Month: April 2021

New (pretty) SDD enclosure and backup drive.

April 20, 2021 mac osX , , , ,

The SSD on my 2015 era macbook died, but once I got a new machine, I was pretty impressed how well the MacOS restore from time machine worked.  It was dog slow, and took over 24hrs, but I got back all my work, and most of the MacOS configuration too.

The new macbook has ONLY usb-C ports.  Luckily, I had the foresight to order a thunderbolt-2 to USB-C adapter with the new macbook for the monitors, so I was able to use one of my monitors as a USB hub to access my old time machine drive.  The time machine backups on my old macbook, with the drive plugged in directly, never seemed that slow, so I think that some of the slow restore was due to this indirect connection.  However, some of that must also have been due to the older magnetic drive too.

Having just gone through a harddrive failure scenerio, backup and restore speed seemed worth spending some additional resources on, so I went ahead and splurged on a new ASUS NVM SSD enclosure:

This direct connects USB-C to USB-C, and is currently equipped with a 2Tb SSD.  It is also really pretty.

I went ahead and enabled time machine encryption on this drive, and was able to do a full (0.7Tb) backup in about 4hrs, even with encryption enabled!  The big 2Tb NVM drive wasn’t cheap, but has lots of space for incremental backups of the macbook’s 1Tb drive.

It is easy to swap out the SSD, so I can use this enclosure to backup my windows machine too (provided I buy an additional drive.)

Welcome to the Ontario police state, in the era of covid-1984

April 17, 2021 Incoherent ramblings , , , , , , , , , ,

Our morbidly obese Ontario premier seems to be attempting to protect himself by instituting another phase of lockdowns and by granting additional police powers.  People can build their immune systems with exercise and fresh air, but he is probably so obese that the cardio that he would require to reduce his weight would give him a heart attack.  So, like a petulant and vindictive abused child bully, if he can’t do it, you are not allowed to either.  Gyms are now shut down for the second year of “two weeks to flatten the curve.”  Somebody who can’t exercise doesn’t care if he is inhibiting the ability of others to do so, regardless of the mental and physical health benefits of doing so, or to the livelihoods of those employed by or dependent on those gyms.

At the beginning of the covid scare, we had no idea what was going on.  We now know a great deal.  Among all the things that we now know, are the particular facts that obesity and vitamin D deficiencies are key risk factors, and that most transmission appears to be in indoor environments.  Our bodies utilize exposure to sunlight to manufacture vitamin D, so being incarcerated indoors puts us at risk.  Getting outdoors for exercise is probably the single biggest thing that we can do to keep ourselves safe, yet Ontario police have now been granted the power to stop people on the streets, demand to know their identity, their address, and their purpose of travel.  This is clearly not something that has been imposed to encourage people to get out for exercise, sunlight and fresh air.  I stopped paying attention to the so-called regulations that are being imposed\({}^1\), so I do not know the full extent of the rules that I am supposed to be complying with.  If I were out on a bike ride by myself or with my wife, who I share a space with anyways, would I have to justify that to the police?  Do I face fines or jail for attempting to keep myself healthy and safe (not just from covid, but many other conditions that are enhanced by inactivity)?

Thankfully, it appears that there is some push back to the new dictatorial measures, and a number of police forces have stated that they will not enforce their new inquisitional power to stop people on the streets nor in their cars.  I’m not optimistic that the Toronto police will take this position, as a force that large is statistically more likely to abuse power.

When I am out of the house these days, it is usually because I am getting groceries, running errands, or walking my beast of a dog.  I can’t help wondering how I would respond if I were to get stopped by the police for any of these.  If the fear porn was truly justified, then those police officers are putting themselves in danger by approaching potential disease carriers.  How do they feel about that?  Would I be brave enough to attempt to politely ask that off the record?  Does an officer making such a stop not cringe internally against the stupidity of what they are being made to do?  I am not optimistic that would be the case.  Police depend on their jobs and paycheques, and part of their paycheque means that they have to enforce the laws, regardless of their opinion about them, and then have to justify those actions so that they can live with themselves.  There is the open question about whether these executive decrees are truly lawful, but if the police believe they are, these mandates will be enforced until challenged in the courts.  There may not be much internal Police dissent, and if there is, it is probably on the down-low, quiet, and off the record.  Is there much chance that the police who have been enforcing the “Now you do what they told ya” mandates, will end up collectively fighting back in a screaming “FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME” crescendo that pulls the power out from under the slovenly dictator who has assumed control of the province?  I doubt it, but I can hope.

Footnotes:

  1. Because there are so many signs about it, I know that I can be fined or jailed for not wearing a mask when shopping indoors.

John Cleese’s “Creativity. A short and cheerful guide.”

April 11, 2021 Incoherent ramblings

This book reiterates some of the hare-brain/tortoise-brain points from Cleese’s “Professor At Large.”  However, despite the redundancy, it was worth reading just for the following remark:

“Begin with simple stuff, such as…, Who are you writing for?  You might be writing for academics, in which case you don’t have to be interesting.

I thought this was so funny, but was it intended to be funny, or just reflect reality?

Some neighbourhood sidewalk art

April 10, 2021 Just for fun