That’s the way the cookie crumbles! Cookies explained.

LAST UPDATED: THURS 31 MAY 2018

Not necessarily 100% related to GDPR apart from the cookie consent form, many websites seem to be updating their policies at the same time for cookies on websites.    An excellent introduction to cookies can be found at Cookiepedia

Another source of information cookies is at:  How can I change my BBC cookie settings?

Another source of information on GDPR and cookies can be found at Cookiepedia

A study was made asking users what they thought of cookies. Most decided they did not want to use a site using cookies, some even thinking that cookies could carry a virus.

Therefore anyone setting-up a new website should be thinking about how to navigate the site without cookies. This will be a tall order for many existing websites.

 

My previous blog on GDPR is shown below for completeness:

 

(right-click and save the image locally for a larger copy of these 12 steps)

Here is where I am placing all of the information I know about GDPR, which came into operation on 25th May 2018:

Five Things You Should Have Done Before 25th May

1. Add your own terms, sub-processors and cookie policies to your site.
2. Add an opt-in checkbox wherever you’re capturing customer data.
3. Add a cookie consent form to your site (and splash pages).
4. Determine if you’re a controller or processor of the data.
5. Email all your existing customers and ask them to reconfirm consent.

P.S. This GDPR blog posting is a work-in-progress, so please check back regularly

New SSD – Mac OS High Sierra Installer

LAST UPDATED: Wednesday 30 MAY 2018

For most Mac users, mechanical hard disks are going the way of CDs, DVDs and floppy disks. Even USB Flash drives seem redundant for all but temporary transfer storage when compared to SSD, and small files are just as easily transferred via email, with larger file transfer possible using Google Drive or DropBox.

Just as soon as you purchase a new SSD drive, do the following:

1. Before you do anything with the new SSD drive, use Apple’s Disk Utility to create an extra partition on the SSD to make it trivial to boot if the main partition has a boot issue. 6Gb should be sufficient, so will not take too much space away from the SSD – the benefit will far outweigh the cost and will be a life-saver in the event of a drive problem. Here is a detailed article detailing how to do this if you need help:                    How to create a bootable macOS High Sierra installer drive
2. If you just need help locating High Sierra, see How to download macOS High Sierra
3. Install the free application Install Disk Creator, to reformat the partition on the SSD created in the previous step (details are also shown in the link in Step 1. above)

Please do not hesitate to contact me via the contact form on this site if you have any issues with any of the above. There’s always a trade-off in a blog in making a description too verbose versus keeping things concise, so don’t be shy to ask!

 

P.S. I wrote this blog post after purchasing an external 1Tb Western Digital SSD drive I bought very cheaply from Maplin. To my disbelief, Maplin has no working website! It has a site, but only as a holding page for contacting the administrator. In my humble opinion, Maplin went into administration precisely because many potential customers moved over to purchasing over the internet. I believe the administrators of Maplin are not adequately internet-savvy, in my humble opinion, so, surely, the very last thing Maplin should close down is its website!

Maplin is in administration so everything is going very cheap – they are even selling shop fittings – I managed to pick up five high-quality LED ceiling lights for a bargain price!

I will either install these lights in my garage or else sell them on eBay!

 

Low Memory on Mac

LAST UPDATED: Thursday 26 APRIL 2018

Here are my notes on getting out of a low memory situation on the Mac

I use some tools outside of the Mac OS in this article but have no vested interest unless specifically stated. Where possible, I always use free or at least freemium software. There may well be alternative applications to the ones suggested so just please take it as given/shorthand (so I don’t have to launch into a BBC-style speech every time I mention a product akin to ‘other brands of X are available’)

Where commercial software is ever mentioned, I will always try to justify its use.

1. Install ‘Memory Clean’. This is a freemium application which does what it says on the tin.
2. Install a Mac general cleaner like CleanMyMac or CCleaner * (I worked for Piriform so declare an interest here.   See    https://www.ccleaner.com/about)
3. In the Apple Menu, go to ‘Force Quit…’ to display all the running applications (if your Mac is almost dead, you can also try running Activity Monitor in Utilities, however, you really need to know what you are doing so best left as a ‘weapon of last resort’)
4. As you save memory, it may be useful to document this with screenshots like the following to chart your progress, e.g. as below:
5. Cycle through all windows for each open application and take a screenshot (Cmd-Shift-3) of everything in the ‘File/Open Recent’ menu (most applications will have this menu item). You can also do a timed screen in Grab for this if it is difficult to keep a menu open for a screenshot. There is a useful article here on that:     http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/05/11/take-timed-screenshot-on-mac/
6. If memory is really low, e.g. as I experienced in Chrome and TextEdit, windows may not show when you select them, however, you can always tell which is the active window as it has a check mark by it, as below in Chrome:
7. If you are finding that windows do not open (presumably because memory is really, really low), select ‘Re-Open Closed Tab’ in the File menu, e.g. in Chrome, as many times as required in a browser to open windows otherwise unopenable in step 6. above.
8. Use Cmd-S to save each selected item e.g. in TextEdit, then Cmd-W to close it (this will save space). Once you have done this for all items and the ‘Window’ menu is effectively empty (i.e. ‘Bring All to Front’ is the last menu item in the ‘Window’ menu), then quit the application (only ever Force Quit if there is no other way).
9. If you are finding that windows in an application do not open select ‘Re-Open Closed Tab’ in the File menu, e.g. in Chrome, as many times as required in a browser to open windows otherwise unopenable
10. Run ‘Memory Clean’ after you have closed each application and maybe take a screenshot as in step 4. above to chart your progress.
11. See Apple article: How to free up storage space on your Mac
12. Finally, if the above steps fail to resurrect your mac, look at the more technical article: Simple Ways to Reduce Memory Usage on Mac (MacBook Pro, Air, iMac)

GDPR

(see updated article)

LAST UPDATED: WEDS 23 MAY 2018

(right-click and save the image locally for a larger copy of these 12 steps)

Here is where I am placing all of the information I know about GDPR, which comes into operation on 25th May 2018:

Five Things You Must Do Before 25th May

1. Add your own terms, sub-processors and cookie policies to your site.
2. Add an opt-in checkbox wherever you’re capturing customer data.
3. Add a cookie consent form to your site (and splash pages).
4. Determine if you’re a controller or processor of the data.
5. Email all your existing customers and ask them to reconfirm consent.

P.S. This GDPR blog posting superseded by (this updated article)

Adding Checkboxes to a Google docs spreadsheet

PLAN A

Caution! Only works if Google has read your mind!

No sooner as I had written this blog entry, it appears that Google has added a new Checkbox feature under the ‘insert’ menu.

So that is the good news.

The bad news is that this is a new, experimental feature so will not appear for all users (yet)

So if your ‘insert’ menu looks like the following, you are in luck:

If your ‘Insert’ menu is as above, i.e. it includes ‘Checkbox’ between ‘Link’ and ‘Comment’ then follow these directions:   Google: Add & use checkboxes

However, if your ‘insert’ menu looks like the following

. . . .i.e. without the Checkbox item between ‘Link’ and ‘Comment’, you are out of luck on this new, experimental Checkbox feature and need to either go to plan B below

If you have spare time to play around AND are happy that this feature may only work on your computer and do not require to share your new toys with others

I have no inside information from Google, but I am thinking that if you google something enough then your dreams will come true, as prior to this I never saw this feature and used the link below instead.

If you work for Google and know who gets to play with the new toys in their toy box, then please let me know!

 

It was only after googling things like:

Adding Checkboxes to a Google docs spreadsheet

red empty checkbox green ticked checkbox

. . . that I got the Checkbox item appearing in the insert menu of my Google docs spreadsheet

 

 

PLAN B

(Works even if Google Mindreading isn’t enabled)

 

Try this link only if you can’t always get what you want from Plan A above, or if you are unhappy using a new feature not guaranteed to work on anyone else’s computer.

Is it possible to add a checkbox/button equivalent?

Then if you are more adventurous, you could use the suggestion in the link above about red and green images, e.g. like with using the following: