Photoshop scratch, system swap, and solid state

The first rule of Pho­to­shop club is: don’t let Pho­to­shop use the sys­tem disk as a scratch disk. It’s a good rule of thumb and it has helped many peo­ple get much bet­ter per­for­mance from their Pho­to­shop sys­tems. It’s helped even more peo­ple think they were get­ting bet­ter per­fo­mance from their Pho­to­shop systems.

The prin­ci­ple is straight­for­ward: Pho­to­shop is prone to using more mem­o­ry than the sys­tems on which they run have. When mod­ern oper­at­ing sys­tems run out of mem­o­ry, … Read the rest

What bowl?

A few days ago on my way out of the bank after mak­ing a deposit for a client (not the sort of thing I usu­al­ly do, but if it helps the checks clear it’s time well spent) the branch man­ag­er (an over­ly friend­ly man, but that’s prefer­able to the alter­na­tive) said to me, «enjoy the game!»

I stopped to think and turned to him. «Game?»

«Yeah,» he chuck­led. «There’s a foot­ball game. You might have heard?»

Of course by now I knew … Read the rest

Please pardon the dust

Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look is hav­ing some work done, and in the process, things might go total­ly wonky. You might see the site with a dif­fer­ent theme or some parts miss­ing or out of place. There is some excep­tion­al­ly heavy load on the serv­er that is caus­ing my host­ing rates to be about 120 times as expen­sive as it should be and I’m try­ing to get to the bot­tom of the issue.

Once this gets sort­ed maybe I can go back to writ­ing … Read the rest

Gary Johnson announces support for same-sex marriage

Today Gary John­son, GOP can­di­date for Pres­i­dent in 2012, announced that he is updat­ing his posi­tion on same-sex mar­riages ver­sus civ­il unions. I sup­port the legal­iza­tion of same-sex mar­riage in my own state so over­all I’m pleased to hear this announce­ment. I am also a lit­tle con­cerned about the lan­guage Gov John­son used when he said that mar­riage should be up to indi­vid­u­als rather than the states.

I’d like to see the Defense of Mar­riage Act (DOMA) go … Read the rest

Nighttime at the Wharf

This is one of my old routes from before my motor­cy­cle acci­dent in 2007. This was before I had a GPS so I mea­sured out dis­tances using my bicy­cle and then stuck to routes I’d mea­sured. I mea­sured enough seg­ments to give myself a rea­son­able amount of vari­ety when run­ning, but it still felt very mod­u­lar: if I want to add a half mile, go to the end of the Munic­i­pal Pier and back. If I want to add … Read the rest

Voting with my feet

Today San Fran­cis­cans made their choic­es for May­or, Dis­trict Attor­ney, and Sher­iff, as well as a num­ber of City bal­lot ini­tia­tives, most­ly about bor­row­ing mon­ey (alleged­ly) for street repairs and changes to the con­tri­bu­tions City employ­ees make to their pensions.

The may­oral race was on sched­ule; Lt Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som left his post as May­or when he was elect­ed to Sacra­men­to, but he would have termed out this year any­way so he would­n’t have been run­ning any­way. Instead the «incum­bent» … Read the rest

…because it would be hard

Weath­er report said it was going to rain. I talked to anoth­er run­ner before the race who said he hoped it would­n’t rain. The skies were total­ly clear, but I don’t think rain on a race is a bad thing. It cools us off with­out hav­ing to sweat so much. Even with­out the rain, the air was pret­ty cool — prob­a­bly about 55°F. A lit­tle cool to be stand­ing around in shorts and a T‑shirt, but just fine for … Read the rest

Pawtrero stroll

I start­ed out going just for some cat food. Being made of meat and liv­ing with car­ni­vores I find it pru­dent to make sure there is always an alter­na­tive food sup­ply for gato y gati­ta. I want­ed to at least get some walk­ing in. With a race com­ing up on Sun­day, espe­cial­ly one that is beyond my cur­rent fit­ness lev­els, I want to be sure that my legs are as fresh as they can be. When Mon­day’s run proved … Read the rest

Freedom-hating Apple fanboy

Android is the plat­form of free­dom and open­ness. Apple’s iOS by con­trast is a «walled gar­den» in which Apple holds strict con­trol over the tools of devel­op­ment and even the con­tent avail­able on its plat­form. Free­dom is bet­ter than tyran­ny, so ide­o­log­i­cal­ly as well as prac­ti­cal­ly every­one should aban­don Apple and get an Android device so that they can live hap­pi­ly, pro­duc­tive­ly, and freely ever after.

At least that is what Android sup­port­ers say. It’s rather trou­bling that there are Android … Read the rest

Running on empty

I read recent­ly that it was a good idea to run with­out first eat­ing. It made sense at the time; some­thing about glyco­gen and fat stores. It made sense at the time, though now the googling I’ve done on the sub­ject is con­fus­ing at best. I’m start­ing to think that tak­ing it seri­ous­ly was a mistake.

Sat­ur­day’s 9.6‑miler was run with­out ben­e­fit of fuel­ing, though I ran that fair­ly ear­ly in the day. Today’s 5.7Read the rest