Ever since OS-X 10.10.0 to the recent update to 10.10.3, Safari 8, Apple's browser, has had problems with Tumblr themes which wasn't a problem with Safari 7 under OS-X 9 versions. And for while I thought it was my ISP, Century Link, which I'm not enamored with except they're better than Comcast.
About half the themes I encountered have problems loading with Safari 8, either not fully loading, but indicated the Web page had finished the download, or stalling while scrolling through a Web pages, especially ones with lots of images, video, and more so with audio files.
So I imported my entire Tumblr bookmarks into Google Chrome - ok, imported the Safari bookmarks and shrank it to the Tumblr bookmark folders - and have been making comparsion downloads and scrolling tests.
The subjective results is that the problem isn't the ISP or OS-X but Safari 8 and Tumblr, meaning whatever the Apple browser developers did with Safari 8, they really screwed the browser. In short, it's about half the download speed to present all the content without stalling or present the spinning rainbow wheel.
When it comes to Tumblr account, Google Chrome runs circles around Safari 8! Really.
Apple needs to really sit down and test Safari on Tumblr for a large variety of themes to really see how bad it is, which suprises me - ok, not really considering they've known this since the first version of Safari 8 - they don't test it on Tumblr accounts and themes.
While I still like Safari 8 as my default browser, I won't anymore when it comes to Tumblr. There Google Chrome wins hands down against Safari. Now if Google Chrome's bookmark editor was easy and simple. It sucks. I like Safari's by a long shot, it's easy to see, edit and rearrange entries, something Google Chrome takes time to learn and use.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Friday, April 17, 2015
OS-X Opinion
I honestly can not believe how bad OS-X 10.10 has gotten over its iterations from 10.10.0 to the recent 10.10.3 supplemental update. It's so slow doing things, the spinning rainbow wheel is the most common immediate action you see on the monitor, even moving files causes it.
It really surprises me how bad Apple has gotten with the sandbox rules they even hamper their own apps where they don't work by stalling or hanging for some time, sometimes enough I can get a cup of coffee in the kitchen (home office).
Adobe apps are so bloated you can measure their opening and opening files by reheating your cup of coffee in the microwave, and that takes from 1-3 minutes depending on how long it's sat cooling off. Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 is twice the size of Photoshop one or two versions ago.
And Safari 8 is a bust with loading Web pages, especially some of Tumblr's themes, and more so if they have audio or video files to load. It's the process, open the Web page, wait, it's loading, wait some more, ok some of it is there, scroll, wait, spinning rainbow wheel effect, some more of the Web page, ad naseum.
This is true of the themes with endless entries where you scroll and keeps adding posts, except Safari hangs every load of new posts. Some of it is my ISP but the speed hasn't changed (tested periodically) but Century Link isn't the best of them, just the best between them or Comcast.
Anyway, this is more a rant against the companies who argue net neutrality and don't make it happen with subtle tricks and companies, and companies, like Apple, who make software that sucks. Apple is going down the road Microsoft did by creating more users who hate their software but live with it.
Oh well, like there's a choice. Oh, right, there's Linux and Unix flavors (OS-X is Apple's Unix) but most major applications companies don't write for them and while they're better for the literate users (like me), they still require some level of competency (I started in Unix).
The problem is I like the user interface of OS-X and the controls you have for the setup, although less with recent upgrades of OS-X as Apple makes variations harder and third-party interface apps harder to keep updated and working.
I like it because I work in one large monitor and put all the app windows in different locations to work in between them easily, and it remembers where they open with what window size. Otherwise, my monitor has my background photo (one I took in Mt. Rainier NP).
And so I'll end this rant. I got tired of loading Web pages that didn't fully load, so I'll do something else now.
It really surprises me how bad Apple has gotten with the sandbox rules they even hamper their own apps where they don't work by stalling or hanging for some time, sometimes enough I can get a cup of coffee in the kitchen (home office).
Adobe apps are so bloated you can measure their opening and opening files by reheating your cup of coffee in the microwave, and that takes from 1-3 minutes depending on how long it's sat cooling off. Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 is twice the size of Photoshop one or two versions ago.
And Safari 8 is a bust with loading Web pages, especially some of Tumblr's themes, and more so if they have audio or video files to load. It's the process, open the Web page, wait, it's loading, wait some more, ok some of it is there, scroll, wait, spinning rainbow wheel effect, some more of the Web page, ad naseum.
This is true of the themes with endless entries where you scroll and keeps adding posts, except Safari hangs every load of new posts. Some of it is my ISP but the speed hasn't changed (tested periodically) but Century Link isn't the best of them, just the best between them or Comcast.
Anyway, this is more a rant against the companies who argue net neutrality and don't make it happen with subtle tricks and companies, and companies, like Apple, who make software that sucks. Apple is going down the road Microsoft did by creating more users who hate their software but live with it.
Oh well, like there's a choice. Oh, right, there's Linux and Unix flavors (OS-X is Apple's Unix) but most major applications companies don't write for them and while they're better for the literate users (like me), they still require some level of competency (I started in Unix).
The problem is I like the user interface of OS-X and the controls you have for the setup, although less with recent upgrades of OS-X as Apple makes variations harder and third-party interface apps harder to keep updated and working.
I like it because I work in one large monitor and put all the app windows in different locations to work in between them easily, and it remembers where they open with what window size. Otherwise, my monitor has my background photo (one I took in Mt. Rainier NP).
And so I'll end this rant. I got tired of loading Web pages that didn't fully load, so I'll do something else now.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
WTF Apple
Update.--After shutting the Mac Pro down for awhile it's back to normal for the initial state, 1.3 GB's of app memory and 1.3 GB's of wired memory. I rebooted several times and even shut it down several times with no change but noticing Safari and apps running very slow, I shut it down again and the restart cleared whatever was causing the problem.
Original Post.--I don't know where Apple's thinking is anymore but they seem to break more shit with OS-X than they fix. With OS-X 10.10.3 and iTunes 10.2.1 the "Free Space" calculation for devices is very wrong, by a factor of 2-3 times from the actual usage stats in the device. They didn't fixed it with the latest update.
Today they updated 10.10.3 with a supplemental update that now either doubles the app memory usage stat or miscalculates it with the Activity Monitor app. It's like no one is checking the simple things anymore at Apple that many users use!
Really Apple, it's a real WTF moment to see such stupid little mistakes be created and not fixed. It makes me wonder what they're doing besides selling new products and leaving bugs and problems unfixed. This is really stupid on their part.
Any bets these won't get fixed soon? Like Apple really cares anymore about the obvious?
Original Post.--I don't know where Apple's thinking is anymore but they seem to break more shit with OS-X than they fix. With OS-X 10.10.3 and iTunes 10.2.1 the "Free Space" calculation for devices is very wrong, by a factor of 2-3 times from the actual usage stats in the device. They didn't fixed it with the latest update.
Today they updated 10.10.3 with a supplemental update that now either doubles the app memory usage stat or miscalculates it with the Activity Monitor app. It's like no one is checking the simple things anymore at Apple that many users use!
Really Apple, it's a real WTF moment to see such stupid little mistakes be created and not fixed. It makes me wonder what they're doing besides selling new products and leaving bugs and problems unfixed. This is really stupid on their part.
Any bets these won't get fixed soon? Like Apple really cares anymore about the obvious?
Thursday, April 9, 2015
OS-X 10.10.3
Well, I updated the Mac Pro to OS-X 10.10.3 and the iPhone 5s and iPad Air to IOS 8.3. So what have I seen so far.
First, it's the same thing with OS-X updates now, after finishing the installation you have to reboot it again, wait, and reboot again (3rd time) where it will level out the initial state of memory and cut the error messages, which are still numerous but different now.
After that, it's the same thing, each update eats, er. uses, slightly more memory, especially file cache, which isn't counted as memory usage now, just some type of temporary memory for OS-X, apps, files, etc., except OS-X seems to love it more.
And other things?
For one, bluetooth to the iPhone still doesn't work. It didn't connect for a long time, and reccyling the power on the iPhone, it conected then disconnect, and never connected again. Bluetooth to the iPad took two shots to connect and it did without disconnecting after a few minutes. So nothing changed.
Two, Time Machine backups are slower for unknown reasons. It used to copy 15-20+ GBytes per hour, now it's 5-10 GBytes per hour. I hope this improves, because without settings to manage it, it's just a user who eats cpu for 10 minutes every hour.
Three, Apple's favorite tool is still the spinning rainbow wheel, especially Adobe CC apps, eg. Photoshop, which takes 2-3 times longer to open the same file. The CC 2014 app is twice as large for memory than PS CS6, which is still my main photo editor.
Four, iTunes can't count. When you connect an iPhone or iPad and go to the setup in iTunes for it, the statistics bar on the bottom is wrong. It worked in 10.10.2 and relatively closely matched the usage stats in the device, but now it's way off by 2-3 times per catagory, especially free memory. Don't rely on it for accuracy.
I haven't cranked up the apps to fully check 10.10.3 yet, which is when some errors begin. Several things I do with my setup which other may not or don't want to use. For one, I turn off Spotlight by excluding all the HD's (4 internal and 3 external) from searches so it's effectively doing nothing.
This was in part from a problem of a Spotlight runaway rebuilding process. OS-X 10.10.2 has a problem with lsregister which also was a runaway process, but a command kills the process and it returned to normal. I haven't seen this yet, but an alias is ready to kill it if necssary.
If you don't use a terminal window or know how to use command line tools, get familar with them as they can help debug and resolve problems. You have to be careful what you do as administrator, but you can do a lot without breaking anything.
You do by researching the error message and the related fixes reported, which are usually commands. If 3 or more Websites offer the same command and they cite the usage and caution with the command, then you can put some measure in the command you won't do any harm and especially not break anything beyond repair, or requiring reinstalling OS-X.
And don't be afraid to reinstall OS-X. I had to do that 3 times with 10.10.2 because the console window would stop reporting messages in real-time and there is no fix other than the sledgehammer aproach to blugeon the Mac with a new installation.
That's it for now. I'll report what I see as thing happen, but for now, 10.10.3 seems better than 10.10.2. But that comes with the caveat all bets are off once you stop reading this.
First, it's the same thing with OS-X updates now, after finishing the installation you have to reboot it again, wait, and reboot again (3rd time) where it will level out the initial state of memory and cut the error messages, which are still numerous but different now.
After that, it's the same thing, each update eats, er. uses, slightly more memory, especially file cache, which isn't counted as memory usage now, just some type of temporary memory for OS-X, apps, files, etc., except OS-X seems to love it more.
And other things?
For one, bluetooth to the iPhone still doesn't work. It didn't connect for a long time, and reccyling the power on the iPhone, it conected then disconnect, and never connected again. Bluetooth to the iPad took two shots to connect and it did without disconnecting after a few minutes. So nothing changed.
Two, Time Machine backups are slower for unknown reasons. It used to copy 15-20+ GBytes per hour, now it's 5-10 GBytes per hour. I hope this improves, because without settings to manage it, it's just a user who eats cpu for 10 minutes every hour.
Three, Apple's favorite tool is still the spinning rainbow wheel, especially Adobe CC apps, eg. Photoshop, which takes 2-3 times longer to open the same file. The CC 2014 app is twice as large for memory than PS CS6, which is still my main photo editor.
Four, iTunes can't count. When you connect an iPhone or iPad and go to the setup in iTunes for it, the statistics bar on the bottom is wrong. It worked in 10.10.2 and relatively closely matched the usage stats in the device, but now it's way off by 2-3 times per catagory, especially free memory. Don't rely on it for accuracy.
I haven't cranked up the apps to fully check 10.10.3 yet, which is when some errors begin. Several things I do with my setup which other may not or don't want to use. For one, I turn off Spotlight by excluding all the HD's (4 internal and 3 external) from searches so it's effectively doing nothing.
This was in part from a problem of a Spotlight runaway rebuilding process. OS-X 10.10.2 has a problem with lsregister which also was a runaway process, but a command kills the process and it returned to normal. I haven't seen this yet, but an alias is ready to kill it if necssary.
If you don't use a terminal window or know how to use command line tools, get familar with them as they can help debug and resolve problems. You have to be careful what you do as administrator, but you can do a lot without breaking anything.
You do by researching the error message and the related fixes reported, which are usually commands. If 3 or more Websites offer the same command and they cite the usage and caution with the command, then you can put some measure in the command you won't do any harm and especially not break anything beyond repair, or requiring reinstalling OS-X.
And don't be afraid to reinstall OS-X. I had to do that 3 times with 10.10.2 because the console window would stop reporting messages in real-time and there is no fix other than the sledgehammer aproach to blugeon the Mac with a new installation.
That's it for now. I'll report what I see as thing happen, but for now, 10.10.3 seems better than 10.10.2. But that comes with the caveat all bets are off once you stop reading this.
Monday, April 6, 2015
500px images
Update.-- Trying this method recently I found doesn't work if the photographer has "protected" his images, meaning the right click produces a message it's protected. Well, it's not, because if you open the source code you can use the find command to look for the word "protect" just past halfway down the page of code, just above the title of the image, and there is the nice, neat, full URL for the image to cut and paste, with no backslashes to remove.
Original Post.-- If you find yourself looking at images on 500px.com and find the right click to save the image is disabled, fear not, as there's a simple way to extract the image file from the Web page to display on a Web page where you can save it to your computer. And pray tell what it the way?
It's simple. First you view the source code by either using the developer menu bar choice to Show Page Source on Safari (or it's equivalent with your browser) or use an extension (I use BetterSource available on Apple's Safari Extension server) to view the source code.
Then search the source code for "jpg" where you'll see a long line of code with of lots of URL's ending in ".jpg". Find the one with the largest last number (eg., 1024 or 2048) before the ".jpg". Copy the full URL (https...jpg) and paste it in the URL box for a Web page, but do not hit the return or enter because it won't work.
You have to edit the URL to remove all the backslashes, "\", in the URL, keeping all the forward slashes, When done, hit return and the image should display in the Web you can then use save, save as, or right click to download the image.
This seems to be part of the way 500px hides images from most people to easily download them, aka protect them, but that's impossible on the Web unless you use a sophisticated algorithim to name image files, use multiple servers, use scripts, or image slicing, but all those methods only take longer to sort through and get the image file.
In short, you can't hide images, so don't try except for the obvious people who want a quick way to steal images, but then Tumblr defeats them as Tumblr has little, if any, image protection for reposting images.
This solution is if you want the higher resolution image some photographers post on 500px.com but only provide the lower resolution to Tumblr and other Website users. But not all post the higher resolution image so the images are all the same on 500px.
Anyway, it's what they do and here's how they do it.
Really Angry
I got home from an appointment with a gastroenterologist for my digestive system problems which has caused me pain, bloating, constipation/diarrhea, and many more symptoms of some type of abnormal bacterial infection to hear they don't have a clue what's wrong and don't believe the tests will find anything.
The best they can say is that my intestinal bacteria isn't normal. What I learned from this guy is that there is a difference between normally sick and medically sick, and in the absence of medical evidence, and when doctors and specialists can’t identify that something is medically wrong, the diagnosis is always, “blame the patient”, and make the patient think it’s their fault they’re sick and their problem to resolve and heal.
I have a Small Intestinal Bacteria Overgrowth (SIBO) test scheduled in two weeks, but only after I insisted on one because the specialist said he doesn't think the results are accurate. So what does indiciate a problem of abnormal intestinal bacteria?
Sorry, rhetorical question because the answer is there aren't any tests. They can only go by symptoms, and despite the typical cold- and flu-like symptoms common with abnormal bacteria, they don't have anything to confirm what you say.
In addition they won't prescribe specific anti-biotics for SIBO without positive test results, even though the drug is harmless against other, espeically good or normal, bacteria, even when the patient will accept the risk of the drug which has no known side effects.
All the appointment did was to confirm what I've always thought about gastroenterologists, if it's not something physically wrong with the intestinal tract or obvious from the symptoms, and the cause is viral or bacterial in nature, they're either clueless or don't care.
I won't say all of them, because I have one in Seattle, and only went to the local clinic if they wanted to run tests, such as a colonoscopy, which required preparation prior to the test and required the patient be driven and/or escorted to and from the clinic.
This way I don't have to stay 2-3 days overnight in Seattle before and after tests as I did the first two colonoscopies. But I'm going back to my PCP and that specialist after the SIBO test because the local one didn't want it and didn't want to schedule a followup appointment.
I'm sorry to feel angry, but it's nearly 10 years of different problems they continue to call it IBS, meaning "It beats the Shit" out of me (they don't know) or blame the patient, because to them we cause our own problems they can identify and heal.
The best they can say is that my intestinal bacteria isn't normal. What I learned from this guy is that there is a difference between normally sick and medically sick, and in the absence of medical evidence, and when doctors and specialists can’t identify that something is medically wrong, the diagnosis is always, “blame the patient”, and make the patient think it’s their fault they’re sick and their problem to resolve and heal.
I have a Small Intestinal Bacteria Overgrowth (SIBO) test scheduled in two weeks, but only after I insisted on one because the specialist said he doesn't think the results are accurate. So what does indiciate a problem of abnormal intestinal bacteria?
Sorry, rhetorical question because the answer is there aren't any tests. They can only go by symptoms, and despite the typical cold- and flu-like symptoms common with abnormal bacteria, they don't have anything to confirm what you say.
In addition they won't prescribe specific anti-biotics for SIBO without positive test results, even though the drug is harmless against other, espeically good or normal, bacteria, even when the patient will accept the risk of the drug which has no known side effects.
All the appointment did was to confirm what I've always thought about gastroenterologists, if it's not something physically wrong with the intestinal tract or obvious from the symptoms, and the cause is viral or bacterial in nature, they're either clueless or don't care.
I won't say all of them, because I have one in Seattle, and only went to the local clinic if they wanted to run tests, such as a colonoscopy, which required preparation prior to the test and required the patient be driven and/or escorted to and from the clinic.
This way I don't have to stay 2-3 days overnight in Seattle before and after tests as I did the first two colonoscopies. But I'm going back to my PCP and that specialist after the SIBO test because the local one didn't want it and didn't want to schedule a followup appointment.
I'm sorry to feel angry, but it's nearly 10 years of different problems they continue to call it IBS, meaning "It beats the Shit" out of me (they don't know) or blame the patient, because to them we cause our own problems they can identify and heal.
Pantone Color Manager
I have and use, being slightly, as many males are, blue-green color blind and have difficulty when colors are very close in color, shade, etc., Pantone's Color Manager, and under OS-X 10.9 it was a good application, but that has changed with 10.10.
Now about once a month the application will tell me my application has expired, and after the first time and instructions from the technical folks at Pantone, got it back by deleting the library and restarting the application which then downloads and rebuilds the entire color library.
After that finishes you have to close the app o recover the 1 GB the app uses of active memory, normally < 100 GB's, and the file cache of 3+ GB's, normally about 400 MB's. OS-X will clear the active memory, but you have to use the purge command to clear the cache.
That was the routine until OS-X 10.10.2 when it crashed during the rebuild. The Mac Pro went nuts as the application just used up all the available CPU and keep growing the file cache to cause the OS-X to simply shut it down.
After contacting the technical support, again, their response was more of the same, to delete the color library, but then to reload the application, which did what it did before. This time it finishes, but not until it's creates spindumps and crash reports for excessive CPU.
Then you have to close, run the purge command and reopen the app, above paragraph. And through it the technical support people keep saying the same thing about an update.
"Yes, we know one is needed and we're working on one."
Really. How long was OS-X 10.10 developer available, and how long has the public version been available and they're still saying we're working on it?
I like the application, but I wouldn't recommend buying it until they release a new version from the current one of 2.1.0. Save your money until 2.2 or something is released to save yourself the headaches and time routinely rebuilding the color library and application.
Now about once a month the application will tell me my application has expired, and after the first time and instructions from the technical folks at Pantone, got it back by deleting the library and restarting the application which then downloads and rebuilds the entire color library.
After that finishes you have to close the app o recover the 1 GB the app uses of active memory, normally < 100 GB's, and the file cache of 3+ GB's, normally about 400 MB's. OS-X will clear the active memory, but you have to use the purge command to clear the cache.
That was the routine until OS-X 10.10.2 when it crashed during the rebuild. The Mac Pro went nuts as the application just used up all the available CPU and keep growing the file cache to cause the OS-X to simply shut it down.
After contacting the technical support, again, their response was more of the same, to delete the color library, but then to reload the application, which did what it did before. This time it finishes, but not until it's creates spindumps and crash reports for excessive CPU.
Then you have to close, run the purge command and reopen the app, above paragraph. And through it the technical support people keep saying the same thing about an update.
"Yes, we know one is needed and we're working on one."
Really. How long was OS-X 10.10 developer available, and how long has the public version been available and they're still saying we're working on it?
I like the application, but I wouldn't recommend buying it until they release a new version from the current one of 2.1.0. Save your money until 2.2 or something is released to save yourself the headaches and time routinely rebuilding the color library and application.
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