It's time for Mackie cab and listener Mike brings us our quick tip of the week by telling us one thing He noticed with Ventura is that it has some entries for things in the if you right click on the system Settings icon in the dock you right click on that and it pops up a menu just like system preferences used to We noticed and it's great. You can go and choose like network, which is cool because there is You know you can you can choose time machine which gets you a layer deep because general is where time machine lives now But it shows up in that menu general however does not show up in that menu There are some things that don't appear there, but lots of them do so if you want a quick way to get into a Specific system settings pane try right clicking on its dock icon and there you go more tips like this plus your questions Answered today on Mackie cab 967 for Monday. I was gonna say Friday. What was I gonna say Friday for Monday February 6 2023? Greetings folks and welcome to or welcome back to Mackie cab the show where you send in your tips like that You send in your questions. You send in your cool stuff found we share your tips like we've already started doing today We share your cool stuff found we share and try to answer your questions Sometimes we bring tips questions and cool stuff found of our own the goal being that we put it all into an agenda So that we can each learn at least five new things every single time we get together Sponsors for this episode include collide at ko lid.com slash mg g You get to help your users learn about security so that they can manage their own device as well Good stuff and Zock doc at Zock doc comm slash mg g You can sign up for their free app and download it and pick and find a doctor many are available within just 24 hours It's free. We'll talk more in depth about both of those in a little while here for now Here in very cold Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton And here in called and windy Fairfield, Connecticut. This is John of Broad The greetings from well by their standards here very cold Daytona Beach where it's 67 degrees fair night. Oh my goodness. Get out the park is Violet beat that is cold for for Daytona. It is indeed. Yeah. Yeah, it's not cold for here. So no Yeah, be wishing for 67 there. Yeah, by the time the show comes out We record this on Fridays, which I suppose is why I was thinking about Friday when when we were doing the intro But by the time the show comes out, it should have warmed up substantially here in New England but our predicted low here today is negative 15 and It looks like from our pre-show troubleshooting that one of my nest Thermostats the one here in the studio has given up the ghost I think it's the backplane on it based on the quick troubleshooting I did But we had to get the show rolling So I put a spare thermostat in we've got heat beginning to flow in here. My teeth will stop chattering I promise and We should do a show. What do you think guys? Yeah, we should do that. Let's do it I will mention though that you were talking negative 15. That's Fahrenheit, which is about negative 27 Celsius if my Brain is functioning. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah, we have an international crowd What it's true where they they they meet at about negative 35, right? I think yeah. Yeah, yeah But there's another quick tip. There's some easy ones to remember 16 is 61 fair 16 Celsius 61 Fahrenheit 28 is 82 Fahrenheit 28 degrees Celsius 82 And then of course 15 is 59. That's an aviation thing. That's a standard day 15 Celsius But 1661 2882. Yeah, so, you know, just close numbers So 16 C is 61 F. Yeah, and and when what's the other one 28? C is 82 Fahrenheit So just transposed this is handy handy stuff and of course of course zero C is 32 Fahrenheit Most of us here know that one right and 100 is 212 100 C is 212. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah All right, so it's we're into it. I'm gonna go ahead and do it Please the way to get the way to get Fahrenheit to Celsius relatively quickly is take your Fahrenheit number and double it Okay, subtract 10% and add 32. So here's how it is at 10 degrees Celsius. Yeah double it is 20 minus 10% is 18 so, you know, okay 18 and 32. Here's public math is 50. So 10 is 50 degrees. Okay Double it subtract 10% at 32 Huh. All right. It's it doesn't work Super, I mean, it's not that's that's backside, but sure, but it's close enough. Yeah, it'll get you within a degree That's fascinating. Thank you for sharing that Pete. That's Come out of that rabbit hole folks. No, that was a good rabbit hole. I like that's a handy thing I mean, well, it's I wish we had had this conversation three weeks ago because being in Europe for 10 days Like I was doing a lot of these conversions, but you know at some point It's like whatever you can do them on your on your Mac with Spotlight, you know and and and you can ask your phone to do them with Siri. That's right. Yeah PJ in the chat points out that negative 40 is where they meet So negative 40 centigrade Celsius is negative 40 Fahrenheit. So negative 40 starts with an F and That's how you remember that's right Yeah, and as you pointed out Dave, um, so you can also do this in the uh In the address bar in a safari you can type in something like 100 f equals question C and it will do the translation for you if you now Is that happening locally on your computer because if you if you do it in the spotlight search command space bar It does it locally if you do it in your um Equals question see if you do it in the the the bar then you're leaving it up You need an internet connection and a search engine to do it, right? Um, it says google suggestions. There you go. Yes. I would assume you're correct. Yeah, okay All right. Yeah, because I don't use google. I use duck duck go, but it it brought me there. Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, so and don't don't don't even put this in the show notes, but Because we're gonna cover it again soon. I'm sure but that's one of the many capabilities of raycast. It'll do temperature Currently, okay area All that stuff. So all right raycast. I promise. I'm gonna cover it as a cool thing. Okay it That's just a teaser for today p teaser for today. Yeah, re-cast those many cool things. All right. Well, let's go We we mentioned siri port those john in our Uh discord chat had a great quick tip about siri. He says Uh If you say siri, what's my update? It will tell you the weather today what your first calendar appointment is for the day and how many events you have And then play the top stories from your preferred news sources He suggests it is a good way to get your day going. Well, you do your morning routine If you are going to do this on your home pod and it will work on your home pod you need to have personal requests enabled for your home pod and You probably need your phone on the same wi-fi network He presumes but of course if if you're if you're there Your phone is probably there with you and therefore Ready to roll. So yeah, I like that one. That's good. I've never I'd never I never knew about that before that's why That's why it's a quick tip. It's great Yeah Pete you got something for us. You noticed something this morning I I did or are we talking the qr one? Nope, we're talking. You noticed that uh, oh, yeah, there we are. Yeah, I'm back. I'm How you doing? I was going for a while. I'm back. That's okay. Welcome back So this morning I'm I'm in a hotel in Daytona beach Enjoying the sunshine and parents weekend with my daughter And I went to use sidecar for the so we would have the show agenda up on my ipad And then when I went to use continuity camera with my iphone it went uh, uh, uh, uh, you must first Disconnect sidecar in order to use your continuity camera. I went really okay. I'm smarter than this I disconnected sidecar. I turned on my continuity camera and I went back to connect sidecar and it went error So you can't use both apparently I found out the the difficult way Um, and I will also add while I thought okay Well, what I'll do is I'll use the camo app to use the phone camera and then I could The third party reincubate camo app. Yep. Yeah, and um Apparently there's something funky going on in this particular hotel network So some hotel networks, it's not going to let it connect. I could probably connect at usb But then I'd have to disconnect my power because I only have two ports I didn't bring my little, uh hub that's sitting on my desk at home where yeah Yeah, travel docs is sitting on my desk at home where it belongs And uh, hey, it's my first trip since october. So, uh, you know help me out. Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's right Well, it's your first trip other than ces let let us not forget. That's true. That's true So anyway, uh, it turns out that some hotel networks won't let you use usp or i'm sorry wi-fi camo Yeah, that is Um, I've experienced that too. There is an app that I love to use called remote for mac from uh, uh, Jenny chirpac. Yeah, and it's great if especially when i'm traveling because I wind up putting my mac You know near the tv and then I use I can use my phone to like control plex On my mac. So it it's great, you know, I can I can be totally lazy about about, you know, consuming whatever content I want from my From, you know, my mac with the hdmi to tv and all that stuff Work great in the air bnb we had in italy It works great obviously in my house when I tested it works great in most air bnbs because they have more traditional wi-fi networks Most hotels and certainly the one that you're in pete Uh have their network set up so that every device is that's connected to the wi-fi is isolated. Yes And that's just a good thing. No from a security standpoint. That's a fantastic thing Because you don't want someone else being able to see that your mac is there and you left file sharing on and now They can try and beat on the door all day while you're out and about with with your daughter at parents weekend, right? So it's a good thing with the lone exception of, you know, that kind of stuff now If remote for mac could use bluetooth then that would work because that's a ad hoc connection You could also do an ad hoc wi-fi network from your mac and connect your phone to that I was thinking about that and I was worried about what I would the the direction I was thinking was just Using my phone as a hotspot and doing it that way and oh that would have used a bunch of data for this Correct. Five gigs a month. So yeah, correct. Yeah So um, but yes. Yeah. Yeah, so there you go. Yeah Fun stuff, uh Don brings us our next quick tip. He uh, he shares He says, uh, I was listening to episode 965 and the opening quick tip about accessing qr codes from another device where you my son took a picture Showed the picture on the photos app on his watch so that he could then scan the uh qr code from his phone Uh, he says as you were stating in the tip I or as you were stating the tip I assumed that you were going to say that you can use your phone to access qr Fodes qr codes on your phone by long tapping them Because he says he tried it And he found a case where qr code was part of a graphic in an email He long pressed the image to read what options were in the contextual menu And then chose to open quick look after which long pressing the qr code gives you the options to open the link in safari Copy the link. It even shows the url and he is correct For things that quick look recognizes In fact, you didn't even need to do the extra step if you just long press on a qr code in your email If it has a link or something that quick look recognizes Then it will offer to bring you to that link or do all the things that don mentioned For what we did because I tried this after we got don's note Uh, we were using uh the qr code to set up our Uh our our esim plans for for when we were traveling in europe for our data plans And I tried it and it quick look does not know anything about Uh esim qr codes So it has to be done with the camera, which is sort of weird You would think That the same engine that the camera uses would be that but no it is not quick look is not smart enough So try it You know if you get a qr code that you need to read on your iPhone Certainly try it and and if that if it works great and if it doesn't work.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Uh I do like when I'm out and about I do like in the camera being able to do either qr codes Or live text Yeah, yeah, what do you use live text for? Um, reading the the uh text on Products in the store, especially if they're foreign. I don't know if it does I mean, it certainly does english. I think I don't recall the languages that live text understand soft top my head. Sure Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool John uh p you want to take us to uh while we're on the subject of qr codes You want to take us to todd? I should yeah listener todd writes, um I I had created a qr of my business card because I don't carry them anymore Having a qr is good but getting access to it quickly via the iphone was a pain until we got multiple lock screens Brilliant. I created a lock screen image with the qr code now when I think I might need to share my info I switched my lock screen to the qr code And an additional tip if you have notifications blocking the screen simply drag them down to the bottom of the top Grab the topmost modification. Uh, bring it drag it down between the flashlight and the camera on the lock screen buttons and it will Uh, they'll those will disappear and you have full access to your lock code Uh, I wrote them back said he I'm a huge fan of qr codes. Uh, I used them all the time. In fact, I For those that are watching, uh, that's an example of and I can't tell whether you see it or not We can see it But okay. Yeah, so I you can create I use iqr app. It's available on the app store for 1499 And there's an airplane in there You could put any image you want in there and and change the shape and the color and put text in there and so yeah Pete Pete showed a qr code that he had printed on a sticker But it was created with this app It it was a qr code like we would all recognize with uh an airplane image in the middle of it And then of course it's a link to his other podcast. So there I was dot us. That's pretty cool Yeah, so that was neat and then Todd wrote back and said he uses uh, and I went and looked at it It looks like a pretty cool Little app as well. It's called qr factory and he said he bought a lifetime Access to that for 29 99 and the link is in the show notes And it looks like it does similar things you can put images in there and Manipulate it and change the size the color the shape the shadowing The number one thing I've noticed in in playing with this you need high contrast Which makes sense when you think about it In other words, you can't use a light blue on a light yellow and expect to get the The camera to pick up to pick it up. Sure That makes sense. Huh, but qr codes are fun. Have some fun with them You know when we were in Italy, we were in an air b&b and as usual they had given us Ahead of time the wi-fi name and password and you know all the instructions for using the unit and all that stuff But when we got there on the wall right next to the door They had printed an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper that they laminated and stuck on the wall And it had emergency contact information for the the hosts. So which great, you know And a massive qr code on it That when scanned would offer to completely join you to their wi-fi network Like you didn't have to do Anything you just scan the qr code and you're connected. I did it with my phone I did it with my ipad and the reason I had to do it with my phone and my ipad because in the past uh What i've done when I get the the the the email from the air b&b with the with the wi-fi details Is while i'm at home I go to any of my computers my laptop my desktop doesn't matter and I go into system Preferences and i'm being intentional about the words i'm choosing here And I would go into wi-fi and I would add the network there It would have time to populate and sync to all my devices. So when I arrived at the air b&b It would already be on my phone and I would just join and everything was smooth Guess what you can't do in ventura System settings. Well, you can't add a wi-fi network manually. That's not Accessible to you at the time You can add a wi-fi network But you can't just go put the the details in Without being able to attach to the wi-fi network in the moment. It won't save them for you interesting I can't find a way So I had to do it when we got there and that's why but the qr code is great when my my daughter and her boyfriend came over Uh, I was just like, oh, yeah, you know just sign up for the wi-fi and they were like, well, this is great So I definitely need to find some app that I can create a similar qr code for here I'm going to put it on the beer fridge in my studio so that when people come over Uh to rehearse or whatever. I don't have five people saying. Hey, what's the wi-fi? Can you help me? I don't just scan right there. Good to go.  Yeah, that's great. Nice Yeah, that's a great idea that and that gives me an idea that uh, Like my mother-in-law is staying at our house with our son this week Put a little qr code to a video. Here's how you operate the tv in the remote because I'm using, you know channel That's a brilliant idea. Here's a little video. Here's how you turn it on here's how you change channels And I'll put a little video up on how to do it and I'll throw it on my server And there's the qr code to that video run and play Amazing That's what I'm oh, I like it In our chat mark m put a link to qr code generator.com There's some hyphens in there. You don't have to worry. Just go to mackey cub.com. We'll link you there It is a free qr code generator and He sent us a link to their very specific template for Creating a wi-fi qr code. So we will put that in the show notes too. Yeah Yeah awesome I agree great listeners here on discord What's that and finally the aero app offers that as well Is that right? Really? Really, where do you go to do that on the aero app john? Well, if you're gonna share it on the show You gotta you gotta I mean we teach here. We don't just refer So i'm guessing If you go and i'm and i am guessing here Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know where to go john. Are you sure the aero app does this? I know there was a screen that I saw that had a qr code on it. So Hmm Well, it is up to you to figure that out at some point when we're not doing something to which you need to pay attention on the show Uh, yeah, I don't I don't see it in here. I'm sort of scrolling through the aero um The Oh, there it is. So go into settings and this is weird because Like it it's it's it's not where I would predict it to be but it sort of makes sense You go in the aero app go to settings go to guest network I have my guest network disabled, but in the guest network page There is a tab for main network and on that also on the guest network There is the share qr code And uh, boom there it is. I I have it up on my screen. So I'm gonna take a screenshot of that And uh, I'll I'll file that away for for later use. So nice. Fine. Good Fun stuff. I love this. I love this. Love this. Love this. Love this All right Let's see Adam is next with Uh a tip for us. We love These tips, um If you are using a microphone in mac os ventura Visit your control center. You will see a setting for mic mode and you get to set it for standard Or voice isolation This works with Third-party microphones. I tested this it works with of course the internal mic But I was shocked to see that it works with third-party microphones because it means that whatever magic apple is doing To do voice isolation is happening Is able to happen without their own hardware in the mix, which I thought was pretty amazing And it will let you pick the mode per app that is using the mic So I had two things using the mic which it's pretty rare I suppose that you would have two things using the mic But I had zoom open when adam told me about this and then uh, and then I opened audio hijack and and You know started a session in there and I got two options two sets of options I could choose standard for zoom and voice isolation for audio hijacker vice versa. So yeah, so what uh What what is voice isolation sound master? Um, it it's Near as I could I don't know so let me start there Okay, well it could mean different things to To different engineers and I don't know what it meant to apples engineers I haven't tested it enough to say what it's doing Uh, there are two things that I think it's doing number one is it boosts the eq Uh from about the uh, you know, it's probably 700 frequency range of the human voice In the frequency range of the human voice probably, you know somewhere around one to two k would be my guess um, and then It all I think it's also doing some, uh Listening for baseline sounds and sort of Suppressing background noise. I don't know if it's doing the ladder It's definitely doing the former where it's enhancing those those frequencies I'm wondering what I heard things if I were to switch to that now as we were speaking You know what try it Pete switch to it. Let's see what happens. I'm gonna do a test count to five one two three four five and the word three I switched to voice isolation probably not much going on there, but I did turn off the Are you are you still on voice isolation? I just switched to voice isolation when I hit three. Yes So, okay, we heard your audio sort of jitter a little bit which makes sense And you're still on it now. I am still on it now. Yes. So probably no real difference, but go ahead and switch back Okay, well, let me where is that silly setting there it is Uh, I'll switch on three one two three Four well, it won't switch back now. You're switched back there is switched back. Yes Took it took three or four clicks to switch back on back to standard All right.  So that would right right Okay, well, I'll leave it alone for now, but I just yeah, yeah Here's where we learn live folks. No, I like it. I like doing these kinds of things live I I wouldn't mess with the core audio on my mac right now I by the way, I know I mentioned it in the last episode. So I will I will share a quick follow-up I did a ton of testing this week. I dedicated like four hours on wednesday Uh, the first thing that I did was instead of wiping this machine to start my tests I went down to the office Uh, now this machine in the studio is an intel i9 2019 iMac My machine in the office is an m1 mini I created an aggregate audio device on that and tried my tests my tests are Start capturing audio in a way that I can hear it real-time live So I know when there's an issue And I launch an app like apples music app that will instantiate a connection to core audio And it doesn't matter what app I launch as long as it's something that will open up its own connection As if I am using an aggregate audio device For input output or both it doesn't matter The audio will stutter for between a half a second and five seconds when a new A new connection is made to core audio. This happens on m1 happens on intel I did all kinds of testing to see if I could make it better or worse And you really can't It's just the way it is if you're not using an aggregate audio device. The problem is almost not there So something has changed between Monterey and Ventura in terms of how Core audio is efficiency, especially when dealing with aggregate audio devices. So I'll keep you posted on my progress, but part of that progress might involve a temporary loop back to To monterey so All right, uh moving on to Uh LL MMD in our discord who shared a tip. He says he or she I don't know they Said to add custom system sound effects to the mac look in your home library folder for a sounds folder If one doesn't exist create one put your custom sound effects in this folder in a iff format What's a iff audio interchange file format? It was developed by apple in 88 based on electronic arts iff used in amiga systems interesting You can convert common audio file types to a ff using online converters and and other things like that. So Uh, that's interesting. I uh that way and then you can use those in the sound effects for your system system-wide So yeah pretty good stuff. I like it Yeah, good. That's good. No, that's great stuff Cool, you know sound effects like say that like that, right? Yeah, but that you're triggering from a third party app This would this would be this would be system sound you could call it up in system settings Correct, correct. So when you get a new email it would do that because you know because everyone loves hearing every time They get a new email. Exactly. Please turn that sound. Yeah Yeah, yeah, thank you All right, um One more from uh, porthos john with uh with in the quick tips category He uh, he says i've been reading up on uh, gan chargers for power delivery and Any of them including the new apple charger that comes with the m2 macbook air That have multiple ports have a quirk when you plug in another device to them All power output will be cut off while the internal circuit determines how to redistribute power Amongst the devices that are plugged in while this usually isn't a problem He says I had a raspberry pi reboot on me because it was plugged into a power delivery port on my charger And when I added my laptop poof the raspberry pi rebooted So that's interesting. It makes sense that the that the circuit needs to Sort of read decide how to how to send power out, but um Good to know. Thank you for that heads up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah So interesting John you said you tried this with one of yours and that didn't happen Um No, oh, I thought in pre. Sorry. I must have misunderstood. I thought in pre show you said that this does not happen with You said someone about a renegotiated Yeah, but it didn't it didn't cut power to the port. It just renegotiated things. Maybe I misunderstood. Yeah All right, cool Moving on we got one quick tip left from well, will we think we have one quick tip left from from jamie Also from our discord A quick tip for Synology users if you want to send a file to anyone securely You can use your disk station to do so you go into the disk station web interface dsm Go to file station right click on any file and select share You will get a sharing link that you can use to access the file You also get a chance to set a password and or access count and expiration dates for the link You can then email the link to someone Uh and then give them the password through a phone call so that you can have sort of a two factor thing going on If you want the recipient does not need an account on your Synology disk station Uh, so yeah very uh very huge. Yeah, I think I've done that before I've played with that before but That's a good one to remember. Yeah. No, it's it's a great I've I've done this I've been doing this for years and never thought to mention it in the show And then of course when I saw jamie's note it was like well, obviously we need to share this that this is the definition of a quick tip The uh the bonus quick tip here is that you can also request a file from someone in a similar way Again go into disk station manager go into file station Right click on a a folder. I gotta find it here. Yeah, right click on a folder and select create file request Uh, and then you can send a link to someone they can use that to to send the file up to you and and you're uh, You're good to go. So yeah, I like it and and mark m in discord says also works if you use Synology drive client on the desktop And i'm pretty sure I thought yeah now i'm not seeing it now I thought you could get a link or something like that to a specific file You can yeah, you right right click it in the if it is a folder that's synced with Your disk station you right click it uh in in the finder and you should Get the the link to there the option to create a shareable link I will say that that has been unreliable for me in over the years so much so That I don't even attempt to do things that way anymore, but Maybe it's better now. They've they've updated the Synology drive app recently It's a it's an apple silicon native app now whereas previously it was it was running in rosetta So maybe it's better now. I mark m you have inspired me to To reset my trust definition with it. Yeah, yeah But yeah, you can right click the file that's on a Synology drive and in down near the bottom is get link Yeah, yeah, there it is permissions public. Yeah, cool You know, there's nothing worse than going into a doctor's appointment expecting to be the center of attention And then your doctor seems like they've got better things to do and better places to be Instead of listening to you intently asking you how you feel and helping you along The doctor is checking the clock looking at the computer distracted. We've been there, right? With our sponsor Zock doc, you're gonna find quality doctors who focus on you Listen to you and prioritize your care Zock doc is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient reviewed Take your insurance and are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun No more dr. Roulette or scouring the internet for questionable reviews with zock doc You've got a trusted guide to connect you to your favorite doctor that you haven't yet met Millions of people use zock doc's free app to find and book a doctor in their neighborhood Who's patient reviewed and fits their needs and schedule just right? I've used zock doc too. It works amazingly well You got to check it out. Go to zock doc.com Mgg and download the zock doc app for free Then find and book a top rated doctor today. Many are available within just 24 hours That's zoc doc.com slash mgg zock doc.com slash mgg and our thanks to zock doc for sponsoring this episode Hey, I got a question for you. What's the most powerful untapped resource in it? Do you know? I do it's your end users and our sponsor collide with a k is an endpoint security solution That uses that resource old school device management tools like mdm's force those disruptive software agents onto your employees devices They slow your performance. They treat privacy as an afterthought collide does things differently Instead of forcing changes on users collide uses slack to notify your team when their devices are insecure And gives them step by step instructions on how to solve their problems It's kind of like what we do here with mgg, right? And by reaching out to employees with these friendly slack messages Collide educates them about company policies and that helps you build a culture in which everyone contributes to security because Everyone understands the how and why you're doing it For it admins collide provides a single dashboard that lets you monitor the security of your entire fleet Whether you're running mac windows linux And that visibility makes it easy to prove compliance to your customers your leadership your auditors You can meet your compliance goals by putting your end users first Visit collide dot com slash mgg to find out how that's k O L i d e dot com slash mgg Collide dot com slash mgg and our thanks to collide for sponsoring this episode All right, uh listener peter brings us to our first question of the day peter writes Uh after one of your suggestions. I have been rebooting my wi-fi mesh system Yeah, he's been doing it each night at 3 a.m. I recommend once a week is is more than enough But uh anyway, we move on says, uh, I have a deco system That's about five years old and for the most part this reboot works. Well, however, I have an issue I have a built-in wi-fi with my phios router that is generally just there if I need a backup When the deco goes down my mac mini picks up the phios wi-fi and attaches to that Generally, it doesn't matter. It is wired for your ethernet However, printing won't work because the printer is on the decos wi-fi network I my thought was to set up some automation to switch the wi-fi back to the deco at some given time each day Say 7 a.m. And I hope there was a shortcut via the app to do this. However, it doesn't appear so It seems there are some apps that may do what I want But I was hoping to keep it to something more native Also, I was thinking this might be a problem with the preferences list of wi-fi networks And this is becoming quite opaque now in ventura However, I realized this is a simple case of my mac mini saying I don't see my preferred network But this other one's available. I'll take it even though the preferred one became available again It doesn't automatically switch back So you could set your mac to not auto join the wi-fi network from your router And and and then you could choose it manually if you wanted But that might be the easiest solution for the exact scenario that you are in your max connected via ethernet So you don't need to worry about that You've got that other wi-fi network there. So going into system settings in ventura And setting it to not auto join that network would would be one way of doing it However, I'm I'm wondering here if your mac is connected to ethernet Where like where how is the network split up Is and where is it connected to ethernet would be my question Because if the printer is connected to the wi-fi via the your deco your mesh system Your computer should be connected to the same ethernet as that that would be my Advice here so that you have just one network If the ethernet connected mac can't see the wi-fi connected printer It tells me that you've got at least two networks And maybe you're connecting your mac to ethernet via the the the router and and so it's it's that sort of side of the family But I would look for a way To connect your mac to the ethernet of the the deco system so that it's all Kind of as one because it there is a bridge all routers these days Create a bridge between their ethernet and their wi-fi. So I I'm I'm thinking that Might be a better path to solving this and other sort of niggling problems that you might wind up with down the road So pick me pick me pick me so I'm just kind of curious is and I'm way over my head here. I'm Oh same water at my nose level Was I don't think we are with your level on you and john on networking. Um, is this a different Subnet mask or something that's going on in there because yes Yeah, no, that's no, and I'm glad you asked that question because I I sort of glossed over that Um, yeah, you know, let and I I don't know what his his sublets are but I'm gonna I'm gonna make some up Let's say that his fios router puts him on 10.0.1.x as a network And his deco puts him on 192.168.1.x as a network So his mac in theory and in practice could be connected to both of those networks simultaneously Uh, you get to pick which one it's going to use as the priority and it doesn't matter whether this is, you know, ethernet or what uh by setting the service order in uh, in and in Ventura, it's slightly different, but it's sort of the same now. It wasn't there I don't think this option existed when Ventura came out 13.0 But now you go into system settings Network and down in the lower right, you'll see three dots with a downward pointing carrot You can choose set service order there and decide whether ethernet or wi-fi is the preferred That's going to be what it uses for connecting to the internet. That's how it's going to prioritize that If you have local devices that are only on one or the other It will just find those because they're using different subnet masks and or different subnets entirely not just the mask the different entirely, okay, because yeah, that's Because there's that and I think I did this but it it may be in a little different. So your your eros and your decos One of them has to be etherneted in right? They want to feed a wi-fi So one of them has to be etherneted in so that's the way I've set it up and then I talked last week I think about having to reset my Router completely once fitium came online And so and as I did that it offered me as I was going through all the settings. Oh, you want to create a network printer I'm go. Let's just do that. I've though. I've never done it before. It's always just been on our wi-fi Once I did that then none of the print And I have no idea why it didn't work But as soon as I deleted that network printer from the router Then it all came back to normal so we can print throughout the house and and we talked about it being an air print It's an air print already so yeah It it quickly gets convoluted. I guess it does get convoluted. I uh, oh pick me pick me. Yeah, yeah I know I have a thought as we're as we're going through this for peter not you peter that the peter our listener. Yeah, uh If I were in this scenario and And I I am not so I can't say for certain that this would be the best solution but one solution I would certainly Probably the pride the pride my priority would be to explore Having just one network. It really is best to have just one network with The phios routers you you often cannot Turn off that network, right? So What I would do is again, I would explore doing this there might be reasons not to but I would put my decos in bridge mode and not have them be routers And that way in my example before when I connected to my deco I would get a one of those 10.0.1.x ip addresses from the phios router On the connections that I make to the deco system because it's not trying to be a router It's just letting me pass things through so that would be my advice here bridge mode would be best now You might prefer the way the decos manage a network versus the way the phios manages a network And so then you're sort of are in a scenario where you have to choose Do I want this double that thing or not double that meaning Your deco is getting an address from the phios and then creating its own subnet off of that So you essentially have two versions of a subnet. That's non-optimal Um, so I would I would I would put your decos in bridge mode And I'm glad I'm glad we had this conversation One other quick networking question then um, and I think I think it's true But like I have one or two devices that are on the 2.4 gig Uh only that's as much as they're capable and then of course on the fly So I have those two networks, but I think they can still see each other even though they're on separate Bands, they're on. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because your router just like just like your router Yeah, well and just like your router bridges ethernet to wi-fi Your your router also bridges 2.4 gigahertz to 5 gigahertz so that it can see everything now What we were talking about before with the issue that you're having in your hotel Many not all many home routers can be set to not let devices see each other and not bridge those things But that would drive you crazy because then you wouldn't be able to see your other devices Right. Well, and I know what it offers if I turn on my guest network It says hey, do you want your guest network to be able to see your network? That's that's a clear option in there and generally speaking you want to say no, I don't want you screwing around in my printer and in my disk drive, you know my sonology drive that sort of thing No, no, that's you're here for network access or internet access only not to play around on my network So I would separate that out, but that's just me Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah some Yeah Fun stuff fun stuff. All right Yeah, I miss being I miss being able to prioritize wi-fi networks Because that was going to be my initial answer But then I'd like your answer better the the bridging thing. Yeah, just bridge it and then you don't have then It's like it's it takes the headache out of it. Yeah Yeah Yeah Uh, all right moving on to question number two. Jeremy asks I think Jeremy s right I've had this issue for several os's now. I can't recall when it started I have four external hard drives on my 13 inch 2020 macbook pro One for time machine one for carbon copy cloner one for project backups and one for photos and music Here's the issue Every time I eject them all I get an error message on my mac saying the disk music and photos wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it to eject the disk immediately click the force eject button No apps are open that would use this disk i.e music is not open nor is photos And I have even tried quitting all of my apps one by one to try and pinpoint a culprit to no avail There's a related issue that may or may not be related to drive for carbon copy. Oh, yeah, that's I'm not going to get into that okay, um, so This makes sense if you are using iCloud photo library Because then there is always a background process running whatever your user whenever your user account is logged in And that's almost certainly the reason you're seeing this message Of course, if you had the music app or the photos app open You would also get this message because they are using that drive But even if they're not open if you've got that iCloud photo library going It has a background process that is always syncing your photos library with iCloud and you can confirm this You it requires a little bit of the terminal and I'll put the command in the uh in the show notes but it would be Lsof is really the command to use and that's list open files I like to then take lsof and pipe it Into the grep command so that it shows and I grep is just a search Pattern match really is the right way to to think of grep And so I would say lsof and the pipe character, which will all be in the show notes grep space and then the name or some part of the name unique name of my drive And that will then only show me the open files that match that pattern Which are only the files on that drive and you can see Not only what files are open, but what process they belong to and so for me I did this on mine and photo library d came up Uh as the as the name of the process which makes perfect sense And that's why I that's why this is happening so um I There's In order to be able to see your photos Uh or to eject that drive you'd have to log out of your mac or You'd have to choose to keep your photos on your internal drive And if you don't have enough space for them you could turn on optimize Storage in iCloud photos and then it would only keep the ones that it can fit on there A nice workaround ish If you want to do that is to create a second user account Have that second user account log into your same iCloud account Have it connect to your photos library Have it store the photos library on the external drive and And then that way when you're home and you're connected to everything you can go and log in is that And let it sync all your stuff up. You've keep your local copy of your photos But when you log out of that account, it's no longer using that drive you can eject them You can take your thing with you You can still access your photos on the road because you have You're in your main account. You have your optimized version of your photos library So that's my that's my work my suggested workaround for Folks that are doing that or if you have yeah, there you go p if you have a desktop mac uh, you can You can just do the photo library syncing on that one and and and then your laptop is sort of free to be your laptop So anyway, that's uh, that's my Yeah, that's my thought on that. Well, that's nice. I'll tell you that's big thing all the years ago. They went to Having the iCloud drive being able to hold all of those how many people lost photos when a hard drive crashed I mean, oh, yeah, baby photos and you know precious memories. It can't be replaced exactly So that's that's great that they did that Yep, so but yeah, the second account is is it's the best workaround I've come up with Yeah, yeah so There we go. That's what uh, that's what we got as um Is my computer just set to did it reset my audio? No, it's not on echo cancellation. You seem to be okay I didn't really need you that time. Oh, you have echo cancellation on that. That's why okay. I just turned it off for you It's fine. I do you did. Yeah Probably because you set up a new mic But now we can have a much more natural conversation because if we wind up talking over each other It doesn't start cutting you in and out. Um, so yeah, there you go Yes, sir. Yes, sir Echo cancellation is great if you're using speakers, but when you're using headphones, you don't need it Hopefully All right Up next john Sylvain Has a time travel tip. Well, it's not really time travel. I just thought I'd say that Um, just found something new. I didn't know. Okay. There are many things. I don't know Um, it's farry on mac os if you hold the command key and click on the back or forward button It will open a new tab with the previous or next visited page Then it is cool I didn't know, you know, I'm pressing the command button and the arrow buttons when I tried it and then No, no, click on the actual back button up on the browser itself on the screen Okay I wish you had flagged this as a quick tip this make this this fits the quick tip the section of the show. Yeah, yeah interesting Yeah, oddly, it's not working for me on the mini and then I looked in the history menu and There are back and forward options that are command left bracket command right bracket Huh, you know what else it works on it works on chrome Does it really p? Huh, that's a good tip. I like it. I didn't know it worked.  There it is right on. There it is Uh, all right While we are on the subject of shortcuts and such listener Andrew I I love this and he shared this in discord and I'll put a link in the show notes to Uh, the discord chat word where he talked about this so you can see it because I it really is one of those things It's worth seeing he says, um And he's got a whole link to to an article about how he created this But he says I am a self-confessed button pusher I know I can control most things on my iphone via siri, but sometimes I forget it exists And then go pecking on my iphone for what I want music. He says is one such thing I grew up in the 70s and 80s when push button radios were a thing That is radios with physical or mechanical buttons that landed you on the station you wanted to listen to And he said he wanted to replicate that on his phone. So with apples shortcuts Uh, he created shortcuts for Categories apple playlists and it makes them seem like Radio stations, so he's got shortcuts. I mean he's got a whole page of these on his phone shortcuts for You know jazz classical piano music It you know his his uh different radio stations that he listens to through music it like it's any any talks through The the way you do this is you add a shortcut And you make the shortcut play music and then you hit the music And thing and you hit you choose a source and then you're good to go It's uh, he's got all the instructions there, but I just love the Love the idea of just being able to get right to Hey, it's sort of think about this as a deep link to music Right, so you could launch the music app and then go and pick the things you want to listen to or You can pre-pick them and just deep link it and click that and shortcuts will take you right there Really disappointed noticing those screenshots. I didn't see one button for the mac geek gap or for so there I was I'm just saying Can you do deep links to the podcasts app? Why not? Well, I don't know I might I mean it might not be a thing that apple lets you do I would think you could get it through apple music. Can you not no no podcasts are not in apple music podcasts are in the podcast app Yeah, that's true. Yeah, but I thought I would do both. Okay If you wanted a deep link for the mac geek app show then you just download the mac geek app Uh from the app store. It's free and you know, there you go So we'll put a link to that in the show notes, too But yeah, I don't know if the podcast app like if shortcuts can do deep links to the podcast app Maybe like I haven't tried it. I'm not gonna try it. I guess is it could but yeah, we don't have time right? Well, I mean we have time it's it's the if I launch the podcast app Yeah, well if I launch the podcast app my audio is almost certainly gonna cut out and then it's gonna start Yeah, it's it's gonna be a whole thing. Yeah John You got another tip from ken Yeah, I think I do so, um ken says Uh in show 964 you talked about using terminal to start up a mac I use carbon copy cloner a schedule a backup in the early am and select wake system with a scheduled time Very clever people are finding ways to use ccc Um as a replacement for the stuff that used to be in finder. So that's why I just thought I'd mention this. Um, yeah Well in system system preferences not finder Hmm, right not finder system preferences to wake your system preferences, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah, and we had a user in the past shows suggested using ccc for a restart that can do that system task too. Yeah Um, but yeah, I do what ken says Is that I'll wake up my machine and I'll do a ccc backup at three in the morning and it schedules the task To do that and then I put it back to sleep when it's done. I don't have to but I do just to save energy Here's the thing though You don't have to do that Mike bombic taught us years ago That you can tell ccc like like we've discussed here to automatically wake up your mac at the time of the backup You know, you said a 3am backup or whatever and and then it you know, it wakes it up and does the backup exactly at 3am That will cause your mac to wake up proper Meaning the screen will come alive and this is why we found out about this years ago, but it but it's applicable here You can also set it not to wake up your mac and to do it and I forget the the exact terminology of the option But there's only like three options And one of them is do it the next time my mac wakes up after 3am. That's effectively what you're choosing If you choose that It will do exactly as it says and your mac You could certainly be the one to wake it up And if you are then your screen will come on and all of those things happen However, your mac also wakes itself up every I think it's every 108 minutes, but it might be more frequently than that now To do its own little background tasks of sorts your laptop even does this While it's in clamshell mode asleep closed It'll do time machine backups that way and the nice part about this is when it wakes itself up in the background It does not turn your screen on So if you set carbon copy cloner to just do its backup the next time your mac wakes itself up It will do it certainly within You know an hour or less of when the scheduled time is and and you're and and then you're not waking your mac up unnecessarily so Just a uh Little a little tip. Yeah. Yeah. I let me find this in carbon copy cloner Yeah, because I also I also do a time machine one. Yeah, that's using power nap So I right it does what you just said it doesn't turn on the screen because it's doing its own little background thing Right, right, right. Yep. Uh, I'm looking here. Where is the schedule? So I have a carbon copy cloner backup Uh, and the option that I'm choosing is in the system wake or power on behavior section There's five options One is wake the system but skip tasks when the system is off The second is wake or power on the system The third is run when the system next wakes The fourth is run when the system next wakes or powers on And then the the last is of course skip this task if the system's asleep or uh off so, um I I'm curious this this Has anybody have either of you guys Had your mac Automatically power on since you upgraded to ventura Because I have my mac Prior to ventura. I set my my max to wake up Uh wake up or power on every day at 7 a.m And the reason I did this Was because if the power goes out and I'm not home I and for whatever reason my mac doesn't wake Restart after a power outage, which it should it's set to do that, but it doesn't always Then it will try to wake itself at 7 a.m every day and My power we didn't talk about this in the last episode But when we were in europe my power went out like three times. We had like snowmageddon here and my studio iMac here and my mac in the office Did not come on while I was away I almost called you peak and asked you to come over and turn one of them on but then I realized it's really not that important but uh But yeah, it like they were off and they stayed off until I turned them on and then as soon as I turned them on I launched the terminal and did pmset dash g sked I'll put that command in the show notes too because now that I said it that that's how you get to see what uh What your system thinks it's going to do when it wake, you know For the schedule and it was there wake power on it 7 a.m every day It's like it's set So I un-set it and reset it. I guess I need to turn one of my computers off and see if it'll turn on at 7 a.m but um Yeah, I have not had mine come on but at my laptop, you know, it's on and off all the time I don't notice it. I need to check my mac mini and see because that's really the one that I need That would be the one exactly a reliable machine. Yeah exactly. Yeah So and then I wonder if I can I should be able through tail scale to to log into it and and log it in, right? Like if it's yes at the login screen. Yeah, yeah, uh As long as you don't have file vault on yes I don't know because if you got file vault on then you're stuck at the file vault screen and nothing's running So you're not true. Yeah, tail scale it not yet Correct, correct But as long as you're not running file vault on it then yes You could get to the login it would bring you to log in screen with tail scale. I think I think that's a good question Pete does tail scale start When does I think no, I I don't think you would see tail. I think tail scale is run later as a user process Yeah, I think so Yeah Brian Monroe says it sounds like another macOS uh vista. I mean ventura bug Yeah, the the not power gets a feature brian Yeah, yeah Yeah, I'm uh, where where do you set? Oh, what they've changed this so many times, but I'm pretty sure tail scale launches at user login And so no it wouldn't be running if you're not logged in so you would have to VPN into your network another way. Yeah mark says real vnc would do it You know starts before the user. So yeah, I don't think tail scale does I don't think it does either. I seem to in fact, I should recall watching it log in after I boot up Yeah, in the preferences the option is start on login. So yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah well, so Your mac mini though is running as like your your plex server and your channel server and all that stuff Yes, so I don't need file vault on that. I just well, but it's well You don't yeah, you probably don't and you don't want it because you want it to come up But in order to run the plex server and the channel server, you need to auto log into an account anyway Yeah Right because otherwise I need to do it or it ain't gonna run. Yeah, it's not gonna run So I'm out on the road and I get a power failure and it's gonna come back up to the login screen And that's it. It's gonna come up to your yeah The login screen or if you're running file vault to your to your file vault screen. So yeah Yeah, I think yeah set at the auto login basically remove the password on that machine Well, no, don't remove the password just set it to auto login You can you can do you can have a password and choose an account to auto log in. I did not know that Yeah, see there's things we learn every time we do this show, man. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you beat me to the ding I did beat me to the ding If anybody was looking for the title of the show There it is. That's it. You beat me to the ding. I like it Uh, all right and go to wrap it up here If you want to see a list of not only scheduled events, but repeating events system information hardware power Um, and it shows more than the command that you gave Dave. So I just wanted to mention it So it shows both of the ones that p.m. Set Showed but it also shows a restart event Which you have to now schedule the other terminal, right? Yes, no, I That i'm so glad you mentioned that john I because I another listener Maybe it was maybe it was this interchange with ken or it was with somebody else Just mentioned that in passing and I was like what I had no idea Yeah, you get to see when like like you said it shows way more Then what that terminal command shows it'll show when it's good. So they don't have to rewind System information Yeah Hardware scroll down to the power section. It will show you the next few Scheduled like wake up events and it could be an app that wants You know time on the cpu to do a thing or like yeah, it's it's it's I was blown away when I saw that there That that is new to ventura. I'm pretty sure right. I haven't seen that in the past. No, I've seen in the past Really? Oh, I mean I've had to do in a different spot because I'm like, well Is that really the right place to put it? It's like, yeah, I guess I guess I'm sorry. I'm lost not system settings system information Yes, correct. So about so about this yeah, go go to about this mac choose more info And then that will no then that will launch the general section of system settings And way at the bottom of that screen you choose system report a faster way to get there Is to option click the apple menu and choose system information. Well, there's that Right super easy. Yeah, I think you beat me to the ding again. I beat you to the ding again Yeah, but yeah, then go once you're in system information However, you choose to get there go to in the power section the power subsection of hardware And you will see power events and reading of repeating events and mine says wake or power on at 7 a.m Every day restart at 7 15 a.m on thursdays It restarts at 7 15 on thursdays. Let me look. Yep one day four hours. So it's friday now Well, we're recording this anyway, so yeah Why did you admit so hard to find system information? I yeah, I agree. It used to be more direct. Yeah one click on more information. Boom. There you are Yeah Hey, we got a show for those of you who are interested in home automation I think that's kind of all of us here It's the home assistant podcast If you're looking to get started with home automation or looking to get inspired by some neat things that people are doing with their Smart homes then look no further the home assistant podcast has you covered from automating your lights and thermostats to integrating smart appliances and security systems They've got all the tips and tricks you need to transform your home into a high tech paradise Listen in and hear their thoughts on automating beer decorators Integrating apple's home kit using home automation to get your kids to do their own chores I need to learn this and even some interesting conversations on how you can use smart homes to help folks Living with disabilities and on their youtube channel There's also a bonus second show called all things smart home Which talks about general home automation concepts ideas and updates Whether it's to simplify your life save on energy or just tame your kids If home automation is something you've been thinking of doing and want to be inspired Then join host phil hawthorne and rohan caramandi on the home assistant podcast and all things smart home show Available on youtube or anywhere you subscribe to your podcast visit hkmedia.io Slash subscribe for all the links and our thanks to phil and rohan for doing this swap with us All right time for a a couple of maybe maybe a few cool stuffs found before we say goodbye here Porthos john has won I think this is the third time we're mentioning something from you today in the episode porthos john He says listening to episode 965. I thought I'd offer this the otow 200 watt Gann charger It has three usb cpd ports and two usba ports with gobs of power The coolest part is that on the side of the charger is a small lcd that shows you volts amps and watts for each port It's also ul listed. I have no idea how long but at the moment He says it has a 40 dollar coupon on amazon that drops it down to uh To well, it doesn't exist anymore. So it doesn't matter. It's 129 at the moment, uh on amazon, but uh, Yeah, this thing is cool, man. These uh, the the port there the You know lcd readout shows you How much power each port's using I I need to decide where I want this because most of my chargers like this Wind up on the floor somewhere, right? This one Definitely deserves to be displayed somewhere, but uh, Yeah, five ports man. I don't know. I don't know where it belongs, but it belongs somewhere in my life folks. So I'm into it It's pretty cool. You don't even you don't even need a uh, you know one of those inline Whatchamacallits, right power meter power meter. That's the one. Yep uh While we're on the subject of cool stuff found mark m shares Uh uptime kuma, which is a free open source engine to track when your devices and servers go offline It's it's hosted at github, but you just download and install you tell it to monitor servers and then it uh It it tells you when they've it Keep keeps track of their history and also tells you when when uh devices have gone up or down And they even have a little demo server that you can look at Right on the web. So you don't even have to download and install it if uh, if you don't want So that's a pretty cool one for things like uh, your nest thermostat and your slage locks and Um, it probably would pee. Yeah Yeah, as long as it's running on your local network and as long as your Devices have consistent ip addresses. So either a dhcp reservation or something so that you can point at it and say I know I want to know, you know, when this goes offline Tell me. Yeah, cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah Yeah, as mark m who who is in the chat points out if you can ping them This thing can do its job. Yeah, sorry gun. John go ahead. Yeah Um, just throw another one in here because I got an alert from it the other day uptime robot Okay, and for the most part it tells me when my synologies are no longer accessible by uh By a ddns. It's like, yeah, a synology five is down and then a synology five is up and then a synology Interesting. So is this uh, this is like a software as a service kind of thing, right?  So yeah, so I give it the ddns of my synologies for example I could add other devices, but Huh, I I don't Really? And it's free for up to 50 monitors a month On a five minute monitoring interval So if you need something that's monitored more frequently than every five minutes then you pay them Different prices, but huh? That's I gotta Okay, I'm into this That's pretty good. John How long have you been using it? Is it is it? I assume it's reliable, right? Okay. Yeah, okay great All right, huh doesn't doesn't your synology email you when it goes. Hey, I've lost contact Well, you can yes, you can have synology Email you about it right because your your distation can't email you if it doesn't have connection, right? It's okay. It doesn't yeah, but yes, I meant You meant what you knew that's right. Um that the only Issue with that is it's not Uh, it's not handle the other things that you can well and you're not gonna get it instantly Like I got I would get a notification because I got those notifications last week when my When my ups has finally died and my stuff went offline with the power outage Because the only the house is covered by the the standby generator Not the office and of course there's something Flaky about our standby generator that doesn't actually turn on when it's supposed to that's a whole other issue Yeah, I told them. I'm like they're like, well, we're not sure what it is. I'm like it doesn't matter Either fix it or or or we're gonna unravel this thing and take a different direction Because the whole point is that it turns on And I don't need to call the generator company to come out here when I'm in italy and turn my freaking generator on Which they did but you know, that's not the point Anyway, I'm probably gonna move my home network stuff over to the house My synologies and everything because now that there's a standby generator there I kind of want that but anyway, I got those emails about my devices From Synology, but it was only after they'd been offline for like an hour So you're not getting it instantly you're getting it and an hour might be fine for whatever your use case is Yeah, I like it. Ah, now I'm now. I want to know why you never mentioned uptime robot on the show before john This is a good one Cool stuff found exists everywhere in our lives folks when you stumble on to yours feedback at mac geek gab dot com Well, that's a good place to send it feedback at mac geek gab dot com I think you said feedback at mac geek gab dot com. I did Dan sent in his cool stuff found and the final cool stuff found of this episode Which is blue snooze blue snooze Disables bluetooth while your mac is sleeping and May help with the sleep wake issues that we were talking about back in mac geek up 955 Uh, because they're yeah Yeah, that's great. Yep. Yep. I can't tell you how I wish they had it for iphone too Because there's time when I want to use my bluetooth headphones on my laptop Oh connect to my iphone so I have to go to my iphone and turn off bluetooth so that I can You know that it won't interesting over Yeah, you should just be able to choose it on your mac. Oh, I usually do but sometimes it'll swap over for no apparent reason Are you talking about air pods or third parties air pods because air pods should be Smart enough to to to do that handoff and not go back Well, I could be wrong, but I think it's like if somebody calls it hangs up It goes up and it swaps over like interesting. Oh Connectivity, okay, because it's trying to go. I'm gonna you want to get to the phone You're gonna want to talk on your air pods and yeah, you know every now and then not all the time But every now and then they'll go hanky it'd be nice to be able to snooze my bluetooth On the on the iphone as well, but blue snooze is great for the mac Yeah, I the one piece of warning that I will give before we leave here about blue snooze is if your mac Only uses a bluetooth keyboard and mouse I do not recommend running blue snooze Because otherwise You might have trouble waking up your mac to get it to connect back to your keyboard and mouse. So that's my uh That's my story and i'm sticking to it Can you wake a sleeping mac with the power button on it? I think you can just a quick tap on the power button should wake like a mac mini or an iMac I think so. I think the iMac remember we that was a question. We had a few weeks back Yeah, we talked about and how to get the keyboard to connect but I think what I did was Like I said, I did it wrongly. I did a chance and it worked I turned off the bluetooth, but I powered it down and powered it back up and the bluetooth came back up So right right not the easiest way and not the best way You're cutting the throat of a lot of running operations by pressing and holding power Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well holding power. That's a whole different thing, but yeah, yeah, yeah Thanks for listening folks. Thanks for hanging out with us Thanks for sending in all your stuff to us at feedback at macgeekab.com Thanks to cash fly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you Make sure you check out pilot peat shows. So there I was dot us Make sure you check out our merch where you can find the mac geekab logo on the back of the don't get caught t-shirt Our merch is at macgeekab.com slash merch Make sure you say thanks to all of our sponsors by visiting them collide dot com slash mvb dot zock dot com slash mvb Well Hopefully everybody has a good week hopefully No one turns off the bluetooth on their mac and can't wake it up again Um I don't know if you have any other uh wishes or advice for our friends john before we go on our merry way um With the storm coming Gotta be careful Hunker down stay warm and don't get caught made Later


Hi, I'm Neil Brownsword, Professor of Ceramics at Staffordshire University. Thank you all very much for taking time to join me today to share insights into my practice past and present. For over two decades, my work has mediated transitions within Stoke-on-Trent's ceramic manufacturing sector, following the impact of global economics in the late 1990s. It reflects upon overlooked histories of labour that draw attention to the significance of people and their practices affected by these transitions via the fluid perspectives of artistic research. To set the context of this work, it's important to give you a very brief overview of North Staffordshire's industrial history and our globalisation in recent decades has impacted upon regional ceramic manufacture. The six towns that constitute Stoke-on-Trent today have been renowned for their industrial scale pottery manufacturing since the 18th century. Alongside pioneers of the industrial revolution such as Josiah Wedwood and Spode, the Staffordshire Pottery is in the late 19th century comprised of hundreds of relatively small factories with more than 2,000 kilns firing millions of products a year. By 1938, half the workforce of Stoke-on-Trent worked in pottery factories, with employment peaking in 1948 to an estimated 79,000 people. To this day, Stoke-on-Trent continues to be affectionately known as the Pottery's, one of the few British cities with a distinctive regional identity and heritage that remains synonymous with a particular industry. Yet during the last three decades, escalating global competition has resulted in many North Staffordshire-based companies struggling to adapt or compete in both domestic and export markets. Rapid changes in lifestyle preferences together with increased global competition from East Asia forced many key factories in the 1990s to outsource high volume and low to mid-cost production to these developing economies, where energy and labour costs were a fraction compared to those in North Staffordshire. This strategy, coupled with the advances of production technology, has proved highly detrimental to a phenomenal concentration of skills and knowledge in Stoke-on-Trent to what was in 1991 a 22,000 strong workforce. From the late 1990s, these commonplace headlines together with the physical evidence of the effects of deindustrialisation prompted the beginnings of what has become an ongoing process to archive industrial transitions occurring across the six towns. This wasn't motivated by nostalgia for past glories or a fetish for ruin porn where the aestheticisation of social collapse eclipses the context of the related trauma. These images were driven by a compulsion to highlight the ensuing effects of globalisation from an insider's perspective, whose personal and social ties have been intertwined with the area's histories of ceramic manufacture. Both my maternal and paternal ancestry were employed in the North Staffordshire potteries. From an early age, a familiarity with pottery terminology was brought about from my grandmother's lifelong employment in the industry as she experienced numerous skilled and semi-skilled jobs. On the right is an image from 1859, a group of employees who had served a total of 54.5 years service with a family descendant Moses Brownsword on the left. Seated in the centre of the group is Francis Wedgwood, Josiah Wedgwood's grandson. As the industry remained a dominant employer in the late 1980s, it was perhaps inevitable that I would follow a similar path and at the age of 16 I was apprenticed at the Wedgwood factory where I trained initially as a tableware modeler. This formative period remains instrumental to my understanding of the wealth of human dexterity transmitted from generation to generation within each division of labour, something which I have continued to cite throughout my creative practice. However, my return to the Wedgwood factory some 15 years later sought a very different agenda and increased awareness of the displacement of craft practices in the ceramic industry prompted the documentation of many of these traditions as a key element of my doctoral research. Filmed during an intense period of economic restructuring in 2003, nearly 80 hours of raw footage was captured over an 8 month period providing a unique insight into the industrial tacit knowledge increasingly displaced by technology and automation. Alongside this documentation, I would also begin to salvage the cladetritis residual from each process as this ephemera made tangible many of the hidden human actions that accrued within each skill specialism. As systems of product uniformity and standardisation became the norm within industrialisation, any trace of human touch that remained in manufacture was considered an imperfection. Yet these byproducts bore within their fabric the physical imprints of the hand providing a direct connection to the repetitive skills passed down through time. Clay ternians, rejected wares and other inadvertent discard were later fired to preserve the momentary imprints of the hand. Materials rescued via this process constituted the work Salvage Series, a spatial assemblage flanked with juxtaposing film loops that documented demonstrations of high craft against the dereliction and demolition of once prevalent sites of manufacture. The work was not a glorification of an industry's distant past where lead poisoning, silicosis and the debilitating effects of poverty were endemic. It set out to elucidate the diverse knowledge and nuances of dexterity embedded in aspects of ceramic production and draws attention to its increased displacement. Exploring the physical site of production as a raw material itself was instrumental to topographies of the obsolete. A research project I initiated in partnership with the 2013 British Ceramics Biennial and Bergen Academy of Art and Design. It involved a site-specific artistic response to the former Spode factory which fell into administration in 2008 and was being repurposed via numerous cultural-add regeneration initiatives. Yet within the regeneration agenda of place there is often an undue and unseemly haste for local government and cultural organisations to circumvent associations with a messy fallout of industrial change in favour for a more managed or sanitised account of recent history. Tackling the complexities of Stoke-on-Trent's post-industrial ceramic situation has often led to an obvious charge of wallowing in decline or being complicit in a retrospective idealisation of the industrial past. Yet the core rationale for topographies was to challenge this politicised amnesia and seek out greater critical discourse to the realities of these transitions and their impact upon people, place and traditional knowledge. Throughout the period of co-leading the project a total of 97 artists and cultural commentators from 13 countries explored a variety of perspectives and practices that have engaged directly with the site's post-production infrastructure to explore a range of research trends which have examined the contemporary ruin the globalised landscape of ceramics and the artist as archaeologist. Though working with such a loaded site participants were inevitably confronted with the ethical dimensions of dealing with its post-production spaces and materials. Frequent questions surrounded the role of the artist working in a non-art space such as, do artists destroy the archaeology of a site or do they contribute another layer of production? Is the artist instrumental to the renewal of such places or merely an apocalypse tourist cashing in on social misfortune? Although many paradoxes remain the primary impact of the project was that the funding raised from the Norwegian artistic research programme saw local labour to restore and make safe previously inaccessible areas of the site for ongoing cultural use. Funding also enabled me to hire and collaborate with a small group of expatriate hand painters in the performative installation National Treasure. Companies that had survived the impact of global competition have in recent decades capitalised upon factory tourism to increase profit and these situations the reality of mass automation and outsourced production is often obscured by marketing strategies that heighten the handcrafted. Today many high-end ceramic skills that were once the flagship of renowned manufacturers are often regarded as outmoded or economically unviable to accommodate today's rapid shifts and consumer buying trends. To elevate the status of these threatened practices the primary objective of National Treasure has been to restage the performance of these at a variety of loaded locations. The work involved collaborating with senior generation China painters whose profession has gradually been displaced by the changing tide of fashion and by ceramic print technologies for mass production. Pictured here is Anthony Chalmer who has worked as a China painter since the age of 15. Serving as a series of provocations the painters were set to work in a post-industrial context amongst the wreckage and disorder of the former Spode factory. Separated behind glass as they applied their skills the viewer is confronted with a situation that evokes both admiration and discomfort as artisans are objectified as cased exhibits. Whilst in residence artisans were instructed to paint on the backs of damaged and discarded plates found on site at the Spode factory with imagery that ate 18th century ceramics romanticization of British ruins. Though portraying picture SDK was not the objective here the spaces within the foot of the plates where a painter would traditionally sign their workmanship were instead graced with images documenting the post-industrial fallout of Stoke-on-Trent. Working within their own time structures each artisan would occupy the space intermittently dissolving the hierarchical relationship between an employer and employee. Vacant but illuminated workspaces together with the residues of labour extended metaphors surrounding the presence of absence within the work. Ironically with this outsourcing of people and their skill as a raw material the ethical dimensions of this process remain paramount. Artisans were hired above their indicated rates of pay and their roles were fully credited within the work. An opportunity to perform national treasure in South Korea a country that gives status to individuals with exceptional artistic ability to preserve cultural heritage provided a prestigious platform to raise greater awareness of Stoke-on-Trent's endangered craft practices. In 2003 UNESCO implemented a convention to safeguard intangible cultural heritage 178 countries have now endorsed this convention effectively making intangible heritage part of their cultural policy but the UK is still not one of them. As technology has substituted many of the people embodied skills there remains few apprenticeships to secure the effective transfer of this knowledge for future generations. The importance of documenting several of these endangered practices became the focus of re-apprenticed a project that set out to artistically reactivate the specialist knowledge of a group of former industrial employees. To gain insights into the transmission and acquisition of these practices I apprenticed myself to three former ceramic industry artisans in 2015 who are amongst the last of a generation of master practitioners in their respective fields. The project aimed to illuminate the procedural knowledge of each craftsperson skill base such as the nuances of preparation, material and haptic knowledge, pace and timing and repetitive movement which were all made tangible through both film and object. Each skill specialism was deconstructed to arrest sequences of touch that exposed aspects of craft intelligence and ingenuity that all too frequently remain overlooked. Questioning aspects of work which the artisans often took for granted facilitated detailed insights into know-how yielding a wealth of oral history which otherwise would have lain dormant. However finding value in the active memory and knowledge of those affected by industrial change has often led to the charge of nostalgia and a pejorative sense and a eulogising of a past that's out of sync with an ever-changing world. Yet I would argue that these first-hand recollections remain essential human narratives that can enrich our scope and understanding of industrial history. Whilst it's correct to guard against false memory it's equally important that in the process we don't obliterate the kind of subjective reflection that can reveal greater insights about the past. In 2015 the Victorian Albert Museum facilitated an opportunity to develop a live performance of re-apprenticed in their Raphael cartoons gallery which holds Raphael's original tapestry designs that were made to cover the low walls of the Sistine Chapel. Against the backdrop of masterpieces of Renaissance art this space provided a perfect context for the performance of marginalised factory craft skills recoreographed to emphasise the sophistication of both material and haptic knowledge. This reassembly of collective skill formed the basis of factory performed at Icheon World Ceramic Centre in South Korea. For the exhibition, two artisans from Stoke-on-Trent, China flower maker Rita Floyd and mould maker James Adams were invited to Korea to present their former practices bringing contrasting modes of ceramic manufacture live into the gallery space. China flower making is one of the few methods of mass production that relies completely upon the dexterity of the hand. With changing fashion this industry in Stoke-on-Trent has all but disappeared with Rita Floyd being one of a handful of still practising artisans who retain this knowledge. Throughout the factory performance, Rita provided an intimate space for the audience to witness the rhythmic intricacies of touch evident within her craft. Yet passive spectatorship is immediately disrupted by a simple instruction for Rita to discard whatever she makes. In Korea I also had the opportunity to work with intangible asset Kwan-Soo Seo renowned for the continuation of many traditional forms of Korean ceramics. Through the collaboration Kwan-Soo produced a series of partially formed moon jars laden with the raw immediacy of touch. James Adams took these casually assembled components into a lesser revered mode of production, mould making instrumental to the histories of ceramic manufacturing in North Staffordshire which paradoxically introduced the eradication of human touch through modes of standardisation. The subtle collision of these very distinct traditions attempted to renegotiate a sense of value to people and practices displaced through global economics on an international platform. Artifacts involved in the mechanics of ceramic production salvaged from various redundant factories in North Staffordshire were also presented as a series of formal taxonomies to reattribute a sense of value to objects left behind following industrial change. What was interesting about these objects was that they were marked by point in time as prior to the factory's closure they were defaced and deconstructed to prevent subsequent reproduction. Historically when a factory would become insolvent design assets such as copper plates and moulds would be absorbed by takeover companies and continued into hybrid forms of production. With reference to this historic process and to expand ideas surrounding the cultural transfer of aesthetics, practices and technologies objects were remoulded by Korean master mould maker, Sinian Cho and cast with clay and subsequently decorated by Porcelain Carver, Young Jung Cho and painter Won Jong Lee. The collision of Korea's rich ceramic heritage with these fragmentary chunks of post-industrial discard created an interesting tension point between cultural notions of value and perfection inherited through procedural knowledge. For centuries China, Korea and Japan have influenced each other's ceramic histories and their subsequent trade with the West greatly influenced the development of European ceramic traditions that were to gain prominence in the 18th century. By reactivating obsolescence through non-commercialised production factory reiterated this process of cyclical exchange between East and West through an elucidation of embodied knowledge that prompted questions surrounding the hierarchy of cultural value and its uneven distribution to people, practices and places. A further iteration of factory was staged in the site orientated residency Place and Practices which are curated for the British Ceramics Biennial in 2017. It was interesting to reclaim the former Spode factory once more as a site of ceramic production as the area we reactivated had recently been sold off for eventual demolition and redevelopment. As plaster moulds revolutionised the industrialisation of ceramics in Britain in the 18th century and continued to be the tools for mass production I decided to use the fabric of the condemned building as a mould itself. The factory's former lift shaft was filled with 3,000 litres of a trueria mal slip, the very material on which the origins of the industry were founded and over the course of the biennial the porosity of the building cast a memory of that space. Prior to the exhibition the Heritage Crafts Association published the Radcliffe Red List of Endangered Crafts the first research of its kind to be conducted in the UK. It highlights important aspects of the UK's collective intangible heritage to assess the current viability of traditional crafts and to identify those which are most at risk of disappearing. Endangered practices from flint napping to Sussex drug making are listed but the industrial crafts particularly those in relation to North Staffich's ceramic production continue to be unaccounted for. This is something I'm currently collaborating on with the Heritage Crafts Association to readdress this imbalance. Yet safeguarding this intangible cultural inheritance doesn't necessarily mean relegating these practices to the dogma of past traditions. One of the aims of a research residency at the Victoria and Albert Museum was to explore ways in which traditional knowledge can be transmitted to new modes of thinking, expression and representation. Historic repositories that record and convey know-how from factory production such as pattern and shape books became a primary influence. Using examples held at the V&A and at the Wedgwood Museum I was drawn to the palimpsest quality of these manuals where fragmentary traces of visual and textural instruction were recorded with casual fluidity. Stemming from these points of reference I started to examine North Staffich's early industrialisation and the artistic and technological innovations that evolved through this period of cultural borrowing and assimilation. The need to work directly with objects from this timeline beyond curatorial handling restrictions led to late 18th and early 19th century ceramics akin to those held at the V&A being purchased via online auction websites. Nuances of casting, assembling, modelling and painting unique to ceramic production were sampled and reconfigured through both analogue and digital means. Through this lo-fi form of exploration imperfections of the digital were embraced as a method to transform instead of replicate. The slippage that occurs through the process of the copy either through limitations of tools, materials or skill which are prominent characteristics in that period of Staffich's production remain a continuous point of fascination. At the end of the residency one of the digitally manipulated patterns that derive from a historic copy of an East Asian prototype was engraved into a copper plate by former Spode master engraver Paul Holdway thus returning the immediacy of the digital back to the slow-paced tactile material interactions of handwork. In a live performance at the V&A Holdway offered a rare opportunity to experience the nuances of an industrial craft seldom practised where the intimate space of tool, action and matter were amplified through a live feed microscopic camera. Skill practices that have evolved through hundreds of years of ceramic industrialisation represent so much more than just the mastery and control of materials and processes. They have shaped the complex social bonds, networks and pride forged by collective skill which is integral to the identity of places like Stoke-on-Trent. Transmitting endangered knowledge through new contexts and ways of thinking in collaboration with the senior generation of artisans is just a small contribution to ensure that these industrial crafts continue to be practised and hopefully safeguarded as an essential part of our cultural inheritance. To conclude the presentation I wanted to discuss a multi-faceted project externalising the archive that was showcased as part of the 2019 British Ceramics Biennial at the former Spode site. Spode was one of the few ceramic manufacturers in Britain to have operated continuously for 230 years on its original site of production. Within 11 of its buildings there remains over 70,000 moulds that date from circa 1850 to 2008 when the company ceased trading. A society is currently in the process of regeneration and its buildings repurposed. Only a small percentage of this material has been recommended for retention with the remainder facing the risk of disposal. As byproducts of ceramic manufacture are rarely valued or preserved for posterity the finished ceramic artefact has always taken priority over those objects associated with labour. Yet as tools that revolutionise mass production they can illuminate the evolution of important technological and stylistic changes in design and industry that remain relatively under-researched. And having been previously trained as a model and mould maker there potentially exist trials and prototypes within this untapped archive which may never have seen the light of day since their inception. To confront the visiting public with the scale of this disposal issue working moulds from recent production that are regarded by some as not historically significant were installed in the external environment on the former Spode site's Jubilee kiln as a deliberate provocation. The majority of the passing public's immediate response was that of wanting to protect the mould from the effects of the elements thus bestowing a sense of value to them. The irony is that only 800 out of the 70,000 are currently earmarked for retention. The function of this work was to raise questions regarding what we do with such material as no one can reproduce from the mould as their intellectual property belongs to another factory. So do we just let this material go to landfill? Or are there more innovative ways to preserve and repurpose their sculptural aesthetics for instance using their potential as architectural modules? Alongside the installation a digital laboratory was set up in the Spode Museum Trust where staff from Staffordshire University made to 3D scan a core sample of moulds from circa 1850 onwards together with their physical mould store environments. The project aims to seek out further funding to support the digitisation of a much larger selection of typologies materials and technologies which can be archived for future cultural benefit and posterity. My ambition is to collide the potential of digital technologies with the intimate material and haptic knowledge of living heritage. I want to challenge notions of embalmed or static heritage and contribute a new layer of production to North Staffordshire's industrial history. As our industrial capacity and technological innovation moves at breakneck speed to facilitate more and more efficient production the value of haptic knowledge that once fashion material objects in particular ways should not be subject to the dictates of authorized heritage discourse and simply relegated to the living museum sector. As I hope I've demonstrated exploring an expanded and plural notion of heritage can open up rich and fertile territory to unravel new modes of thinking and creativity in a digital age. Thank you.