Okay, this blog is not meant to be about tech stuff. But have you ever had the feeling of searching for something that’s bugging you and you find some blogger has helpfully written down exactly the solution to your problem? Maybe that will happen for someone here.

How to take a full screen screenshot

Taking a screenshot in any OS is pretty simple. But capturing a full webpage maybe could be easier. Every time I need to do this, I end up heading to this post on reddit.

To take a full page screenshot:

• Open Firefox
• Choose “Tools” > “Browser Tools” > “Web Developer Tools”
• Click the “Console” tab
• type

A .png will be saved to your Downloads folder. What the options above do: DPR is device pixel ratio and on Retina screens you generally want to use 2 or above. The delay flag takes a short delay of 5 seconds before making the screenshot which allows you to hover over or unhover over options you might need. Some options are described here at mozilla.org.

How to interrupt Mac when ejecting a disk

On Mac OS, removable media will often get stuck as you attempt to eject them. The OS will complain “The disk wasn’t ejected because one or more programs may be using it.” Every time this happens to me, I locate this amazingly helpful 18 second video on YouTube. Please note: quitting processes can be sensitive so I can’t take responsibility if something goes wrong (data loss, etc).

To eject a disk in use:

• Click the Apps icon in the dock (formerly Launchpad) and choose Activity Monitor
• With the CPU tab selected, type in the searchbar
• Hold shift to select multiple items and select all Process Names with the word quicklook or QuickLook in them
• Press the stop sign icon to quit these processes
• Attempt to eject the removable media again

How to paste an image into a PDF inside Preview

This should be easier but at least it works. Every time I need to do this, I locate this Stack Exchange answer.

To paste an image into a PDF using Preview.app:

• Open your destination PDF in Preview
• Open your image file (.png, .jpg) in Preview
• With your image window in focus, press + to select the image and then + to copy it
• Choose “File” > “New from Clipboard”
• Close your original image window
• In your duplicated image window (named Untitled), press + to select the image and then + to copy it
• With the ‘marching ants’ still visible in this Untitled window, press
• Press + to paste the image back into this same window
• Click on this new object, so that blue perimeter points appear and press + to copy this object
• Give your destination PDF focus and press + to paste this object into the PDF

Once pasted in, this new object can be resized using the blue perimeter anchor points.

Conclusion

I use all of these three links a lot. I also end up using this aspect ratio calculator, this URL decoding tool, and this character identifier quite frequently. In all six of these uses, I wish the OS could do better or surface solutions better. But until then, maybe these will help somebody.

Friend of the blog and talented bible-designer Chad Whitacre is retiring from tech, which he explains in a farewell letter here. Chad was very kind to me in a time that I really needed the kindness and his design of The Gospels (incredibly beautiful typography!) is one of my most cherished Earthly items. Today is his first day at his new job and I want to wish him well. He’s going to be operating a magazine called Gift which sounds so very wonderful. Fair winds and following seas, brother!

When we were scouting for locations, whenever we saw any magnificent view, like a postcard type, we would appreciate it, Robby and I, and then turn our back and look for a location without a view.

Jim Jarmusch, discussing his 1995 film Dead Man, quoted in the book Cinematography by Robby Müller

The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of “anti-rebels,” born oglers who dare to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse single-entendre values. Who treat old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point, why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk things. Risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. The new rebels might be the ones willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “How banal.” Accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Credulity. Willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.

David Foster Wallace, For M.M. Karr, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction, 1993

👁 A purple heart in the shade of Rebecca Purple hangs from a Christmas tree.

There are three great cities in the United States: there’s Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York – in that order.

L.A. is the apocalypse: it’s you and a bunch of parking lots… The city, ironically, is emotionally authentic. It says… you’re the least important person in the room; get over it.

The whole thing is ridiculous. It’s the most ridiculous city in the world – but everyone who lives there knows that. No one thinks that L.A. “works,” or that it’s well-designed, or that it’s perfectly functional, or even that it makes sense to have put it there in the first place; they just think it’s interesting. And they have fun there. 

And the huge irony is that Southern California is where you can actually do what you want to do; you can just relax and be ridiculous. In L.A. you don’t have to be embarrassed by yourself. You’re not driven into a state of endless, vaguely militarized self-justification by your xenophobic neighbors…

The desert, the ocean, the tectonic plates, the clear skies, the sun itself, the Hollywood Walk of Fame – even the parking lots: everything there somehow precedes you, even new construction sites, and it’s bigger than you and more abstract than you and indifferent to you… You’re free.

In L.A. you can grow Fabio hair and go to the Arclight and not be embarrassed by yourself. Every mode of living is appropriate for L.A. You can do what you want.

Los Angeles is the confrontation with the void… It’s the confrontation with geology through plate tectonics and buried oil, methane, gravel, tar, and whatever other weird deposits of unknown ancient remains are sitting around down there in the dry and fractured subsurface. It’s a confrontation with the oceanic; with anonymity; with desert time; with endless parking lots. 

And it doesn’t need humanizing. Who cares if you can’t identify with Los Angeles? It doesn’t need to be made human. It’s better than that.

Greater Los Angeles, Geoff Manaugh, 2007

The true gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good-will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness, but always with sincerity and sympathy, and whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; who appears well in any company and who is at home what he seems to be abroad—a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

John Walter Wayland, The Baltimore Sun, January 31, 1909

Twenty years ago today I started posting to this site. A year later I marked the occasion. And now, another anniversary: 20 years. Blogging still works and remains proof of a better way in a world of social networks. As humble as this site is, it contributed to major real-world experiences in my life. So a sincere thanks to all of you for reading and writing in!

No amount of homage paid to the past is a sure indication of living virtue. On the contrary, the more profusely it is bestowed, the more clearly it will be seen that it is designed as a cloak to cover moral cowardice or arrant apostasy. Nothing is easier, nothing more common, than to honor “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”; to build and garnish the tombs of the old prophets; to celebrate the deeds of Jesus and his Apostles. Nothing is more difficult, nothing more rare, than to walk in their footsteps and imitate their example; to live, in our day, as they did in theirs, without reputation, hated, despised, persecuted, for righteousness’ sake.

William Lloyd Garrison

I enjoyed the following letter from George Catlett Marshall to Charles J. Graham, found in the Marshall Foundation library and included in We Cannot Delay (a decade later he would echo the sentiment in public remarks). At the time, Marshall was the Chief of Staff of the Army, a post he held for the duration of WWII:

September 23, 1941

Dear Charlie:

I wish it were possible for me to accept your tempting invitation to the Woodmont Rod and Gun Club’s first shoot of the season on the 15th of November.  There is nothing I would like better than to be a member of your party but unfortunately for me, I expect to be in Panama at that time.

Am sure that I would enjoy meeting Wendell Willkie, particularly under such informal and agreeable circumstances, and as to my political faith—I have never voted, my father was a democrat, my mother a republican, and I am an Episcopalian.

Thank you many times for asking me to join you on this alluring outing, I am indeed sorry that I cannot be with you.

Faithfully yours,