Original YouTube Videos

Major Mac Mini speed boost with SSD upgrade – Not as hard as you’d think

Posted by Scott Beam (Fry) on 10/06/2017
Posted in: HowTo, Live Streams, Original YouTube Videos, Tips & Tricks. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

Apparently, this site isn’t going to update itself… and I’ve given it plenty of opportunities.  YouTube videos don’t tend to edit themselves either, so I’ve been skipping that step and streaming live.  The Mac Mini (late 2014) is actually a decent machine, once you ditch the 1950s hard drive technology for something more solid and stately.

Several workers loading an early hard drive that's taller than they are into a truck

5MB IBM Hard drive from 1956

Moving the OS from a 1TB hard drive to a 256GB SSD with all of my data and the larger programs on an external USB dock with a 5TB drive made a huge difference.  The limited RAM becomes less of a bottleneck when it’s swapping to what’s basically slower RAM instead of a steam-powered spindle with ones and zeros chiseled into it.

Following a good 5min HowTo (link is in video description), I had no problem making the upgrade the first time I’ve opened a modern Mac.  If you’re moving to a smaller drive than your original, you’ll need to use an imaging utility like SuperDuper!  The MacOS recovery boot won’t do it.

I took my time, familiarizing myself with a few types of connectors I’m not experienced with, and it took about an hour.  If I were to do it again, I could probably crank it out in 20 minutes.  The biggest time saver tip would be that the small power connectors can be just pushed on vertically, it’s not a plugging-in motion like Molex.

-Fry

New Video Series: Apple Bug Reports

Posted by Scott Beam (Fry) on 04/09/2016
Posted in: News & Blog, Original YouTube Videos. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

Finally, after a year of turmoil and moving to a new state, I’m settled in enough to start making videos again.  Plus, with 2 new iOS devices (first ones I’ve owned), it’s orders of magnitude easier to create content.  After a week of joining the Applesphere for the first time, I’m very impressed.

Picture of Fry with iPad in lap, holding 3 iPhones as if they were playing cards

A Traditional Game of Poker

In the process of learning, I’ve come across a few bugs, and I’d like to start entering reports so they can improve even more.  There are also a few regressions with things that used to work in previous versions, but don’t now.  This bug is labeled 003 because I’ve filed 2 already, but haven’t made videos.  Since I might want to down the road, I thought I’d number them in chronological order.  The first one documents a bug in iOS 9.3.1 where App Switcher does not change orientation when the device is rotated.  I’ve entered a bug report to apple (text below), with a link to the video:

Your subscription on YouTube would be much appreciated.

Enjoy!

-Fry

[Sponsored by Weederizer.com – Wax/BHO Vaporizers]

Review: Electric Sheep – Screensaver / Fractal Visualization

Posted by Scott Beam (Fry) on 02/06/2014
Posted in: Original YouTube Videos, Product Reviews. 1 comment

Watch in 1080p fullscreen. An awesome screensaver program that evolves based on user ratings. Break out the projector at your next party for some nice visuals. Try to let the screensaver run once a day, so it can download fresh sheep. I’ve only been running it for a few days on this machine, so what you see here is only a fraction of what’s available.

Free download at: http://www.electricsheep.org

-Fry
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