Category: Getting Stuff Done

Sticky Ghost Safari iCloud Tabs

Every few months this issue comes up for me. Oddly when I get a new device or when my Apple devices aren’t all running the latest operating system. Every few months I have to do a search for the solution. So now I’m writing it down here for myself and others to hopefully find.

If you have an issue in Safari on MacOS where you have iCloud Tabs on your Start Page that are closed on your other devices, but still persist in this list, here is the solution.

Note: All iCloud tabs will be gone once you complete these steps. This resets things completely in my experience. So, save your tabs somewhere. As bookmarks, notes, emails, whatever, before you proceed.

  1. Open Finder
  2. Select “Go” from the menubar, then Go to Folder…”
  3. You can also have Finder as your front-most application and use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Command+G (⇧+⌘+G)
  4. Type or copy/paste: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Safari/
  5. Close Safari
  6. Delete the following three files: CloudTabs.db, CloudTabs.db-shm, CloudTabs.db-wal
  7. Open Safari. Ghost tabs are gone.

What is an accident?

Larry: For the sake of your viewers who can’t see this, I’m showing you I always have a flashlight in my pocket. That’s what I walk around with. A good prop person always has a a flashlight, and it’s there so that you can shine it down the barrel and check for that. If you don’t have a flashlight, don’t go on set. And so that’s yet another step along this horrible chain of events that leads to these incidences. And I do want to point something out. You said it once or twice, Liz, but you notice I have not once used the word accident.

Lizzie: Yeah.

Larry: Right? Because an accident implies that there’s nobody to blame. Oh, it was an accident. It was an act of God. No. The Crow and all these other high-profile things There’s people to blame. There’s enough blame to go around. If you don’t do your job correctly and it leads to an injury or a fatality, you’re to blame. It’s not an accident. An accident is when you do everything you can possibly do to prevent it and something still goes wrong. That’s an accident. These are not accidents. You know what I mean?

Emphasis mine.

From Larry Zanoff, an armorer who works on films. He’s talking about the role of an armorer and their importance in keeping everyone safe on set.

From What Went Wrong, a podcast about movies, and how it’s nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one.

Episode link on podcastindex.org

The future of knowledge is yours to protect. #Wikipedia25

I am really proud of this video my colleagues made to celebrate the 25th birthday of #Wikipedia. It’s a really stressful time in the free knowledge world and this celebration is a much needed reminder that there are amazing people behind all this and it’s stunning what they have accomplished over the last quarter century. Here’s to another 25 and beyond!

Fun behind-the-scenes fact. All media in the video is under a free license. As such, we have to provide attribution. For all 650+ assets. Here it is as one honking table. 🤯

Wikimedia Commons Vanity Stats

I made a thing. It allows you to see how many media requests your files have received on Wikimedia Commons. It’s a vanity project and the numbers don’t mean much without more context. 🙂

It’s a small python script that allows you to provide a username, date range, and a number of files to check. It then uses the MedaiWiki and mediarequests APIs to create a .csv file of how many media requests those files have received. I did this for my own ego, so a literal vanity project!

If this sounds interesting, I’d appreciate any constructive feedback. Not sure I’ll work on it more than I have, but thought I’d share.

https://github.com/ckoerner/Wikimedia-Commons-Vanity-Stats