Power Outage and SimpliSafe

My power went out at 3:00 am and wasn't restored until 11:00 am.

Less than a minute after the power went out, my SimpliSafe Base Station started announcing network trouble.  Ok.  But it kept announcing network trouble about every minute and I was trying to get to sleep.

I took out my phone and opened the SimpliSafe app in order to turn off the voice completely.  (I've already had door chimes and entry announcements turned off as those get annoying as heck.*  But I didn't mind the Armed and Off messages, which are in the "Status" category, which sadly also includes the endlessly repeating network trouble messages.

It wasn't easy to get through to the base station.  I figured that was because the wifi router was down, and it only worked with direct communication from my phone to the base station when it would try to use the router first.  But eventually I did get through and shut the messages off.  And was able to get back to sleep.  (I was in deep panic for about 10 minutes worried that somehow I would not be able to do this, but persistence paid off.)

(*One of the curious but unfortunate things is if you have door chimes or announcements enabled for any entry sensor, you have to get some announcement or chime (you can choose which) for every entry sensor.  So I couldn't just have an announcement for the back door, which I hardly ever use and might like to have such indication, without also having an announcement or chime for the front door, which is what gets annoying as heck.  I tried just having a chime on the front door and decided that was little less annoying than the announcement.)

To avoid having this situation happen again, I'm going to have to keep all the voice messages off, and I miss some of them. 

Blinking LED strips

A few years ago, I discovered that lighting up my 'home office' (which is actually...my kitchen) with ambient lighting in the dark corners helped avoid eyestrain late at night.  I've taken it as a requirement since then to be sure there is background lighting for ever screen in the house.  Watching video in darkness is bad for your eyes because of unnatural light changes.

Around one corner, above the refrigerator and near my electric vent, where it's always dark, I used an LED strip, placed on top of the sound absorbers.

So far, two of these LED strips have failed.  They work fine for about two years or so, and then something happens, and they start blinking.

I've always noticed that when the blinking starts, the power supply is quite warm.  Online sources often say you should check the power supply.  But none of the power supplies have gone bad.

Instead, what seems to happen is that the strip draws way more current than it is supposed to.  As it heats up, it draws more and more current.  That then forces the (fully working as intended) power supply to shut down for awhile.  About a second later the power supply fires up and tries again.  But the same thing happens.  So...blinking.

Now actually putting one of these LED strips on top of my (fire rated, acrylic) sound absorbers is a non-standard usage.  And I just lay them there without removing the paper backing.  Possibly because of that, they are generally running too warm and eventually develop an issue as described, a thermal runaway.

These lights have never given me problems actually attached to a TV or monitor.

Anyway, clearly strip lights are not good here.  What I've been successful with before are mini LED spotlights.  I have not needed to replace those, even though they are also installed on top of the refrigerator (but not on top of the sound absorbers).  I can aim two of them to fill in the two walls in the corner behind the refrigerator, eliminating the eye straining darkness.

Now, there are larger ambient light products that all look interesting.  But most of them suffer from a fundamental flaw.  They are operated by push button or app or remote control.  That's OK maybe if you have one.  But if you want the whole room lit up, you want to have them on the same power strip or whatever is needed to turn them all on and off at once.  But I also don't like the idea of having an app that powers them "all" because that presumed you bought "all" once and forever at the same time.  Instead, what organically happens is you keep adding to a growing set of lights to achieve the full desired effect.

Honestly, I just keep all my kitchen ambient lighting running all the time.  I probably shouldn't, though I think it's a trivial amount of spent electricity for making my life much more convenient. 

So generally the best idea is for ambient lighting to have no switch at all.

The mini LED spotlights have no switch at all, they plug into "USB" power and draw only 1 watt.  (It's best to say 1w or below so they don't get hot.)

Much Greater Risk of Buying Wrong Item with Digital Media

 Today I was searching for the acclaimed documentary No Other Land.  Amazon first said "Currently Unavailable" but I realized that was DVD and looked for other version in the main search results.

I cannot retrace my steps at all (the history was completely expunged by Amazon and Google somehow immediately after my purchase was final) to see page where I made my mistake, but I could have started from a page for a different movie not realizing it was a different movie.  I somehow thought I was on a page for No Other Land, and it only offered to stream or buy, which seemed to make sense.  I chose buy, figuring then I could download it.  It took me to a page warning that I would not be able to view the movie in 4K because of my device (ok, 2k would be fine by me) and there was a "view" and a "download."  I repeated selected the "download" and nothing happened.  So finally I started to view the video through Chrome and all.

Only then I realized that I had ordered the wrong movie, after watching 2 seconds.  But two seconds two late because all digital media sales are final once watched, no matter how little.

I then tried to retrace my steps, but the only history prior to the movie window was the the Amazon search results.  Digital movie purchases show up in a different folder within Purchases and Returns and the only option was to review.

If I had ordered a Blu Ray, as I would have preferred to do, I would have caught this error in 10 different ways before it was too late.

It would show in a purchase screen (not a "viewing" screen).  It would show up in my email to be checked a few hours later.  It would be delivered and I'd see the name on the sealed disc package.  And then I could have returned it.  If somehow I had opened the movie, I might not have been able to return it, but I could sell the disc and recover some amount of the cost, or donate it.

I finally found the film through YouTube which actually linked to the movie on Rumble.  The Rumble version appears to be the genuine article, but only standard definition (480p), or perhaps less, some kind of lowered resolution copy.  It does not appear to come from the producer but from some blogger with 11 followers.

There seemed to be another version in high definition on Youtube.  But if you look carefully at the title, and the description, you see it isn't the movie at all, but a "Review" of it which consists basically of endless junk such as pictures of the DVD package and the producers appearance at Cannes and various logos with various disparaging fades.  Nearly two hours of junk which profits from YouTube royalties which value time watched and how many, so for each person sucked in (especially if they download the film) they could get some royalties for junk, scamming off the original title.  (And in the search results there are many similar other "reviews" just with slightly different titles.)

Here's the actual Title at YouTube from the one I looked at.

No Other Land (2024) Movie ‧ Oscar Winning Documentary | Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra | Review & Facts

Well, obtaining that was not as bad as my mistaken purchase at Amazon anyway, though I hate the fact I subsidized scammers.  Sadly I doubt the producers get any royalties from Rumble, and I guess that's the whole point of being "locked out by Hollywood."

Another version even added "Full" just before the "Movie".

Selecting CD metadata

Whenever I "rip" my CD's to my harddrive, I first must select the metadata.

My preferred ripper, XLD, doesn't have the biggest metadata collection, so I've always let a native Mac application (which used to be iTunes, now it's Music) identify the metadata first, then I run XLD to rip it.

Generally I'm presented with more than one possibility for the metadata.  You can already gleen some differences just by looking at the list.  Some are exceptionally wordy (I don't like those, my Roon always knows all the details anyway) and others not.  Some are in languages other than English (but 95% are in English).

But there really isn't enough detail in most cases to figure out which would be the preferable metadata (or, at least, the one I would prefer).

It would be better if you could explore each metadata option, to see how they label each song rather than just the whole disc.  But I have never seen such an option available.  Instead the only thing that I can do is select one version of the metadata and see what it's like then.  If I really don't like it, I can undo it and start over, but this gets complicated especially if I have already ripped the disc.  Not only do I have to delete the ripped disc files, or quit and restart the XLD application, sometimes I've had to reboot the computer.

4K Monitors on Macs

I got a new 55 inch 4K monitor (well, actually it's a TV, but it's a nice TCL Q6 LED TV) for my Mac.

But it appears the 4K quality of the monitor (which I sit about 4 feet in front of btw) is essentially useless.

When I switch to 4K everything becomes half as big.  Text in most app windows becomes nearly unreadable.  I have to go through the apps one by one to change the default font size, which usually fixes the app completely as the apps generally resize themselves to fit their own text.  Sometimes you have to change 2 or 3 font or other size settings in each app.  It's a pain in the neck I would have never expected, but it's doable.  There's no global way of just making everything bigger.

There's a preference panel Desktop & Dock which nicely has two different sizing controls, and they allow a nice continuous range of sizes so it can be set just right for your monitor, distance, vision, and the number of apps you usually have open.

But there is one thing which simply cannot be changed enough.  And that is the size of the menu bars at the top of the screen and perhaps elsewhere.

That is controlled by a very hard to find control:

System Settings->Accessibility->(Vision) Display->(Text) Menu Bar Size

It has two options, Default and Large.  On my 55" monitor, in 4K mode, 4 feet away, the Default setting is microscopic and the Large is still barely readable.

In 1080P mode, Small and Large are both useable by me, but I prefer Large (given my distance and old eyes).

Now when people complained about this with previous OS's, the advice given was to go into the Display settings, and "correct" your monitor size.

As of Sequoia 15.4.1, that option does not appear in Display Preferences.  I thought I saw it previously, and it simply could not be changed.  It had been fixed to 27 inches (and I previously had a 40 inch display).

So it seems you are not given any control over what the Mac sees the monitor as.  I imagine this works correctly if they are connected via USB which communicates such information, as does HDMI (though I wonder if it's universally supported over HDMI).  Now in my case, I have my monitors connected to my computers and other video sources through an HDMI Matrix Switch, so it's possible that information is not communicated correctly even if the TV supports it correctly.

But even then, I was thinking, suppose the Mac incorrectly believes for some reason that my connected monitor is 27 inches when in fact it is 55 inches.  Well, it would then tend to make the menu bar larger than necessary it would seem to me, which is probably what I'd like, and instead it's making it far smaller.  So WTF is going on anyway?  Screen Size miscommunication may not be at the root of the problem after all.

What's needed is full user control of the Menu Bar Size with a very wide range, as offered for the Dock size.  (Or better yet, a global control over the sizing of everything, so you don't have to reset the font size in each and every app.  Or somehow keep everything the same size when switching from 1080P to 4K.)

I feel like I'm being persecuted for not having a direct monitor connection,  I'm persecuted for old eyes, and not having a Mac monitor.

Somehow, you would think, that the Small and Large Menu Bar Sizes would be just perfect on a 4K Mac monitor (though maybe not still from my distance and eyes).

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255096501

Sequoianoia

I'm happy that I've been able to move on with updates to all my key applications from 2014 with my new Mac Mini Pro with M4 Pro processor.  But system security, what I sometimes call securianoia, has been the main thing I've had to struggle with.  (I'm happy at least that in every case I've eventually been able to find the solution, though sometimes it's taken quite awhile, and I would have been completely stumped had I not been able to scour the internet for answers.)

Frankly I'd turn most of the security off, and I have whenever I can.  I really don't care much if people are watching me, etc.  In 44 years of personal computing I've never had a virus, worm, or serious trojan horse.  (My one and only rule: I avoid stuff that looks iffy, and especially stuff telling me I've been infected, etc.).

Meanwhile I've had endless problems with add on virus protectors, and now system security "features."  And going forwards.  (Though I appreciate that Macs don't seem to "require" external virus protectors like PC's do, so I suppose a little bit of pain might be worth it.  I'd still prefer less pain, though.)

I had to struggle for days to get both Roon and Sonos S1 working on my new Mac, mainly to find just the right combination of permissions for them and their background servers.  With each of those permissions hidden behind a different set of Settings panels which are often infernally misleading.  Such as "Network" doesn't really control everything related to Network.

Today another routine Roon update made it impossible for Roon to see any of my external audio devices again.  I'm thinking this happens every time now.  I couldn't quite remember how I fixed this last time, and I scanned through the Network and Privacy and Security pages to find anything useful.  Indeed both Roon and Roon Server had permission to communicate with devices on my network, which is found in:

System Settings->Privacy and Security->Local Network

But the story is that after an update, you have to un-check and then re-check both Roon and Roon Server, then quit and restart Roon.

Well, I did that, but it didn't fix the problem.  So I progressed to the usual thing I do (which helped fix inexplicable internet loss a few days ago too), I restarted my Mac.

It was then that I realized that although I had quit Roon, I had not quit Roon Server, because for a moment Roon Server blocked the shutdown.

Well, the combination of the restart and the checking and unchecking cured the problem, but perhaps just the restart would have done it, or if I could have restarted both Roon and Roon server.  I'm noting this here to jog my memory next time.

Samsung TV keeps trying to connect to new neighbor's bluetooth and won't take NO for an answer

I don't regularly use Bluetooth, though sometimes I have to turn it on for some new gizmo.  I thought that's what might have happened when my 9 year old Samsung TV popped up a message box asking me if I'd like to connect to a Bluetooth device named RTS TU.

WTF.  I've never even used Bluetooth with this TV except while using 3D goggles, and I haven't done that in 5 years so the batteries in all my 3D googles are dead if they haven't been turned off.

I wasn't even sure whether it was the TV or the computer that was giving this message.  But I dug up my Samsung remote (which I haven't used much in years either, because I keep my TV connected to an HDMI line connected to my computer) and using an arrow button I was able to select the "NO" option.

But 20 seconds later, the same dialog popped up again.  I turned it off again.  And 20 seconds later, the dialog popped up again.   And this kept going on for the next 45 minutes it took me to figure out how to stop it.

Finally I think to myself, maybe it's the new Asus monitor I bought for a "second monitor" in the bedroom.  That's the only thing in my bedroom that has changed recently.  The Asus monitor had not even been taken out of the box yet, but perhaps there is a remote or something in the box.  So I moved the box to a distant room in the house.

Nope, the Bluetooth connect dialog still kept appearing.  Now I'm beginning to think it has to do with the new neighbor next door who moved in yesterday.  And I really don't want THEM to be connecting to my TV, which carries an audio signal from my computer which could be anything.

So I tried the "MENU" button on the Samsung remote, something I also haven't used in a long time (I prefer acessing menu features with another remote for reasons that will become clear.  But for some reason I couldn't find my other remote right now, so I had to use the actual Samsung remote, which has only a few visible buttons which are often "overloaded".)

When I press the Menu button, it puts me on a number key in a number pad on the screen, and there's a bar at the top of the screen with things you can do like change channel.  At the very far right of that bar at the top there's a button which says Menu.

So what I have to do is first press the menu button on the remote, then navigate 2 positions up and 1 to the side to press the Menu button on the screen, THEN I can actually access the Menu options.  If I press something else by mistake, I could be stuck for quite a while trying to figure out how to get out of it.  (I basically never use all these extra features of the TV and personally I wish they hadn't included them because I'm only ever selecting them by mistake and then trying to figure out how to get out of them, which often isn't easy.  All I really want ever want to do is use the actual Menu, but the Menu button doesn't go there directly, it seems like it first wants to show me the wonderful extra functions of this TV which I mostly wish they hadn't included.  Speaking of which, there's something actually called Extra which was apparently discontinued 4 years ago.  But there are other extras in addition to that one).   If I don't navigate to the Menu button on the screen fast enough, everything goes away.

Samsung screen after "Menu/Hub" pressed on Remote

Well, before I could figure out how to do all that, the Bluetooth dialog appears again so I wasn't navigating the menu anymore, but the arrow buttons only allowed me to say YES or NO, and by the time I've done that all the Menu/Hub stuff on the screen has disappeared and I have to start all over trying to Navigate over to the actual Menu button.

If you don't know exactly what to do, and I didn't at first, you might never get to the actual Menu button on screen before the TV gives the Bluetooth dialog all over again.  You have to press the button fast before the Bluetooth dialog appears all over again.

As the minutes passed (I wasted about 35 minutes on this issue, when I'd been trying to go to bed) I finally mastered the remote well enough so I could navigate to the actual Menu screen, then look at at a menu option or two, before the Bluetooth dialog appeared (every 20 seconds) and I'd have to start all over.

And doing this one bit at a time, then answering the Bluetooth dialog and starting all over, I managed to progress through the Menu options, one bit at a time.  But I didn't see anything like "turn Bluetooth OFF" anywhere.

So finally I go to my computer in another room and start asking Google some questions.  It seems like many other people have experienced this "My TV keeps trying to connect to neighbor's bluetooth" issue with their Samsung TV's and running into roadblocks trying to stop it.

It seems that Bluetooth is typically used by the TV to connect the sound to external listening devices like headphones.  (I never use headphones and basically hate them.).  So to keep the "Would you like to connect to Bluetooth Device" dialog from popping up, you have to go to the Sound options, and turn it off there.

So I went to the sound options, and it showed the RTS TU bluetooth device, and I pressed on it which brought up a pull down menu with a DELETE option.

The moment I pressed that DELETE option, the dialog "would you like to connect to Bluetooth device RTS TU" reappeared.

After again saying NO to that, I figured I hadn't selected the DELETE option fast enough, so I tried it 2 more times, starting with pressing the menu button on the remote, but each time the same exact thing happened, as soon as I deleted RTS TU, the dialog asking me whether I'd like to connect reappeared.

Somewhere in this process I finally decided that since this was sound only, I'd go ahead and let RTS TU connect just this time, and that would buy me more time in navigating menus as I wouldn't have to start all over again each time the dialog re-appeared, and it wouldn't bump me out of the menu navigating and changing process all the time.  Overall this was so difficult I wondered if my TV had been hacked, and the hackers figured out how to keep me trapped because I'd never get anywhere in the menu fast enough to change it.

What finally seemed to fix the problem was that I turned something called "Multisound Output" off, and selected one of the other Sound output options (Speakers, which I never use, or optical output, which I always use.)

Or maybe I could have accomplished this without turning "Multisound Output" off but merely by selecting one of the other sound options.  But since I've always had one of those other options selected, how did this even happen?  I must have had Multisound Output on, because I've always been able to use the speakers AND the optical output at the same time.  Then I never had any problems, because there weren't any bluetooth headphones nearby.  Then a new neighbor movied in.  So now I can't use Multisound Output anymore because it will be constantly asking me if I want to connect to those headphones.  There should just be a way to turn off the Bluetooth...even just the Bluetooth audio (if they wanted to keep bluetooth available for 3D) without affecting the ability to have multisound output generally.

Note: I love my Samsung flat panel tv's (I didn't love their CRT monitors) for their high performance, durability, and longevity.  But I've long felt their menu interfaces left a lot to be desired, though it was useful that they were generally so complete, though in this case it seems Samsung doesn't want you to be able to turn off bluetooth generally.

A good general rule is that such things should be shaken down with a lot of real life experiences before being unleashed on the public.  And then every problem should be fixed, and shaken down again.  This is what I have always tried to do, being the first user of my own programs.  But it has often seemed in big commercial products, that is not the case.  I could give endless examples.

Apple generally gets a lot of things right, though securophobia has made it increasing difficult with the Sequoia OS.  You have to find the right options behind the right menus to enable just the right things to get anything to work.  Apple's general problem is that they limit choices (Samsung generally does better) and make everything very opaque.

But in this case, Samsung really is limiting your choice (just turn bluetooth off dammit) and being very clumsy about it (No means No dammit, don't make me keep saying No forever).  Many would have returned the TV immediately as defective if they experienced this problem in the window.  It takes some clever operations and understanding to get it properly disabled to avoid having one's TV made useless by a neighbor just doing his thing.

This TV was from 2016 and one would hope this bug has been fixed by now.  Or maybe it's even, gasp, an ageing issue.