I got macOS Mojave 10.14 / 10.14.1 installed in Parallels very easily! But encountered some graphics issues with certain apps... and managed to find a workaround.

Did you know you can (sometimes) shrink the size PDF files by apply lossy compression to images? This is a built-in capability with macOS - no third party tools required. Read on...

Well, it turns out that after creating a PowerShell script to list deleted files (part 1) and another PowerShell script to monitor for deleted, renamed or moved files (part 2), I've decided to revert to a simple, batch file instead because running a batch file is so much easier than PowerShell!

This is part 2, of my attempt to "sync" photos I deleted on my desktop to my SD card (you can read part 1 first). In this post, I try to use PowerShell with .NET framework to (try) monitor for file system changes, and output to a batch file that "replicates" the ren (rename) and del (delete) to files and folders.

I have an unusual workflow when copying photos from my camera's SD card to my Windows desktop. For any photos I my desktop, I want to also delete on the SD card. In this post (part 1 of 2), I describe my PowerShell script to "repeat" what I deleted on the desktop on the SD card. In my next post, part 2, I expand the PowerShell script to (try) monitor for file system changes instead.

I recently bought a Fujifilm X-E3 interchangeable lens camera to "replace" my Sony NEX-6 (links to DPReview). I'm very happy with the camera and impressed at the plethora of customization options. Here is a table I created to familiarize myself... obviously I like tables!

In my post yesterday, I inserted a chart using Chart.js. I didn't plan to, but after 5 minutes reading the documentation, I was convinced to try - and it turned out to be easy! Here's how it's done.

I recently tried Crunch, an open-source tool for PNG image file optimization, currently on version 2.0.2 at the time of writing.

I sometimes need to search a huge CSV file (13 MB), containing 21,000 rows and roundabout 40 columns, which Numbers takes half a minute to open. All I need to do is search and display the results of a few columns only... so I wrote a bash script to do this for me - and I was quite specific in that I wanted the results in color!

On my hosting provider, there is a slight tweak needed to get Grav to run on PHP 5.6. Here's the solution:

I had put off updating my iPhone 6 to iOS 11, primarily due to the poor performance reported by Netizens. But, with the release of iOS 11.3 - reported to be focused on improving performance, and more transparent power management (throttling) - I decided to go ahead!

I got a new 2 TB external disk - "yay" - and wanted to use it for both on my Windows desktop and for Time Machine backups. Immediately thought to format it as exFAT but quickly came to realize Time Machine does not support exFAT! Fortunately, there is a workaround...

I've been experiencing this problem for a while - when presenting using Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 2016 (version 15) on an external monitor (or LCD projector), PowerPoint used to both the presentation slide show and the Presenter View on my notebook display, instead of Presenter View on the notebook and the full-screen slide show on the external monitor. Recently, I found the solution!

Recently I needed to analyze some JSON data. Now, I'm no data scientist, so I wanted to convert my JSON data to comma separated (CSV) and "flatten" the data... just so I could use the data in Excel.

And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

When macOS High Sierra was released around 25^th September, I tried to install it in Parallels Desktop Lite. However, both a clean install in a Parallels Virtual Machine (VM), nor an in-place update did not work (the High Sierra VM would refuse to boot). I discovered the High Sierra installer converts the VM file system to Apple File System (APFS). However, Parallels does not support APFS, so here's how to disable the conversion and get High Sierra running in a Parallels.

I admit, my title is misleading. This is a list of mostly "not likes" with iOS 11. Why few "likes"? Because there is enough written elsewhere singing the praises of iOS 11 and detailing "what's new". Maybe my dislikes will help you decide if (when) you want to upgrade...

I upgraded my iPad to iOS 11.0.0 last night - and this morning realized that my IBM Verse contacts had disappeared from my iPhone! I didn't update my iPhone, nor did I make any changes of significance lately. Most upsetting! Here's a guide to restoring your contacts.

Lots of web pages now rely on SVG instead of PNG or JPG images. SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, an XML-based vector image format that scales well, unlike bitmap images (bitmaps become pixelated when up-sized). I recently wanted a quick way to convert a SVG to PNG, and discovered modern browsers (read: Chrome and Firefox) can do this with a simple bit of code.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 for Mac (aka version 15) has a strange quirk - when I copy and paste images from Preview or most other applications, the image gets copied in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). The image is practically uncompressed (or possibly minimally compressed), resulting in very, very huge PPTX files! Plus: Removing unwanted font references.

I recently had the "opportunity" to perform some text manipulation to get data from a huge log file into a spreadsheet. I had done this sort of work a long time ago as a developer, but had forgotten over the years. So I decided to compile a text manipulation cheat-sheet for macOS.