Month: November 2014

I was complaining the other day about Apple’s AirDrop not working with older Macs and then suddenly the AirDrop icon appeared on my old iMac. Hey, great, I thought, and I tried to transfer the photo of Danica from my iPad to my Mac.

AirDrop simply does not work, even though the icon appears in the Finder. It wasn’t there a few days ago. What made it appear is anybody’s guess. Various Mac users online offer different stories, some claiming Macs must be 2012 or newer. This Mac user has a simpler explanation. Apple has bungled this one. The software is flaky, unreliable and unpredictable. It should not have been released as part of Yosemite, because it simply is not ready for public use.
Good excuse to post the Danica picture, though. I emailed it to my Mac in the old-fashioned way.

Hmmm, this could explain why I am almost invariably disappointed with election results. My score on the Toronto Star’s Political Sentimeter put me in agreement with 2% of those who’ve done the survey.
I like to think we are the TOP 2%, of course, but the poll didn’t specify that. 🙂 My attitudes are shared, on average, with 36 year olds and more than two thirds of them are women. I’m good with that.

Apple’s Mac OS X offers a feature called AirDrop which facilitates file transfers directly between two Apple devices that are on the same network. For some users (me), it will not work because my iMac was made before 2009.
Yosemite is free, so what the heck … and AirDrop, frankly, is a trivial frill … but if you were expecting to try it and your Mac is older than Apple likes, you’re out of luck.

The idea here is to hover over the image to see what’s on the back. Or click the button. If it works, it could be a way to display what’s written on the backs of many Helen Andersen artworks. Please leave a comment if it works for you … or if it doesn’t.

This particular airbrushed painting is an important one, reflecting Helen’s acute awareness of the terrible century (!) of Canadian history when aboriginal children were forcibly taken away from their parents and housed in residential schools. A mother wipes tears from her little girl’s face.
The image was chosen by Pat Ekland when we offered to frame one of the “lost” paintings for her. They would never have been recovered without her kindness and determination. That story is here.
The flipping animation effect derives from a renewed interest. A lot has happened since I stopped my online courses 3 or 4 years ago. Back to Lynda.com, I guess.

At a loss for content to fill your Tweet? Report the location of your studs to friends.
Home Depot flyer: studfinder gizmo plugs into iPhone

What can I say? This guy nails it … at least the over-the-air TV we get. Maybe cable’s better, but somehow, I doubt it.

To quote my cycling buddy Peter, “the lake never disappoints”. It offers different views every day, all year ’round. Light and colour are ever-changing, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. Today’s brief return to mild temperatures made for a perfect boardwalk opportunity. Rich, full sounds of waves against the beach accompanied the view. Perfect.

The Brits do this kind of stuff so well …

Thanks, Ian’s sister, via Ian.

I’ve just been enjoying novelist Amelia E. Barr’s 9 rules for success and one thought appealed particularly.

… genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.

Here’s the context:
“Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.”

The acronym tl;dr (Too long; Didn’t read) is familiar enough but it made me smile when I saw it applied to The Bible. A cheeky critic has made an editing attempt. For example:

GENESIS
God: All right, you two, don’t do the one thing. Other than that, have fun.
Adam & Eve: Okay.
Satan: You should do the thing.
Adam & Eve: Okay.
God: What happened!?
Adam & Eve: We did the thing.
God: Guys