The Robservatory

Updated and republished for macOS 26.6.2; skip it unless you really really care about all the macOS releases.

For the last couple weeks, I've been (finally) working on some Moom videos.

As with Dramatis, The Queue is a Claude-developed web app.

As shown in my post about Claude Code, Dramatis (from "dramatis personae," the list of characters in a story) is a tool Claude created to help me keep track of the relationships between major characters in books, TV series, and movies.

Like many of you, I suspect, I've been using AI tools to assist me with tasks both mundane ("Help me find a cat bed large enough for three cats") and complex ("Configuration recommendations for pfSense").

As the last step in bringing back my A Full History of macOS (OS X) release dates and rates post, I wanted a way to be notified of released updates.

Prompted by both the 25th birthday of macOS (March 24th), and my buddy Kirk's prodding, my dormant A full history of macOS (OS X) release dates and rates post is coming back!

Based on some comments on my Mastodon post, this only works due to a bug in macOS 15.7.3!

Connections is a New York Times word game that's played with 16 words on a four-by-four grid; the objective is to correctly group four words into four sets, where the words in each set share some characteristic.

For way too many years, building Lego kits has been one of my favorite hobbies.

I like taking pictures, and some years back, I bought a starter-level DSLR—the Fuji X-E3.

My wife and I just completed a three-week journey around a chunk of the United States.

Since February, in fact.

I use a lot of browsers for testing, so I created this launcher to make the process easier: You may be wondering what third-party tool I used to do this.

Back in 2020, I explained how to use Terminal to display stock quotes.

I was having some issues with my desktop photos (which I load from Photos) not working properly, and I noticed that one particular photo wouldn't preview in the Wallpaper System Settings panel.

tl;dr version: I highly recommend the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Flightstick (right) for use with X-Plane on the Mac.

I was in Washington, DC for the last week or so, visiting some relatives and acting like a tourist.

That ugly garish purple travesty shows up in the menu bar whenever your screen is being recorded by any number of apps.

Note: Newer versions of LogiOptions+ have an on/off switch built into the app; find it in the app's Gear icon.

I stumbled upon this simple AppleScript while looking for something else, but it's incredibly useful for scripting System Settings…so I'm posting it here in case the original site ever goes away.

I use Keyboard Maestro a lot—a quick search here reveals how often I write about it, and I use it much more than I write about it.

Update: Apple fixed this in macOS 14.4; the cp command can once again create hard links.

I use Terminal a fair bit, for any number of things.

Back in the early Mac OS X iTunes era, there was a wonderful small window available that had control buttons, volume control, a visual progress bar, and a text display showing the artist, song, and album—it could even display a graphic equalizer in lieu of