Macbook Pro file browser replacement

My little Lenovo netbook died of old age, so I picked up one of the new Apple Macbooks with a so called retina display. The high resolution screen is absolutely worth the money.

My main gripe with a Mac is the horrid excuse for a file browser called Finder. A file browser that doesn't allow you to browse all files, is really not a terribly bright idea - it doesn't do much of anything really and is quite useless. Even Microsoft Windows Explorer works better than Finder.

Fortunately some kind souls have coded up a few alternatives including one called Macintosh Explorer (by Rage). You can get it here: http://www.ragesw.com/products/explorer.html

Mac Explorer is free and it works - a good combination of features - although I like the Linux file browsers such as Dolphin and Thunar better.

Another well kept secret, is to extend the Finder with a plug-in called Xtrafinder (by Tran Ky Nam), which makes Finder a whole lot more useful:
http://www.trankynam.com/xtrafinder/

The Mac keyboard is a bit crummy - the Carriage Return key is too small and there is no Delete key, only a Backspace. The Ctrl-D combination usually works as delete. The X-Windows highlight and middle click also doesn't work - instead it is highlight drag and drop, but you can only drag and drop to something that is already visible. Some mindless things to get used to again - fortunately there is a configuration button for the mouse to make it scroll the 'correct' way.

The desktop user experience of a Mac is OK, it just feels a bit 20th century. I prefer KDE - I want my virtual desktops and wobbly windows! Yeah, I know, "Small Things..."

Comments

Parasitic Quadrifilar Helical Antenna

This article was reprinted in OSCAR News, March 2018: http://www.amsat-uk.org If you want to receive Satellite Weather Pictures , then you need a decent antenna, otherwise you will receive more noise than picture. For polar orbit satellites, one needs an antenna with a mushroom shaped radiation pattern . It needs to have strong gain towards the horizon where the satellites are distant, less gain upwards where they are close and as little as possible downwards, which would be wasted and a source of noise. Most satellites are spin stabilized and therefore the antenna also needs circular polarization, otherwise the received signal will flutter as the antennas rotate through nulls. The helical antenna, first proposed by Kraus in 1948, is the natural solution to circular polarized satellite communications. It is a simple twisted wire - there seems to be nothing to it. Various papers have been published on helix antennas, so the operation is pretty well ...

To C or not to C, That is the Question

As most would know, the Kernighan and Ritchie C Programming Language is an improved version of B, which is a simplified version of BCPL, which is derived from ALGOL, which is the Ur computer language that started the whole madness, when Adam needed an operating system for his Abacus, to count Eve's apples in the garden of Eden in Iraq. The result is that C is my favourite, most hated computer language , which I use for everything. At university, I learned FORTRAN with punch cards on a Sperry-Univac, in order to run SPICE, to simulate an operational amplifier. Computers rapidly lost their glamour after that era! Nobody taught me C. I bought the book and figured it out myself. Over time, I wrote a couple of assemblers, a linker-locator, various low level debuggers and schedulers and I even fixed a bug in a C compiler - not because I wanted to, but because I had to, to get the job done! Much of my software work was down in the weeds with DSP and radio modems...

Unlock CRA PDF Forms

Unlock Canada Revenue Agency PDF Forms It appears that there is a relatively new PDF feature to prevent casual copying and saving of a file and that some programs save PDF files with these foolish features active by default. Many forms from the Canada Revenue Agency are locked in this way, which makes it difficult to do one's taxes, since one can fill the form, but cannot save it. One can only print the form. It should be possible to print to a file or export it to a new PDF file, but it is far better to reset the annoying anti-taxpayer flags, since the 'printed' form cannot be edited easily any more and I always manage to make a mistake or three that need to be corrected after review. If there is a Linux (virtual) machine handy, install qpdf and use it to reset the silly flags: $ su - password # dnf update # dnf install qpdf # exit $ qpdf --decrypt lockedfile.pdf unlockedfile.pdf One doesn't need a password to unlock these flags, so the fix is instant. La voila! He...

Aeronetworks sro - Airborne Linux

Search This Blog