Mark Gerrior

  • Hulu Users: Do you need a password to access your Hulu account? I don’t. I can enter any random password I want. I only need to correctly enter the one-time verification code they email me.

  • Castro to Overcast: A Podcast Player Migration Story

    I recently migrated from Castro (2022.1 (1337)) to Overcast (2022.4 (930)). I wanted to share my experiences and help other migrators.

    How I use Castro I’ve always liked Castro’s Queue metaphor: Subscribe to your favorite podcasts, and they automatically download to your Queue playlist (Queue Next). Reorder the Queue as necessary, and podcasts play in order (top to bottom). I prefer this model because I arrange the Queue before a workout or chores and listen to my podcasts as a continuous stream. The next podcast episode starts playing as soon as the current podcast episode ends. Castro doesn’t have playlists (just Queue and Inbox), and I rarely checked the Inbox (podcasts you subscribed to but didn’t automatically download).

    I’ve grown disillusioned with Castro and wanted to give Overcast another try. Overcast never fit my mental model. Overcast seemed more podcast-focused like books and not episode-focused like email with Castro. I originally used Castro because it had less friction and just worked like I thought a podcast player should work. This time I sat down with Overcast to see if it could fit my mental model. The following covers almost all my use cases of Castro and how I get the same functionality from Overcast.

    • Import Moving podcast meta data was seemless. Castro > Gear > User Data > Export Subscriptions > Overcast
    • Setup Create a playlist in Overcast and include all your Castro “queue next” episodes
    • Sort “Newest to Oldest” (this pertains to newly added podcasts). If you change this setting, your existing playlist order will be rearranged.
    • Arrangement You are free to rearrange podcasts as needed. Simply long-press and drag.
    • Migration As I verified new podcasts downloaded in Overcast, I went back to Castro and switched podcasts from “Queue Next” to “Add to Inbox”; then deleted the podcast episode since I was going to listen to it in Overcast.
    • Detection Neither Castro nor Overcast has great detection of new podcasts. But I’m willing to live with it at the moment.
    • Chapters When you expand a podcast (^ icon) in the player, swipe through the cards to get to the chapters.
    • History in Castro was a list of your listened-to podcasts in the order they were listened to. This was helpful in reviewing show notes for information I wanted to follow up on later. In Overcast, turn on Gear > Delete > After 24 Hours, and the podcasts will remain in place in the playlist for 24 hours. Not ideal, but it will do; I preferred Castro’s History area of every podcast you’ve listened to in the order they were listened to.
    • Play Order Podcasts episodes in Overcast play down. For example, I’m going to finish listening to Ugrade+ later. It’s in position 1. I played the podcast in position 2, and Upgrade+ stayed at position 1. When the podcast in position 2 finished playing, it remained in place because I had “delete after 24 hours” turned on, and the podcast in position 3 started playing.
    • Skip Intros In the per-podcast settings page, you can set Skip Intro and Skip Outro. From the main Overcast screen, scroll to the Unplayed | Active | Archive area (depending on your current selection) and select the podcast you want to work with.
    • Anomaly On a couple of occasions, I saw Overcast not download a podcast that had been imported and was in my Castro Queue. It was in my list of podcasts in Overcast but hadn’t been Followed. This feels like a bug, but it hasn’t happened again for me to document what I saw thoroughly. Keep an eye out for this issue as you migrate.
    • Overcast Tip Long press on a podcast and select “Add to _playlist-name_” to quickly get one-off podcasts into your playlist of choice.

    A couple of weeks into the switch, and I’m sufficiently happy with my progress that I will stick with Overcast for the moment.

  • Finally got VPN to the Synology working again. “Enable SHA2-256 compatible mode (96 bit)” needs to be off in the Synology LT2P/IPSec settings. In one case I had to toggle it. support.apple.com/en-us/HT2…

  • Fascinating to learn about Elizebeth Friedman’s code breaking expertise on American Experience. Unfortunately she didn’t get any recognition of her efforts while she was alive. www.pbs.org/wgbh/amer…

  • Is it Screen Shot or Screenshot? #snelltalk

    Screenshot Wiki

    Screenshot Talk on Spelling

  • Hey, @DuckDuckGo! I use you for spell checking. Could you add a COPY to Clipboard button to the search results? It can be hard to select the correct spelling because results are links.

  • At the edge of Death Valley lies Star Wars Canyon, the area has been a training area for combat planes since World War II. Jets slice between the multicolored walls, flying at or below eye-level at the Father Crowley vista point. www.youtube.com/watch

  • Pro Tip: If you’re building an email verification system, use codes that last 24 hours and if the user makes another request; send the same code. It just took 45 minutes for me to get my first email and I already reqeuseted my second and the first one doesn’t work. So now I wait.

  • My macOS 11.1 login password wasn’t unlocking System Preferences. I thought I was going insane. Turns out it’s a known issue. Reset your SMC to fix.

  • XR Studios was responsible for Katy Perry’s “Daisies” Extended Reality (XR) peformance on American Idol. Check out the video and behind the scenes on XR Studio’s web site.

  • Manteca gets California’s first Diverging Diamond Interchange (DDI). Reduces the potential accident locations from 26 to 14. There’s less opportunities for T-bone style crashes. Safer for pedestrians and bicycles too. Watch the embedded video to appreciate how it works.

  • How to setup sudo to use Touch ID in Terminal.app https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/11/quick-tip-enable-touch-id-for-sudo/

  • In macOS Big Sur, to change the location screen shots are store:

    1. Open Terminal.app and type defaults write com.apple.screencapture location
    2. Add a space at the end after location
    3. Drag and drop the folder you want to the Terminal window
    4. Press Return

  • It was unfortunate when I moved my ~/Library/Mail/V7 to my new MacBook Pro; the “On My Mac” folders weren’t migrated. This article helped me import “On My Mac” folders into Mail.app; and into an Import folder. I wonder if there was any benefit to move the folder since I use IMAP.

  • I find it interesting the “New message sound” is Big Sur’s macOS Mail.app > Preferences and not part of System Preferences > Notifications > Mail. I discovered this because I decided to setup my new MacBook Pro as new (and not use migration assistant).

  • If you ever have the opportunity to hear Caitlin Kalinowski @kalinowski007 speak; take it! I found her enthusiasm to be infectious and left feeling very inspired. I learned about her years at Apple and getting the hardware team going at Facebook.

  • Yup, it was me 😉 @jsnell knows Photos.app inside and out and was quick with the answer. Thanks! sixcolors.com/post/2020…

  • Yes, I had to select the mailbox to pass the Turing Test.

  • watchOS PSA: If you want to get off the beta train, now is a perfect opportunity. Make sure you’re on 7.0 (18R382) and then delete the Beta Profile from your phone Watch > Settings > General > Profiles.

  • iOS PSA: If you want to get off the beta train, now is a perfect opportunity. Make sure you’re on 14.0 (18A373) and then delete the Beta Profile from Settings > General > Profiles.

  • Break a Nav Bar Into Separate Storyboards

    1. Create a new storyboard
    2. Cut the View Controller out of the old storyboard and paste it in the new one.
    3. In the new Storyboard, in the Attributes inspector, set “Is Initial View Controller” and change the Bottom Bar to Opaque Tab Bar
    4. And in the Identify inspector, set Storyboard ID to NewStoryboard.
    5. In the old storyboard, drag out a Storyboard Reference from the Library.
    6. Control drag from the source View Controller to the Storyboard Reference and select “Relationship Segue > view controllers” from the popup.
    7. In the Storyboard Reference’s Attribute inspector, change Storyboard to an item from the dropdown (used NewStoryboard in this example).
    8. Unfortunately the Nav Bar Item icon on the old storyboard appears as a square with the text Item. Haven’t solved that yet.

    I thought I missed “Editor menu > Refactor to Storyboard…” but it will only take 1 view controller with it.

    As of Xcode Version 11.6

  • Glad to see Hidden Brain repeat their “You 2.0” series. “WOOP, WOOP!” changes the question from “what are the obstacles in my path?” to “what is it in me that stands in the way?” WOOP = Wish. Outcome. Obstacle. Plan. www.npr.org/2020/08/2…

  • iOS 14 Beta 5’s Maps was rough durning a long weekend drive. Short series of crashes before navigation would take hold. Castro also had a habit of playing 5 seconds and crashing, but once restarted it was OK. Instagram couldn’t load pics from camera roll. Beta 6 out yesterday!

  • Why do credit card companies send you payment reminders when you’ve already paid? Then you waste your time verifying you did indeed pay it.

  • Unpaired my Watch; backed up my iPhone to the Mac mini; and now it’s time for iOS 14 Beta (18A5301v) and watchOS 7 Beta (18R5310a). Hopefully this will bring some relief to my Watch/iCloud issues. Yes, it’s so bad I’m willing to risk the beta.

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