Among the Apple productivity apps, I use Keynote every single day in my work. I develop a lot of graphics and many of those get used on webpages or in social media. Having pre-sized Keynote decks for each purpose (Linked In, or WordPress Hero Images) makes it easy not only to pull from previous work,… Continue reading Sharing with iCloud
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Ejecting Disks in MacOS with Shortcuts
In working from home, I shuttle between two MacBooks in my home office setting. I use a Thunderbolt dock to connect external drives (both spinning and solid state) that I want access to on each computer. In addition, I have a USB-connected keyboard and I re-use my mouse by changing Bluetooth channels. But ejecting all… Continue reading Ejecting Disks in MacOS with Shortcuts
Adventures in Using LLMs
This past week I’ve been using the three major LLMs available to the general public: ChatGPT, Microsoft Co-Pilot, and Google Gemini. I’m not writing this to compare the three, but to report out how a few things I’ve learned and how I’ve adopted these tools to help me in one of my hobbies. Image Generation… Continue reading Adventures in Using LLMs
Original Macintosh Grayscale Dithering
Those who may be interested in the original Macintosh design (based upon Apple Lisa) may already know that it was a black and white machine. At the time, this was a significant drawback considering the Apple // and IBM PC computers had color. Likewise, when the NeXT Cube launched, the original display was grayscale. Color… Continue reading Original Macintosh Grayscale Dithering
Photo Management Recommendations for MacOS
I was recently asked (again) for recommendations for photo management from folks who use Apple products (iPhone, Mac). I wanted to capture my thoughts on this publicly for others who may need advice. I’ve lived with Apple’s iPhoto (now Photos) app for some time. I’m not a professional photographer and started out with a point… Continue reading Photo Management Recommendations for MacOS
Will you be that one?
When I was growing up through my teenage years, I created a large number of original works on piano. My method was to keep playing them and elaborate upon the ideas over time. I rarely wrote anything down, I kept it all in my head. As I grew older, past college, I lost the ability… Continue reading Will you be that one?
How we learn
Reflecting Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m a reflective person. And among all the things that have fascinated me about the field of education is how we learn, and to some extent, how this body of growing knowledge may contradict classroom practices. I remember well thinking I had “how to learn” mastered by… Continue reading How we learn
Gamify?
In 2023 I began some intensive research around the topic of gamification. This topic seemed to have its heyday in the literature (books, articles) nearly a decade ago, with a seeming golden year around 2015. “Gameful design attempts to design interactive systems that serve (a) functional needs and (b) specific desired uses and effects of… Continue reading Gamify?
On Blogs
I often feel nostalgic at the end of every year. Not for what I did this year, per se, but it’s just a natural time for me to think about a lot of things, some of which are themes that attract themselves back into the front of my brain. Assuming that’s where fresh thoughts are… Continue reading On Blogs
Documenting Your Growth
I used to be an expert at a program on my computer. When I say expert, I don’t mean just good. I used Finale (music notation software) from version 1 (1988) heavily until 1999, completing a good solid decade of almost daily use of that program to write and arrange music. I knew it in… Continue reading Documenting Your Growth