Trick for Speeding Up MacBook

March 27, 2013

This is a great little trick if you have a MacBook Air or one of the retina MacBook Pros.

To save battery, Apple now puts these computers into a deeper sleep after a pre-defined period of time. Unfortunately, this means there is some lag when you open your laptop. The problem is compounded when you put your computer to sleep plugged into a monitor with a different resolution. When your computer wakes it shows an image of the old screen at the old resolution making things look strange and slightly broken for a few seconds.

You can change this by delaying the deep sleep function. To make it work, open Terminal and type in:

sudo pmset -a standbydelay 43200

This delays deep sleep for 12 hours. You can change the time to anything you want using the math:

43200=60sec*60min*12hours

You can find a longer explanation and the source of this tip here. I have noticed some increased batter drain. I have also, of course, noticed a huge improvement to my wakeup time and user experience. My laptop is back to feeling much more like an iOS device.

Edit 2013-03-27 - I decide that 12 hours was too long. I am now using three hours:

sudo pmset -a standbydelay 10800

Here is a link to a detailed technical article explaining the background behind this "trick."

iTunes and App Store 20% Off

March 18, 2013

Every few months Best Buy gives away the store - literally. They are running a promotion where you can buy a $100 iTunes gift card for $80. Which includes free delivery and no additional taxes. Hard to figure out why (how) they do this - but they do.

With one of these cards, all of the music, books and software Apple sells through its stores is 20% off. If you buy any of Apple's content you can't pass up this deal. Get it here

CameraBag 2 HD

March 15, 2013

I am a huge fan of the CameraBag app for iOS and OSX. The good folks at Nevercenter recently released a new version of CameraBag for the iPhone and iPad. You can get them for free today. The iPad version is particularly great. Get it.

Great New Updates

March 14, 2013

Two great updates for Mac users today.

First, an updated version of Mountain Lion came out today. Version 10.8.3 includes a new version of Safari which appears to have fixed a crashing issue I had when opening up new tabs. If the fix lasts, I will be able to switch my default browser from Chrome back to Safari. You can update Mountain Lion (for free) through the App Store.

Second, Alfred was updated to version 2.0. This is a major reworking of Alfred. Alfred is one of the first applications I install on a new Mac. Here is a great post from Macstories about the capabilities of version 2.0. If you are interested here is the theme I am currently using. I strongly recommend buying the Powerpack, just note that the price is in British Pounds so use a credit card that doesn't charge you a foreign transaction fee (or use PayPal).

Charity - It's About Dignity

March 8, 2013

I recently attended a wonderful discussion session led by Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR. The topic was giving charity as a religious discipline. There will be several more of these discussions during March throughout the Los Angeles area. If you are around and have an interest, I really recommend them. You can find more about the sessions here.

One of the key takeaways for me is that charity, or in Judaism *tzedakah*, is about helping people achieve their own dignity. Helping each person according to their own needs. [Paraphrase of Deuteronomy 15:7-8] Helping someone achieve dignity helps us realize our own.

Keep Important Things Readable

February 5, 2013

Data Longevity

Keeping a journal secure and ensuring its longevity are two important concerns if you are going to record your thoughts and feelings. Whether it is an annual project like a personal report card or a daily journal, the where and how you store those important records of your thoughts and feelings is important.

Paper lasts but is not secure (and often not convenient), digital storage can be secure and convenient, but it exposes you to a heightened risk losing your data through mishap, technological change and obscelesence, or simply becuse your data is stored in a place that the future you or your loved ones forgets to check.

Take Stock - The Personal Report Card

December 25, 2012

Reflection

Time passes and we do not mark it. It is the birthday, the New Year, the holiday, the milestone — the event that pauses time for a moment to let us reflect. With the new year looming, now is as good a time as any to take stock.

Take a moment — Take stock.

It is trite for me to encourage you to reflect on you life, those of you who already do know its value, those of you who don't — well, you don't. This post is for all of us that don't take stock often enough.

iPad mini - The Future is Now

November 11, 2012

I remember I had this vision when I first started practicing law, around 2002, about a day when we would use ultra-light ultra-thin screens instead of paper. The screens would be small enough that you could hold them like paper. You could pick them up and move them around. People would have multiple screens on their desk so that they could refer between them. The vision was about the end of paper.

With the iPad we have taken a huge stride toward this reality.
With the iPad mini we have leaped forward.

Quiet Siri Down

October 24, 2012

Tired of Siri screaming at you. Cult of Mac discovered a great way to quiet Siri down. You can find their instructions here.

Simple instructions:

activate Siri
change the volume using the volume buttons on the side of your device

Presto. Done. This should quiet things down. Once again, it is the small things in iOS that make all the difference (although it just might take a while to discover the small thing).

Source: http://www.cultofmac.com/197780/quiet-...

B.E.C.A.U.S.E.

October 15, 2012

My oldest just taught me a trick for spelling "because". This is not generally a word I have trouble spelling, but he earnestly took me aside and said: "you know Daddy, because — big elephants can always understand small elephants — because."

It would be comforting if he was right.

This big elephant sometimes has trouble understanding his small elephants. It is reassuring to think that grownups know the answers, that we have the keys and the insights, but we don't. We grope for answers and we struggle to understand.

I watch my little elephants grow and learn and experience the world. Everything is new. Each experience helps them grow and change. Their individual personalities grow and flourish. They take their own paths. The differentiation begins at the beginning; but with every day, every moment, it becomes a little tougher to understand them, a little harder to understand our complicated, nuanced, vibrant and loving little elephants.

Because they are different we can love them and learn from them.
Because they are different they can love us back.
Because they are different we simply won't always understand our small elephants.
Because they are different when we do understand each other it can be radically transformative.
Because of all of this, it is a blessing that we can't always understand our small elephants.

As we work to understand our small elephants we learn about the essence of each of them and we learn about the core of ourselves. I am glad that I don't always understand. It would be easier if I did, but the world would be unimaginably poorer too.

A more accurate mnemonic would certainly be: Big elephants cannot always understand small elephants (but we try).