volumes. I have […]

two quick tips: 1) I had a cd with about 40 folders and a total of almost a thousand files on it. I wanted to move all that to a hard drive, but if you drag and drop the cd image (as mounted on the desktop) all you’ll get on the drive is an alias […]

Well, not sure this applies to anyone in the world except me, but it sure lead a bunch of ftp gurus on a wild-goose chase until by brute force I discovered the problem’s solution: the problem: some, but not all, ftp clients (including Apple’s own finder built-in !!!) failed to connect to ftp sites. The […]

Quick tip for Apple’s Mail software: you can have multiple “from” easily – just enter them in the account setup “from:” separated by commas, like this: tracy@someplace.com,  tracy@elsewhere.net, tracy@overthehill.org Doing so will create a popup menu below your “Subject:” line, and allow you to choose which one to use. Handy, for example, when some services […]

Hi folks

I was plagued by this suddenly a few days ago, and now I think I’ve figured it out. It began when I signed into myEbay and got: “There was an error in your input. Please go back and ensure that all fields are properly filled in.” Nothing I could do, over several days, including calling […]

Caveat: I’ve not got proof of what I’m about to say, but the circumstantials are reasonable. YMMV.

Of course, Mail has some settings built-in, via a popup menu in the Mail Preferences. But what if checking for new mail every minute is too fast, and every 5 minutes is too slow? Well, it’s just a plist entry: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist The entry you’re looking for is “Poll Time” and you enter the number of […]