Category: Tips for Mac users

How to repair and replace Safari’s iCloud-sync’d bookmarks

PRINT THIS PAGE, since you’ll be quitting Safari to do this, and the page will go away, eh?  🙂  I suggest reading thru all this before getting started… ___________________________________________   Here’s the problem: your Safari bookmarks are all messed up. In my case, repeated syncings (and probably stupidity on my part) ended up with 10,700 […]

sparseimage vs sparsebundle

I was using a sparsebundle to backup my OSX drive on an always-mounted external drive. I did that because I (mistakenly) thought that would prevent the OS from seeing the extra OS.) Well, I just learned that if the drive the sparsebundle is on is a mounted drive, then the OS sees the sparsebundle as […]

Advice on USB hubs

Having just gone thru a bunch of USB issues in the last 48 hours, I’m prompted to share my experiences. I have 5 hubs hooked up to one machine. They are all 7 port hubs, and all of them have a power supply. 3 are USB 3.0 and two are USB 2.0. Yes, I have a lot […]

Preventing Spam on Your Blog

I run a few blogs, and as anyone with a blog can tell you, spam postings are more than a little annoying. For years I have tried various different WordPress plugins, some more successful than others, but most lacking, unfortunately. I’ve now been running a paid service (although the fees are very modest) that has […]

The truth about TRIM

TRIM is not a simple subject, and many people do not understand it. It is NOT voodoo, and NO SSD has TRIM all by itself, simply because TRIM runs on the computer, not on the drive. ALL SSDs have garbage collection routines. What TRIM does is make those routines more efficient, by telling the SSD […]

Security in the Cloud

Just thought I share what I use so that I can keep copies of important stuff (log-ins, passwords, bank accounts, credit card numbers) in “the cloud” (I hate that euphemism), and be able to have them on all my devices (Macs, phones, etc) without worry: https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/boxcryptor Yes, I pay $48 a year to have access […]

filter out some spam right at the source !

This may or may not apply to you, but if it does, there’s a quick way to filter out a bucketload of spam. Spam can be sent to an address that looks like this: dlsi.biz@proxy.dreamhost.com or valleau.gallery@proxy.dreamhost.com instead of yourname@address.com (ie myname@dlsi.biz) That is something in the form of  “address.com@proxy.yourISP.net” What’s happened here is that […]

AV software, Part Two, (BitDefender removed)

My mini report: So: I uninstalled Intego (Virus Barrier / VB) because its RTS was so slow when copying files. [It was fine, otherwise, and didn’t seem to generally slow my Mac, but I do make a lot of clones….] to try BitDefender. BD was faster while copying files, but would slow my machine (50% of […]

Anti-Virus recommendations for the Mac

 (Without wishing to revisit the whole AV discussion on Macs, but because I have decided to use it for myself, I’ll submit this note:) For reasons I don’t recall, yesterday I found myself investigating the latest reviews of AV (anti-virus) software. Based on the info found at URLs below, I ended up downloading and installing […]

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