Friday, May 04, 2018

Direction Indicator Fix for CityMaps2Go

Left this morning to explore a city.  Equipped with my iPhone 6 plus and CityMaps2Go I felt confident that I would be able to maneuver in the new city that I was exploring. Unfortuntately, that was not the case.

The blue dot was working fine and i could see my location on the city map, but as i pointed my iphone to the place that I wished to explore, the normal arrow that indicates which way I am headed was not appearing.

There is another option that did work enough to keep me headed in the right direction.  When back to my home base I found that my Apple compass app was not working correctly.

Once I changed a few settings on my iPhone the compass worked again and the cityMaps2go app started working correctly. 

I used the following steps to turn my compass calibration back on.
  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Select Privacy.
  3. Select Location Services.
  4. Select System Services at the bottom of the list of apps in the Location Services.
  5. Turn your compass calibration on and off. 

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Getting rid of "Spam " and "Scam and Fraud" Contacts put in iphone contacts by Hiya App

I noticed that an app called Hiya had added many phone numbers and two contacts to my contact list.

To get rid of this from my Contact app on my iPhone, I turned off wifi and cellular.  Selected each of the intrusive contacts from my contacts i.e., "Scam and Fraud"  and "Spam" individually. Then I  scrolled down to end of all the numerous phone numbers that were put in my contact list by the Hiya app and came to "delete contact".  These two contacts  are gone!

Tuesday, April 03, 2018

Transferring Midis to Disklavier using FromToPC folder

When the latest edition of DKVBrowser for Mac failed to function on my MacBook Pro, I was heartbroken. It still runs on an older Mac that I have kept around here for editing purposes.  One of the nice features of DKVBrowser was the ability to transfer new midi files I downloaded from the internet to my Mac to the piano using wifi connection.

Even though I can't use the DKVBrowser on my MacBook Pro running Sierra 10.13.4 — I have figured out the steps to still transfer midis from my Mac to my piano via wifi.

This will be a great help as most laptops and newer computers don't have floppy drives or  CD drives.  I tried using a thumb drive which failed -- I believe due to being formatted as a Mac thumb drive. Maybe if I had a PC formatted thumb drive my Mark IV Disklavier would have recognized it.  I was spoiled using DKVBrowser to easily move midis to my piano via wifi.  So here are the steps to do so without DKVBrowser application. 


UPDATE:  Make sure your piano is ON ... out of standby.  Just turn on piano and play a song. Then stop song. 


On MacBook Pro, use the Go menu in the menu bar of finder.  Select Connect to Server from pop down submenu  and then from the upper right hand side of window select the pop down arrow and click on DKV#####





Click on Connect.

A popup window requesting name and password to server appears.
Fill in and click on connect.  (Note:  you may not need a password.)
Select FromToPCYou can use Guest to sign in - that works too!




The FromToPC  icon should appear on the Mac desktop.
Drag and drop any midi files that you wish to transfer to your piano into the icon.

Next, you will need to refresh this FromToPC directory using the piano's PRC remote, before the files will show up in the FromToPC directory on your piano's PRC remote screen.

Select the  FromToPC directory from the PRC
Select the root directory which is  a "/"

Select the Function button below and use "Refresh" option.
Which should  reload all the new midi files that you transferred via wifi so that they appear in the directory of the PRC remote screen.
You can now play them on your piano using PRC remote.

You can also run the Disklavier Controller app on your iPhone and can see the midis in the FromToPC directory on the app and play them.


You should also eject the FromToPC icon from your Mac’s desktop when finished.

Additional Note: Today, I was able to upload midis using my iPhone and app called "GoodReader" to my Mark IV Disklavier.  I save midis I find using iPhone Browser to my GoodReader app using the share icon.  GoodReader has an option to connect to servers.  Then I setup my piano server in GoodReader.  I select add server using SMB type server and adding the dkv###### address and add to my GoodReader app.   I then upload the midis saved in GoodReader to my piano's hard drive FromToPC directory.   

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Update of previous blog post to handle High Sierra: “How to Make an Encrypted Area on your Mac HD to Store Sensitive Information”

This posting is an update of previous blog post:  http://grannyjoans.blogspot.com/search?q=encrypted

“How to Make an Encrypted Area on your Mac HD to Store Sensitive Information”

 The previous blog post needs to be modified to handle Macs which have High Sierra Operating System installed.
The MacOS High Sierra operating system introduced APFS (Apple File System) to Mac computers. APFS replaces Mac OS Extended (HFS+) as the default file system for solid-state drives (SSDs) and other all-flash storage devices.
Disk Utility in macOS High Sierra can format most storage devices using either file system. If you need to manually reformat, consider these points:

    •    APFS requires macOS High Sierra. Earlier versions of Mac operating system don't mount APFS-formatted volumes.
    •    APFS is optimized for solid-state drives (SSDs) and other all-flash storage devices.
    •    Disk Utility tries to detect the type of storage you're formatting, then shows the appropriate format in the Format menu. If it can't detect the type of storage, it defaults to Mac OS Extended, which works with all versions of macOS.
Eventually, it becomes necessary to set up a logical system and place to safely keep myriads of personal information like password logins, financial statements and such.   The Disk Utility application on your Mac offers a means to create a Disk Image on your hard drive or external flash storage drive that is encrypted and accessible with a single password where you can store your digital information.  I have opted to use the Mac OS Extended file system as I still have devices and Older Macs where I need to be able to access these important files.

Below is the method to create such a disk image when using High Sierra System:

(1)  Open Disk Utility (located in the Applications/Utilities folder on your Mac).

(2)  Click on the File menu, select New and Blank Disk Image.

A dialog and options box for creating the New Blank Image file will appear on the screen:

       
 (3) Enter a name in the Save As field.  Enter this same name in the Name field (e.g. Test Storage Box)


(4)  Next, select a folder or destination for storing this newly created (e.g. Test Storage Box.dmg) file onto your hard drive under drop-down Where field.  You can store the .dmg file directly on one of the computer's hard drives, either an internal or external hard drive.  It is probably a good idea to check to see if there is enough room available on whatever hard drive you choose.   Note: This .dmg file can always be moved from the Desktop to the main hard drive (i.e. used to boot). If, however, it is moved from the desktop to some other hard drive then a "copy" will be generated which may result in confusion.

(5)  Type in a size for the image file in the Size field.  Select a size that will be large enough to sufficiently contain all the data or document files that you plan to place in this secure disk image.

(6)  Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the Volume Format drop-down menu if you plan to copy this disk file to a Mac with previous operating system or a device that doesn’t support the APFS file structure.

(7)  Select either recommended 128 bit AES or 256-bit AES encryption.  It is my guess that recommending 128-bit encryption, may have something to do with additional time required for the 256-bit encoding method.  However, many feel 256-bit encryption is unnecessary. 
Note an article by Seagate, a hard disk manufacturer, (reference link:  http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/docs/pdf/whitepaper/tp596_128-bit_versus_256_bit.pdf ) states that anything that could crack a 128-bit encrypted file would also be able to crack a 256-bit encrypted file ... with little additional time or effort. They currently estimate it would take 77,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years on average to crack just one encryption under the following assumptions:
 
• Everyone in the world (all 7 billion people) work together and simultaneously to crack the key to your encrypted file. 
        
• And each person uses 10 computers running 24/7. 
  
• And each computer can test 1 billion key combinations per second.
(8)  Select read/write disk image for Image Format.

(9) Select Partitions type.  Single GUID Partition map is good one.

(10) Enter a secure password, one that you will use to access this Disk Image.  Many experts recommend at least 10 characters, with with at least one character being in a different case (capital letters and non capital letters) and at least one character being non alpha numeric (i.e. $, %, ^ etc).
  

(11) Click Save to create the encrypted Disk Image file (e.g. Test Storage Box.dmg) that will appear in the location you specified. You can Quit the Disk Utility application at this time.

Now you will be able to use this mounted Disk Image (e.g. Test Storage Box.dmg) to store any sensitive data.  Double click on this desktop icon or .dmg file. The Disk Image (e.g. Test Storage Box) will appear on your desktop and can also be viewed in your sidebar, like a normal drive, adding files, opening, editing and copying files to it.  Merely, drag the documents or files that you wish to keep secure into the Disk Image icon or into the opened icon window.   When finished, merely eject the mounted desk icon (e.g. Test Storage Box icon), by dragging to the trash where you should see the eject arrow as you place the desk icon image over the trash. 

In the future when you wish to access the secure files, double click this .dmg file (e.g. Test Storage Box.dmg) to mount the  file to your desktop.   You will be prompted to enter your password in the dialog window and click OK.   Note: it is important to leave the box unchecked to deselect 'Remember password in my keychain' option.  Otherwise, your password will not be required to gain access to your encrypted file.


In summary, there are two files that are created using Disk Utility:
    •    One file will be .dmg file (e.g. Test Storage Box.dmg) — note the .dmg extension. This is the file to double click for mounting.   
    •    The other file (e.g Test Storage Box) icon will appear on the desktop.  This file does not have an extension and is the file to move to the trash or to eject for unmounting.
 



Sunday, February 11, 2018

All My Notes Not Showing on Contacts App on Mac using High Sierra

I have been trying to clean up my contacts on my Mac and noticed that some of the lengthy notes under the notes section are partially viewable. I found a way to view the rest of the notes by clicking in the visible text and then hitting the space bar.  This made all of the notes section visible.

I wonder if there is a glitch that Apple will address in coming system updates?

It is scary to think that your notes are obscured and not viewable or possibly missing.