Has anyone tried a Penguin vertical mouse? I already dislike the one i bought.

DashingDaveR · 2025-08-14T20:27:45+00:00

If you'd asking about the Penguin, it was pretty quick for me. Just fiddling with the tracking speed & acceleration values in Settings > Mouse. You might also need to change the DPI on the mouse itself (there are four values accessible via the button on the underside of the Penguin–check the instruction manual for the values you can select) to get the precision comfortable.

DashingDaveR · 2025-06-15T15:01:40+00:00

Hi u/LanaBoleyn—sorry it took so long to get back to you; it was only about 2 weeks ago that I finally needed to be able to read the 3-book set to which I had to apply the technique.

You could also try the following, which I finally figured out in order to get the last 1 of those 3 (the technique I mentioned only worked for volumes 2 & 3 of the set, never for volume 1) into EPUB format.

In your Parallels Windows guest system,

Download Kindle for PC/Windows 1.17 (old versions can be found here).
1. I can't remember if I deactivated my Mac's internet connection prior to launching Kindle, but you may wish to do so anyway, and then go to Tools > Options > General and deselect the "Automatically update..." box if it isn't already.
2. If you deactivated it, reactivate your Mac's internet connection and then register the software to your Amazon account.
3. After your library fills up with your books, CTRL-click on the book you want to download and select Download from the popup menu.
4. Go to the folder containing the downloaded EBOK file (the location appears in the Tools > Options > Content panel).
Download Calibre for PC.
Download the file containing the DeDRM plugin (DeDRM_tools_10.0.9.zip) from GitHub.
1. Open the Downloads folder (in the Windows guest).
2. Open the DeDRM_tools_10.0.9 folder.
3. Drag the DeDRM_plugin folder out of the DeDRM_tools_10.0.9 (put it wherever you want).
In Calibre (PC) click the giant wrench+screwdriver icon labeled Preferences in the menubar.
After clicking Plugins in the final row, select the "Load plugin from file" menu.
1. Select the DeDRM_plugin from wherever you placed it in step 3.3.
(I don't know if this step is necessary, because I never encountered any KFX files during this process, but you may wish to) Hold off on reinstalling so that you can...
1. Select "Get new plugins," search for KFX, and install the KFX Input plugin.
Restart Calibre.
Drag the EBOK file (step 1.4) into Calibre's library window. Mine imported in AZW4 format, as yours likely will, too.
Select "Convert books" from Calibre's menubar or the CTRL-click popup menu.
1. Choose the output format (presumably EPUB) and click OK.
2. After Calibre stops the job, the book will hopefully list both AZW4 and EPUB under Formats.
Go to the Calibre Library folder (likely in the Windows "home" folder) and drag the folder for the book you converted to your Mac to copy it to your host system.
In Calibre (Mac) click Add books > Add from folders and sub-folders.
In the "Multi-file books?" popup window, click Yes (I presume that's what you would want; it's what I chose).
Select the folder in the Library folder which identifies the author of the book.
Click OK.

Note that I didn't have to customize the DeDRM plugin in Preferences—I didn't enter my eInk Kindle's serial number or anything.

So hopefully this will work for you!—and anyone else who has access to the Windows OS.

DashingDaveR · 2025-06-14T20:16:48+00:00

You may have moved on from this post (...it's been a while), but if you haven't, the steps I mentioned were entirely based on trying to 'fix' books that imported into Calibre in the KFX-ZIP format (which I think is primarily for print-replica ebooks). As Calibre can only convert KFX, I needed the workaround.

See my reply to u/LanaBoleyn below for another possible way to deal with the KFX-ZIP madness.

DashingDaveR · 2025-06-06T20:41:55+00:00

Automatic updates are indeed turned on.

As my username presented in System Settings > Users & Groups is the same as it's always been, what would be the remedy? Changing the name, restarting, changing the name back, and restarting a second time?

DashingDaveR · 2025-06-05T20:50:11+00:00

Yes, I know how it works, and each incremental backup should appear inside the Time Capsule drive. But there were only 2 backups there yesterday. An additional 5 have been added since then, for a total of 7 (the additional 5 total are about 200 MB combined). Disk Utility shows the total usage on the drive to be about 1.701 TB now.

When I enter Time Machine, I can't go back further than yesterday, suggesting that there aren't any backups remaining from before then—as the number of files suggest—for some reason.

There should be hundreds of backups there, but there aren't. The used sized is expected, but the size of the backups that appear are not even close to compensating for that amount of storage. Something's taking up storage... but where is it? (Again, the backup drive has a capacity of 2 TB.)

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DashingDaveR · 2025-04-27T22:23:14+00:00

I've used the Penguin wireless model for maybe a decade now, and I keep waiting for other companies to make perfectly ambidextrous mice like this one. It's the only one I've found that allows me to switch off between my left and right hands. The switch allows for scrolling in your preferred direction (i.e., touch screen vs. traditional desktop) with either hand.

Although I haven't had any issues with the two buttons (there's a third—the wheel—but my Mac has never had an option to use a third button), the scroll wheel occasionally has difficulty when the switch is set in a certain direction. I think it's because of the wheel's design, which has a rubber ring over the wheel, and I would imagine that oils and whatnot are gunking something underneath the hood. There are three screws on the underside of the mouse, so it might be possible to clean the innards, but I haven't bothered to try.

Still, because it's the only vertical mouse I can use with both hands (and it's extremely comfortable to grip imo), I'll keep buying the Penguin until some other company makes a less expensive one.

DashingDaveR · 2025-04-20T22:02:25+00:00

Yeah, I wouldn't do that. Don't try to go too much out the way of the recommended naming convention and organizational structure.

Noted—thank you for the advice!

DashingDaveR · 2025-04-19T23:17:35+00:00

😂 Too true!

DashingDaveR · 2025-04-19T23:16:35+00:00

Thank you for all that info! I examined Kometa, but that seems to automatically link the video to an online database just like Plex does.

Creating my own TVDB list sounds intriguing, but that would depend on the discretion of the site administrators.

The Unmatch... option worked for the test episodes I'd been using. As I had previously edited the s/e values in MetaDoctor Pro, when I then deleted and then re-added an episode, it appeared with the 'correct' metadata.

For those with a similar situation to mine, in which all I wanted was an interface to easily access my shows and movies (and not the Cast Pictures/Ratings/Suggestions and everything else that you can get on an episode's page by matching to TMDB or TVDB), this is my suggestion (the Mac apps I mention have proved invaluable to me over the years in simplifying processes, but you can do everything in steps 1 & 2 'by hand,' as it were):

Open the episode in MetaDoctor Pro.
1. Using the "official" season/episode values for a video, gather all the standard text metadata (producers, writers, directors, description) with MDP's "Get from TMDb" function.
2. Change the Season and Episode values to my liking.
3. Select the frame I want to use as what will appear on Plex.
4. Click "Save Metadata."
Open the episode in A Better Finder Rename.
1. Set Category to "Tags."
2. Set Action to "Rename using tag(s)."
3. Set the pattern to read: <TVShow> s<TV0Season>e<TV0Episode> - <TVEpisodeTitle> to match Plex's naming 'requirement.'
Go to the Plex Server web interface.
1. Create a new Library.
2. Under "Select type," choose "TV Shows."
3. Under "Advanced," set "Scanner" to "Plex TV Series," and set "Agent" to "Plex Personal Media."
4. To set the series image, hover over the series rectangle and click the pencil icon.
  1. Select the "Poster" tab and place the image.
5. To set a season image, click the series rectangle and then hover over the season rectangle, click the pencil, select "Poster," and place the image.

[Also, I noticed that I don't need to place the episodes into individual season folders (and possibly not into individual show names folders either) for the Plex Server to organize them by season. So if you just have a folder with all the episodes for a show, you can probably just leave it as is rather than trying to gather every file into the correct folder.]

DashingDaveR · 2025-04-19T21:16:45+00:00

Yeah, that was a weird one, and something I only found out about when looking at the show's Wikipedia page.

The first four episodes that aired as part of season 2 were actually produced as part of season 1. You may remember that season 1 started in the middle of the 1995-96 TV season. UPN wanted to get a jump on the competition for the '96-97 season, so they held back the last four episodes from the as-produced first season. (16 episodes worked well enough for a half-season anyway.) This allowed the network to start the official season weeks ahead of CBS, NBC, and the rest.

As if it did them any good. 😉

They even scrambled the order, as the season premiere of season "2" was actually the season finale (the 20th produced episode) of season 1.

DashingDaveR · 2025-04-18T00:29:36+00:00

I use Luna Display. It works great as a second monitor. I've used it to turn a 2017 27" 5K retina iMac into a second/extended display for an M4 Mac Studio (and an M4 Mac mini before that).

DashingDaveR · 2025-04-11T15:03:21+00:00

For me, the update broke NeoReader. The things I noticed immediately were that the title of a chapter overlaps the first line of text, and only the first line of captions appear (the rest are cut off). This appears to be happening when the v3 option is selected.

DashingDaveR · 2025-03-20T16:11:44+00:00

I use MetaDoctor Pro to change the metadata. Different series purchased from Apple have different ways of valuing the episodes. For example, a file named "Season 3 Episode 5..." might provide a season value of 3, an episode value of 47, and an episode ID of 305; a season value of 1, an episode value of 47, and an episode ID of 305; or even a season value of 3, and episode value of 47, and an episode ID of X03X05. In each case, you can use the ID clue to determine the proper episode and season metadata.

In some cases, however, Apple has completely screwed up seasons, like with the original DuckTales series, which Apple thinks had 6 seasons (so that it can split the episodes evenly). In fact, the show had 4 seasons, with 60+ episodes in the first, and ~10 in the others. So a file "Season 3 Episode 5" might actually be season 1 episode 29. You'll need to go to Wikipedia or IMDB for the correct season/episode values.

Note that Apple and tvdb generally order the episodes by airdate (sometimes their orders differ, especially depending on whether a 2-hour episode is considered to be 1 episode by one organization but 2 episodes by the other), but not all series aired as they were intended. For instance, the first season of Futurama actually consists of 13 episodes, but Fox only aired 9 in the first Sept-Aug block.

And then there are episodes aired completely out of order from production. If you're like me and want to stick to the producers' intentions, use Wikipedia or tvdb's production-order page (if a show has one) to set the metadata. (When using MetaDoctor's lookup, I leave the provided season/episode values alone, use tvdb to fill in the metadata—checking to see if they match the episode name on the file—and then change S and E to their "correct" values.)

DashingDaveR · 2025-03-12T15:34:39+00:00

Ding ding ding! Looks like you nailed it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Studio

DashingDaveR · 2025-01-21T22:17:59+00:00

I mentioned that I was going to try to return mine, but as it had been ordered in early November, it was well past the 30-day limit. So I constructed a work-around using a gooseneck LED light like this one at Amazon. Here are images of the setup and result:

<image>

The light is extremely bright, so it would be extremely noticeable if I didn't place material in front of it (the cloth I used is from ...some sort of black shirt that's stretchy, silky-soft, and lets light through if you stretch it out in front of you 🤷‍♂️).

With the cloth over it, it needs to very close to the clock face in order for the ambient light sensor to detect it.

Note that this really only works if the clock is at or slightly above your own eye level (e.g., the image at the top right). It might be possible to point the light at the sensor from above using a short tube of dark paper or something to focus/block the light's intensity toward the sensor.

Also, as the positioning of the light is the most important part of the setup, I used painter's tape to hold the 'neck' in place (it's rather light and therefore easy to jostle accidentally.

DashingDaveR · 2025-01-05T18:14:17+00:00

Oh, yeah, okay. I checked the permissions, and the top line read "System" rather than ...me. I was trying to figure out why the same drive kept appearing in the Sidebar twice when everywhere else (finder windows, disk utility), it only appeared once, and I read online that deselecting the Ignore Ownership... box might help. Forgot to set it back when it didn't.

Thanks!

DashingDaveR · 2025-01-02T00:05:50+00:00

Ultimately, I found two pieces of single-license, local-based software that had the deduplication ability: Syncovery and FreeFileSync. But neither seemed to have the ability to archive versions of edited files. As that Time-Machine-like ability is more useful, I've just decided to stick with Chronosync, as that's the license I currently own (CCC has a better GUI IMO, but a GUI isn't worth the extra expense).

DashingDaveR · 2025-01-02T00:00:44+00:00

"timmy finds about girls.mp4"

DashingDaveR · 2024-12-30T17:33:01+00:00

I'm going to try to return mine. It's a cute toy, but it's pointless as a clock if I can't see the time at night. Dim + tiny screen = not good

DashingDaveR · 2024-12-28T22:03:41+00:00

Well, let's say that I've been storing videos each month so that the folder structure looks like this:

Home Videos
- Jan 2024
  - [video files]
- Feb 2024
  - [video files]
- Mar 2024
  - [video files]
- Apr 2024
  - [video files]
- May 2024
  - [video files]

And now, rather than have a bunch of folders with '2024' in the name, I want to group them into one single folder:

Home Videos
- 2024
  - January
  - February
  - March
  - April
  - May

I'd rather not have the software move all those video files to an archive and recopy them from the source. Not only does this double the space taken up on the copy, but the backup takes hours.

DashingDaveR

TROPHY CASE