Enhance

The Twitter account known as SwiftOnSecurity deleted a short thread of tweets today stating that the vast majority of 4K resolution laptop screens could be scaled down to 1080p. This would improve performance owing to the reduction in pixels being refreshed, and those users would scarcely notice the difference. Swift was referring to a display’sContinue reading Enhance

Disable Windows 10 task view or timeline on a Parallels virtual machine

This is mostly for my own sanity, because I keep losing the Parallels KB page link. On a Windows 10 virtual machine running inside Parallels, some random touch pad or mouse movement opens up what is variously called the Task View or Timeline, depending on the version of Windows 10. Either way, it’s annoying andContinue reading Disable Windows 10 task view or timeline on a Parallels virtual machine

Core memory in IBM mainframes from 55 years ago

Did you know that computer memory used to be stored in cores linked by hand-woven nets of copper wire? The core was a small ferrite ring (iron because magnetic), and wires were woven between them to read or set the electrical current in that magnetic ring (which ran clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on the value).Continue reading Core memory in IBM mainframes from 55 years ago

Converting a VMware thick-provisioned disk to thin-provisioned

Tonight on my ESXi host I noticed that I accidentally created a virtual machine with a thick-provisioned disk of 127 GB which was only using 13 GB, so I wanted to free up the 114 GB for other VMs. The following instructions were extremely useful in resolving this problem: Turn off the VM which containsContinue reading Converting a VMware thick-provisioned disk to thin-provisioned

Mailgun is a terrible company and it has nothing to do with their technical ability

There’s a saying that if something makes you angry you should wait before writing about it. In June 2016, I signed up my company in South Africa with Mailgun, and shortly thereafter connected a subdomain so we could send emails. We didn’t need 10,000 emails. Rather, we send between 50 – 100 a month, evenContinue reading Mailgun is a terrible company and it has nothing to do with their technical ability

Flipboard and the case of usability that doesn’t care about you

I’m a regular user of Flipboard, the app that tells me what’s happening in the world that isn’t Twitter. I have a carefully curated list of interests. One of the things I do with my lovely spouse is share links using Flipboard. In the user interface on my iPhone (I don’t use it elsewhere), thereContinue reading Flipboard and the case of usability that doesn’t care about you