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2014-11-05
Yosemite Hates my Mac
There’s nothing like discovering that your MacBook Pro wants to die after upgrading to Yosemite, and that it’s failed to alert you to the fact that Time Machine hasn’t backed it up successfully in over 20 days. It’s been getting progressively worse over the past few weeks. It started as slow app launch times, and moved onto painfully slow OS launches, unresponsive Finder and Spotlight on boot, and more.
If you rely on Time Machine backups, make sure you’re routinely verifying that a backup has, in fact, taken place. I had assumed my backups were current. I was wrong. System Preferences > Time Machine will report the date and time of your last successful backup. You can also browse backups by entering Applications > Time Machine, or browsing your backup diskand going to Backups.backupdb > Computer Name > and look for a series of dated folders. It’ll match this format: YEAR-MO-DAY-TIME.)
If your Mac fails to backup at any time, you can always try deleting any .inProgress files that happen to be located in the same folder as the dated ones and try initiating a backup again. (Under Yosemite, you have the option of assigning multiple hard drives as Backups and Time Machine will alternate between them.)
Don’t rely on Time Machine to be your only backup solution. SuperDuper! for Mac (Free/$27.95) can easily make fully bootable backups. (The paid version will even allow you to schedule full backups.) Carbon Copy Cloner 4 ($39.99) is another viable option, though I haven’t used it personally.
You can get a 1TB drive for less than $60 on Amazon (affiliate link).
I’m lucky I have semi-recent backups. But it could have been much worse. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be backing your system up regularly. Be prepared for the worst case scenario.
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2014-06-17
Slides: Embrace the Suck
Here are the slides from my talk at GIANT Conf last week.
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2014-05-30
Reading Rainbow for the Next Generation
I was extremely excited to learn that there was a Kickstarter project to bring back Reading Rainbow. Watching it absolutely crush it’s funding goals has been quite the experience. I grew up watching the show. I want my kids to be able to experience the joy of learning and reading it gave to me as well. If you haven’t backed the project yet, think about it?
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2014-05-23
Sharpening Creativity
At some point during my life I stopped drawing. I don’t remember when it happened exactly, although I’m almost certain I stopped because of computer-aided design.
As I’ve been preparing for my talk at GIANTConf next month, I realized I hadn’t been pushing myself much lately. I stopped doing things that I loved because I was too hard on myself — and frankly, too lazy to continue pursuing them. Once I realized this, I started drawing again. Some of it’s been based on pictures I’ve found online. Some of it’s been based on toys I own. Some of it’s been completely freeform. But all of it’s been incredibly liberating.
Creativity, left unused, is a blade that dulls over time. Practice is the only way to sharpen it and improve.
Am I where I want my skills to be at yet? Nope. But I know that the only way to get there is to keep trying. I’m still overly critical of what I’ve been working on lately, but I know that I’ll get better if I keep with it.
Deciding not to do something because you can’t do it well is a cop out. I’m tired of having a dull blade.
