Wednesday, 12th January, 2022

Now each day I get the joy of using my text snippet to insert the front matter.

I installed the 2TB SSD into the mac mini last night. I did manage to forget to include the drive mounting screws. When I put the new drive in, it did wobble about a little which I thought was strange but continued re-assembling it. I only noticed once everything was back in. As it has two drives installed the screws aren’t actually needed, so I decided to screw them onto the drive I took out and store that somewhere. If I ever sell it, I’ll put that drive back in and keep my large one. I don’t need to replace it, it works just fine for everything I do on it (it is the quad core i7 model) but it is now capped on OS version, iPad screen extension doesn’t work with it, and max monitor resolution is 2560x1440 via displayport. Most of these things don’t concern me but the draw of a new mac might be hard to resist. Either if they release new models this year, M1X Pro etc.?, or the current M1s go on fire sale. The sales are mostly for the 256GB model and occasionally the 512GB model, but never anything larger.

Reinstalling macOS over the internet is great, albeit a little slow. Weirdly cmd+r didn’t work but cmd+option+r did work. Seems like it might try and install the original version with cmd+r and then the latest possible with cmd, option R. I didn’t have much installed and quickly got everything back on. Started importing photos into Apple Photos to use as my master library.

It was quite quick to import them. I was worried it would be the spinning colour wheel for hours. I also purchased iCloud and all the pictures should be syncing. There’s no clear indication of progress or status though, so will have to trust it’s uploading. I’ve logged into icloud.com and the photos are there, so guess it’s working. It doesn’t appear to sync Albums though. Well it has ones from my phone but not from my mini.

My iCloud subscription includes Hide My Email and private relay (VPN). I should look into that and maybe use hide my email for any new services I sign up to. I wonder how quick it is to make a new address though.

VS Code has a settings, extension, keyboard shortcuts and probably other things sync option. It saves to github or somewhere so all installations are the same. This seems ideal although every time I add a new VS Code install it complains about the settings file. I think it’s just checking I want to overwrite the stock one it sets up on install but it’s still unnerving and gives me doubt each time I do it.

Oh it seems I also have Custom Email Domain service too with iCloud. I may actually use a personalised domain email address now…! I’ve had a domain for >10 years, and even one on the old Google business account thing when you could use it for free with 5 users. But I still find it hard to move away from my gmail. Everything goes there and it’s easy. Plus my address is reasonable.

I think this is a good theme for my “normal” blog. I’m not quite sure I like the front page but probably can tweak that. The rest of it is nice, and I like the footnotes being asides.

Adding all my photos to Apple Photos is great. Don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner, and by it I mean just any library management tool.