How do you solve a problem like Catalina?

Apples's latest Mac OS version has caused issues for many people.

It seems slow, buggy and has been a disappointment to those of us who have come to expect better. We use Macs because they 'just work', and Catalina doesn't.

There's a few bodge fixes available, which i've gathered here.


General slowness

With thanks to Twitter user @SarikaidenMusic here's one solution:

"Boot up the mac while pressing & holding Command+R until it boots into recovery options, then select Disc Utility, and then run First Aid. I did it to all my drives to be safe, but you probably only need to do it to the one macOS is installed on."

I also did it to every drive. It's made it better, although not as fast as it used to be. My Mac is a few years old so i don't expect top performance, but the change is speed is noticeable.

Many users reported lagging and general slowness making the user experience painful.



Apple Music memory leak

This one is particularly bad. It might only effect people with music collections in the thousands, based on what I've read, but Apple Music started using up more and more memory until the system crashes. Ands this repeats.

The workaround seems to be:

Go into preferences -> advanced and untick automatically update artwork

Go to your music folder - > iTunes and delete the Album Arrtwork folder

Restart.

Now Apple Music should be using between 200-600MB, which is much more sensible.

Photos

It's slow to start with but just let it run it's course - it's just scanning all the photos to give you new collections 

Earthbound - new EP!

My new EP came out today! 

It's has some beats you might even consider dancing to.

You can find it in a number of ways:

Google "The Skerry Hill Earthbound"

Or click one of these links:

Apple: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/earthbound-ep/1472571150

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/music/album/The_Skerry_Hill_Earthbound?id=Bwqkvelvjwgorthe6tbu3dfu6sy&hl=en_US

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Earthbound-Skerry-Hill/dp/B07VB5T8XF/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Skerry+Hill&qid=1564697603&s=dmusic&search-type=ss&sr=1-1

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/5b99FhlYWXRmw3n3uaXXPu

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l6LDUxpYfGTBaIQjIGqZ9ShVel2f2T6YQ

I'm trying.

The Skerry Hill

Some ask "how do I find you music online"?

The short answer is "Google 'The Skerry Hill'" but some people think that's rude.

Here are links to some places you can listen to or buy my music:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7mlOa0ISH3XKB3gcxaEFMM

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/the-skerry-hill/1278935122

New EP 'Earthbound' out 1st August 2019.

This has been a public service announcement.

Hubpages

Some stuff I write gets posted on https://hubpages.com/@lukecore

I get more money for those clicks ;)

Most of my new poems are going there.

Long Live The Queen video game review

Rock Paper Shotgun did a recruitment drive in 2014. This was my application:

_______

At some point the Google Search Gods decided that I should see adverts for cute manga style games. At a slightly later point the advertising worked and I bought Long Live The Queen.

I am perhaps not ideally suited to the role of a 14 year old girl called Elodie, who is about to become the queen of Nova, but I took that plunge anyway. The goal is to keep young Elodie alive long enough to be crowned. This is not as easy as it sounds, and part of the fun seems to be the variety of sticky ends the lass can come to.

The game unfolds like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, with your skills levelling up via lessons and story paths affected by your decisions. 

The first run through is a minefield as you are thrown into the deep end of Nova’s political scene with little background info - you learn this by studying to upgrade your skills. Your ability to learn is in turn affected by your mood i.e. depressed, angry, cheerful, and that’s without getting into the learning boosts from changing your outfit! 

What looks on the surface to be a simple little game takes on layers of complexity as you choose to prioritise military skills over spying or economics over royal demeanour.

The seemingly random nature of events causing your death is initially frustrating until you realise that’s where they’re going with it. To get further you start to develop tactics, then throw those tactics away when you inevitably die again and try something else until you get another outcome (likely: death). That guy you threw in the dungeon? Maybe next time give that a miss.

Long Live The Queen is delightfully drawn, cheekily dark, with a lot going on under it’s cute surface.

deleted scene from this application 

As you can see there's not much video game writing in there. When I was much younger I wanted to write for Total, Mean Machines and the like - the games mags that had a sense of humour. Then I hit puberty and wanted to write for Kerrang! or NME. I wrote a music fanzine in the late 90s called FSU which was reviewed by Dan Silver in Metal Hammer who described it as "either the embodiment of the fanzine ethic or the ramblings of a remedial child", a review which remarkably tripled sales but didn't do much for my self esteem.

Luma Shop

...and sometimes i just re-write lyrics for comedy value.

This is what happens when you combine Blitzkrieg Bop with Super Mario Galaxy:

_______

Lu ma, luma!

Lu ma, luma!

They’re eating tasty starbits

They’re building Toad a starshroom

And sometimes selling mushrooms

The Luma Shop

Lumalee lumabop,
What they want, I don't know
They're starbit-ed up and ready to go

Wlecome to the Luma shop

Pigling

Sometime I write ridiculous songs about guinea pigs using the tunes of popular songs.

You may be familiar with Wild Thing.

This is Pigling.

________

Pigling

You make my heart sing

You make everything… poopy

Pigling

Pigling, I think you’re tiny

But I wanna know for sure

Come on and wheek all night

For nomlets...