Angel of Spring

The angel of spring, tiny as he is, slowly but tirelessly, digging his way, inch by inch, out of what’s left of winter. It’s been a long, cold wait.

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Moving iCloud from C

 

I use an iPhone and an iPad, and subscribe to 200GB of iCloud storage which I also sync to my Windows 10 computer using the iCloud sync software. This means that the files I store to iCloud from my two Apple devices are also available on my PC.

The problem is that Apple’s iCloud software only stores these files on the C drive, which on my computer is already crammed to the brim with Windows, programs and games. I simply don’t have room for all my stuff on there! Which is why I’ve moved all my documents, photos and other files to the other hard drives. I definitely need to move the iCloud folder, too.

The bad news is that there’s no way to do this from the iCloud control panel, which is something that I consider an oversight or gross neglect on Apple’s part. The good news is that there are other ways around it. The downside again is that it’s a little technical, but don’t let that scare you from asking a friend.

Disclaimer: This guide is provided with the only guarantee being that it worked for me on my computer using the steps described below. Proceed at your own risk. There is always the chance that something could go wrong. To protect yourself against data loss, make a backup before doing anything that might harm your files. I’ll assume no responsibility for any mistakes on your part, or damages or loss of data thereof, or even whether this works at all on your computer.

Step one: Disable iCloud Drive

Open the iCloud control panel, and disable iCloud Drive by first removing the check mark next to iCloud Drive, and then press Apply.

This has the additional bonus of removing all the files in the iCloud storage folder on your computer, but don’t worry, they will remain in available your iCloud account, and they will be automatically downloaded after you’ve completed all the steps.

Step two: Create a new folder on another drive

You will need to create a new folder on a different drive, preferably one that will have room for all the files that will be synced with iCloud. I’ll use the D drive in this example, and create a folder that I call "iCloudDrive", making the path for the new folder "D:\iCloudDrive". Your drive letters may be different, so use what you have.

Step three: Make a link from old to new

First we need to open the command line window as Administrator. To do this, open the Start Menu, type "CMD", right-click on “Command Prompt”, and select “Run as administrator”, then click “Yes” to allow this program to make changes to your computer.

You now have a new window with a black background, and a few bits of text. This is the command window. We won’t bother with what’s written there, because it’s not important to what we’re going to do.

IMPORTANT: For the next step, make sure to use your own Windows username where it says "USERNAME", and your own target folder path where I’ve put "D:\iCloudDrive".

In the command window, type the following line, and press Enter.

MKLINK /J "C:\Users\USERNAME\iCloudDrive" "D:\iCloudDrive"

In response it will say something like
“Junction created for C:\Users\USERNAME\iCloudDrive <<===>> D:\iCloudDrive”
You can then close the window.

Step four: Re-enable iCloud Drive

Open the iCloud control panel, and enable iCloud Drive by putting a check mark next to it and press Apply. As soon as you’ve done this, it will begin downloading all your iCloud Drive files to the new folder. Be aware that this may take a while, depending on how many megabytes of files you have, and how fast your internet connection is.

And that should be it! Happy iClouding! 🙂

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The Burden of Death in Schools

“It has to stop. And spare me your Second-Amendment arguments. It’s all you’ve got. If you don’t have any other practical solution than MOAR GUNS, then you don’t get to participate in the conversation about what we do next to make this stop.”
— Jennifer Gadd

I’m the son of a teacher, and indeed my close family is full of teachers. I’ve been through school, from day one and on to the end of high school, and my wife and I have seen our two children go through school in similar fashion.

And I am—we are—blessed with the good fortune of living somewhere that guns, or even the awareness of guns, let alone the risk of being attacked and killed by someone with a gun, in schools or elsewhere, has never, ever, needed to be part of our daily lives.

We have fire drills, but never gun drills. We have political arguments about school funding, but never about any form of need, imagined or otherwise, for having weapons in schools.

I don’t doubt for a moment that any single one of our teachers would go to any lengths, do whatever they could, whatever it took, give their life if needed, to protect their students in the event of a school shooting. But I am grateful for the fact that, so far, while for years and years school shootings and other mass killing sprees in America continue to make weekly headlines in our news, they do not have to.

I cannot begin to imagine what living with this kind of prevalent fear feels like to a child, or a teenager, or a teacher. What I can imagine is that it doesn’t help with learning, or teaching. Even if your own school wasn’t attacked this week, then the all too familiar news flashes about massacres at schools just like yours, mass murders of children just like you, must weigh heavily on their minds, and constantly remind them that “this could be you”, indeed that “your turn is coming”. Such a burden I imagine would be a destructive challenge to any learning process. Children in any country deserve so much better than that.

American school teacher Jennifer Gadd has quite a lot to say about the situation:

Please read on, and continue to Facebook to Like and Share.

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First little telescope adventure

My dear wife and daughters got me something absolutely wonderful for Christmas: a beginners’ astronomical telescope! Alas, since then, the weather has gone out of its way to keep the night sky veiled and thoroughly hidden around these parts. Only last Sunday did I catch a momentary break in the cover, and an opportunity to check if my some-assembly-required-fu was as stellar as I’d hoped.

Some wobbliness still remained, possibly due to the fact that this was a non-IKEA product with no Allen wrench in sight for miles, thus forcing me to use such unfamiliar tools as — *gasp* — a screwdriver (neither vodka nor a single orange included). Plus I’ve never actually operated a proper telescope before, and much of the initial navigation of the heavens was by trial and trial and trial and utter trial and error. Stars are painfully difficult to track by hand, at least with inexperienced hands and unfamiliar controls, so both Sirius and Betelgeuse ended up far more successful in their game of hide than I was at my game of seek. I suspect my finder may be severely misaligned and the target of future calibration.

Enter trusty old Moon, whose location in the sky is hard to miss unless you try very, very hard indeed, meaning even I ought to be able to do it blindfolded (for the record, I tried without the blindfold, which may have helped). Let me tell you, the apparatus works! We spent a chilly fifteen minutes or so in –7°C, gazing at craters, ridges and plains all over the lunar surface, as well as the zig-zagging of shadows along the terminator. The moon is a big place when it’s up close! Just before I decided to let temperature dictate the duration of this adventure, I fired off a couple of shots with my iPhone into the viewfinder, and here is the result … though I ought to add that the image we saw with our eyes was far better than what the iPhone in my by then freezing hands could capture 🙂

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Red Monday Morning

Monday Morning Sleepy Sunrise Revealing the Red Eye of the East.

January 8th, 2018, at a quarter to nine.

Technical: Shot in RAW and edited on iPhone SE using Lightroom Mobile.

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