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  • Locked out! Fixing my mum’s iPad

    Locked out! Fixing my mum’s iPad

    My mum exclusively uses an Apple iPad for her online life. She has a smartphone but it’s an old Android one that is useful for not much more than phone calls and texts. Her weekly shopping, Facebook and everything else is on her iPad.

    A few months back, it came to an end. The supermarket app no longer worked on her iPad Air due to its age and she was in a constant battle with the – wait for it – 16GB of storage. It was time to upgrade, which she did. She didn’t get the latest all-singing model, but found a new but previous generation iPad instead. When she got it, it guided her through copying over from her old device. She put her old iPad away and continued, happily, with the new one.

    But, as much as we think about security these days, it’s not always the best thing for someone elderly. She didn’t have a passcode on it and, when searching for “Password” (for the passwords app) one day it came up with the passcode screen instead. She got confused and supplied one. She didn’t write it down (she does for her important passwords for everything else) and, after a couple of days, forgot it.

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  • Re-thinking my social media

    Re-thinking my social media

    For a while now I’ve not been on X/Twitter (as in, I deleted my account some years ago). Let’s face it, Musk is a nazi and X is an absolute cesspool right now. I initially moved to Mastodon but have now jumped fully onto Bluesky.

    I haven’t actively used Facebook for some time – it stopped being useful many years ago and, these days, is full of meaningless ads and really inappropriate video shorts and page recommendations (and when I say inappropriate, I mean sexually so). In fact, it was similar on Instagram, which I also moved away from, along with Threads.

    And, Google, well, I moved far away from them some time ago (in terms of using Gmail, maps, etc.) although came back to their search engine.

    Now, we have the situation where both Google and Meta are cosying up to Trump, dropping company DEI policies and getting rid of fact checking. This doesn’t sit comfortably with me at all. Yet, indirectly, I’m paying both of these companies, who make their money from using my data. It has to stop. Or, at least, be reduced.

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  • What’s on my desk? 2025 edition!

    What’s on my desk? 2025 edition!

    For a number of years now, I’ve shared my desk set-up to the world. As I work from home, my office is both practical but cosy and personal. In an office, you may be limited to personal possessions (in fact, at my previous employer, they made you clear your desk at the end of each day into a locker) and, although I try and keep clutter down, I still want to have everything to hand.

    The room is compact, but that’s more than enough to get me and everything I need inside. However, that means I had to opt for a deep, rather than wider, desk. This is what it looks like…

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  • Review: ESR MagSafe Power Bank

    Review: ESR MagSafe Power Bank

    We want slim phone but, equally, we want battery life. Something has to give. And usually it’s the battery. As a result, battery packs have been pretty ubiquitous. A few years ago, though, they were always tethered by a wire, and where to put the bulk battery pack whilst you were using it was always a feet of supreme juggling, especially when you wasn’t using your phone and needed to put it away in your pocket, now along with an even thicker power bank and a metre long cable.

    Nothing really changed until Apple introduced MagSafe – a magnetic, clip-on connectivity system for iPhones. And to prove its usefulness, they created their own MagSafe battery pack. No cables needed, it simply snapped to the back and instantly started charging your phone.

    Apple no longer makes it, and other manufacturers have stepped in with their own alternatives. After trying an Anker model, I’m now trying the latest from ESR. Not only does it have a massive capability but it has the latest Qi2 charging technology – more of that in a bit.

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  • Disable back & forward gestures in Mac browsers

    Disable back & forward gestures in Mac browsers

    In MacOS you can swipe left or right to cause a browser’s web page to move forward and back (also known as “overscrolling”). It can be a useful trick, but can also prove to be annoying. I’m in the latter camp.

    It can be turned off, but only from the command line.

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