What's it all about, Alfie?

This morning I saw that iTerm2 had a new release - 3.3.0beta1, and in this new release, there were several new options for the Title Bar, and even a fancy Status Bar for things like the git branch, running app, etc. It is quite a nice visual upgrade. So this is how I've enabled the new Title Bar.

First, set the iTerm2 Theme to Minimal. Go to Settings, select the Appearance tab, and choose "Minimal" from the Theme dropdown.

Next, select the Profiles tab, select Window, and in the dropdown for Settings for New Window, select Compact.

Go to Advanced, and scroll down to the Tab settings, and for Tab bar height for compact windows with minimal theme, I have 22. It's about the exact size of the old window title bar, and it looks just great:

This was a day that the kids would always look forward to when they were in elementary school. The teachers at their school would always make a fun day of "Pi Day". Today, it makes me feel like going to Baker's Square and having a piece, but that's just a fleeting emotion... I'll be just fine with the memories of the days the kids would come back from school and tell me all about their "Pi Day".

Some memories are just so good, they survive the bad.

This morning I got an email that said that the Spectre Duffle Bag I'd ordered from Chrome Industries had shipped from California, and it should be at my door by the end of the day tomorrow - Thursday. The reason for the bag was that I've been using the same luggage that my delightful ex-wife bought for us - as a family, and while it's OK... it's two huge roller bags, and a cosmetic case, that I've been using for the few trips I have needed something.

But I'm old enough to get my own luggage - in fact, it's arguable that it's about time. So when I knew I had to make a trip to Seattle next week, I looked around and decided now is as good a time as any.

My top picks were Chrome bags - and Away Travel. The former made the messenger bag I use daily, and can't say enough good things about, and the latter is promoted on The Talk Show all the time. I like the hard exterior of the Away bags, but I wasn't sure how much they would hold, and they didn't give a lot of details on the size or what to expect.

Then I started looking at the Chrome bags, and I kinda ran into the same problem - What would it hold? Really not easy to see. So I measured the existing bag, and calculated the cubic inches, and then started comparing. Then I went to the airline carry-on page, and saw that the Chrome bag was exactly the right size to be a carry-on, and that you get one carry-on, and one laptop bag, and that would work great for me!

So I ordered the Chrome bag, and selected two-day shipping, because I wanted to make sure that I got it in time for this trip. And this morning, I found out that it would arrive! Fantastic!

Yesterday, I lost access to my GMail and GTalk accounts on my laptop - and it was saying that the password was bad. The first was covered in this post, and this morning I attacked the second. Overnight, I was just hoping that it was a transient thing, and that Google would restore whatever it decided to turn off, but that was not to be.

Given that Adium is now limited to just GTalk and ICQ, there really wasn't a lot of reason for me to keep it running, if I couldn't fix this authentication issue. So... knowing that Google wanted me to secure my account - but doing that would kill the old scheme for Adium, I decided to go ahead with it, and if it didn't work, then I'd just shut down Adium, and have to live with the loss of communication to my friends.

Securing Google

So the first thing I needed to do was to turn off the Insecure Access in Google. This is just saying the old, plaintext, username and password being passed to Google. This was the only way the old Adium worked, and so I had to leave it like this. But that's all changing.

Once that was turned off, I knew I wanted to use Authy for the Authentication App for Google because I didn't like the SMS codes, and Authy is just a nice tool for exactly this purpose without worrying if your SIM card has been cloned. So I turned that on, and typed in the first code, and we're good to go.

Finally, I needed to generate a single Application Password for Adium, and that was all done from the Security tab in the Google Account Settings. Not bad at all, they generate a 16-character code, and you then use it for that app. You only get to see it once, so make sure you type it in correctly, but you can always make another.

Testing Adium

Once I had the 16-character application password for Adium, I pulled it up, typed it in, and BAM! it worked. I could almost not believe it! This was exactly like the POP3 issue - I'm guessing Google just got tired of the less-secure methods, and just shut them off. Period. Now with the 2FA on my account, the Application Password is as secure as Google wants to make it. 16 characters is gonna be really hard to guess.

And as I was testing Adium... still a little giddy that this all worked, and I had also locked down my account, I got a notice from Mail.app that I needed to enter my password.

Ah... IMAP was not using the 2FA, and I needed to pull up the accounts in Mail.app, and go through that login once to get the login using 2FA, and to to trust this device. When that was done, email was back online, and GTalk was too.

What a heck of a morning! Very good news!

Well... that was a heck of a realization! This morning, I notice that my Mail.app can't connect to GMail, and I wonder if it's something that is wrong with the account - or just Google. Oddly, Aduim also is not connecting to GTalk, and that's very strange. So I start digging into this.

I know that my password is valid. And I also know that I haven't had any Security Alerts from Google - so that's good. But still... both Gmail and GTalk are not allowing me to login.

I got caught up in a lot of other issues today, but got back to this, and on a lark, decided to look at the two Gmail entries in my Accounts for Mail.app - one was just for GMail, and the other was the more complete email/notes/contacts/calendar - and the latter had to be using IMAP, and I know the former was POP3. So let's disable POP3, and use the IMAP for mail.

Bingo!

It seems as though Google just shut off POP3 access. I looked at the settings, and it's still considered "on" in my GMail account settings, but that doesn't matter. I simply cannot connect to the POP3 site. OK... guess that's that.

At the same time, I'm wondering if the GTalk (XMPP) API is shut down as well? I'll give it a day, and then I'll have to accept that it's dead, and at that point, there's no need to have Adium running, as the only protocol it used anymore was GTalk, and with that gone, it's really pointless. Sad to see that happen. Very sad.

UPDATE: I downloaded Trillian from the App Store, and it doesn't connect to GTalk either. So this is not a single app or my credentials. This is just GTalk. We will have to see if it clears up tomorrow.

A few months ago, I got a new Apple TV 4K, primarily because my old Apple TV was getting very slow in selecting ESPN, and in the morning, I just want to get on the treadmill and start running. So I invested in a new one, and I'm very glad I did. It's just amazing.

First, I really like the remote. I like the touch pad, and while it took a little getting used to, it's nice to have it on the remote, as opposed to the four direction buttons. A very nice upgrade. Add to that, the remote is rechargeable with a Lightening cable. This is great because I can then charge my AirPods, the Remote, or my iPhone all from the one cable that's connected to my Thunderbolt Display. Very nice.

Second, it's fast. That's what I expected from it, and that was not a disappointment. Exactly as advertised, it is zippy, and I don't have the multi-minute waits switching channels on ESPN. That was expected.

Third, and this was a surprise - the TV App that exists on my iPhone and the new Apple TV 4K is really almost something to drop cable over. It allows me to focus on the Shows I want to watch, and not the networks they appear on. I can look at my iTunes Movies as well, and it remembers the position in each movie, and show, so that I can move to my iPhone and watch a little bit, and then transfer back to the Apple TV 4K. This isn't Rocket Science, but it's an excellent implementation of the iCloud storage, and syncing. It's just great.

Now I've heard there are games for the Apple TV 4K, but I am not a big game player, but I will admit that I've purchased a lot more movies now that I have the Apple TV 4K than I did before. Which is good for me, and good for Apple.

It's not the most amazing thing Apple makes, it'll never have the attention that the iPhone or iPad has, but it's a fantastic little box, that is absolutely what I was looking for. Nice.

This morning I noticed that Google Docs had done a little bit of an upgrade to the style, and specifically, that the Note cards on the right side of the docs, were sporting a little more whitespace, and the font wasn't tied into the font on the doc.

I also noticed that the buttons on the Slide decks were colored with yellow - for the presentation tool. OK... sure... who doesn't like primary colors? But it was the whitespace that was a little annoying.

I like to keep things tight on the screen - not a lot of chrome, buttons, etc. And certainly not a ton of whitespace - it just takes up space. But at the same time, it's all about evolving and adapting to those things which you cannot change - and Google is certainly not interested in my style preferences.

Wonder if this is something of a bigger change on the horizon?

This morning a friend at the train station in Naperville mentioned that tonight starting at 6:00 pm there was forecast an Ice Storm that would make evening - and morning - commutes really nasty. So I had to look this up when I got into the office... was it really going to be all that bad? What was the latest news?

When I got in, and had time to look it up, it was sound pretty nasty:

...ICE STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 AM CST WEDNESDAY... * WHAT...SIGNIFICANT ICING EXPECTED DUE TO FREEZING RAIN. ICE ACCUMULATIONS OF ONE TENTH TO FOUR TENTHS OF AN INCH EXPECTED...

and if that wasn't enough, it went on to reassure us with:

POWER OUTAGES AND TREE DAMAGE ARE POSSIBLE DUE TO THE ICE. TRAVEL COULD BE NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE ON UNTREATED SURFACES. THE HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS MAY IMPACT THE EVENING COMMUTE.

And I just started giggling... We just got out of the Polar Vortex, and now we're going to covered in ice - and rain (to make it nice and slick) overnight, so that most places will be very hard to walk in the morning.

I have time, and knowledge, so we'll see what happens to that forecast as the day wears on. But it doesn't look particularly good for tomorrow morning's walk from the train station. But there's also working at home, or toughing it out... we'll have to see.

The forecast is saying that with the 6"+ of snow on the ground, we are going to be getting a once in 25 year cold spell. It's about 1 deg now, and heading down to something like -23 deg tonight. A good friend in Alabama sent me a picture of his driveway with the comment "Not [sure] I can handle all the snow" - and it looked like a September day.

So I took a picture out my front door, and sent it to him:

and we giggled about the difference.

He's from Northern Indiana, so he remembers this all too well... and I don't mind it, so we can share a laugh about the fact that he's there, I'm here, the cold is coming, but we have both had the wonderful experience of walking in the Chicago Winter with the wind chill in excess of -30 deg - and lived to tell the tale.

This is why we live in the Midwest. Not because it's easy, but because it is hard.

UPDATE: went out a few hours later, and shoveled off the snow that fell last night. It was chilly... I had forgotten the bite of the cold wind. It was something I always want to remember... always.

This morning, actually, last night, Apple released macOS 10.14.3, iOS 12.1.3, and tvOS 12.1.2 - and so I had a good morning updating my devices. It always puts me in a good mood to update machines... it's a fresh start... a new beginning, and it makes me smile.

I am glad to have updated to the latest Apple TV because the TV app is really a great thing for keeping track of the shows that I'm watching on Netflix and Hulu - all in one place. And it goes to my iPhone just in case I'd like to watch on the train home.

All updated and ready to take on the day!