While the 2018 Mac Mini I purchased from Other World Computing last September (2025) is a bit long in the tooth, it's been getting the job done. I like the ability to dual-boot into Windows, primarily to take advantage ham radio applications such as N1MM+, which is no longer possible with Apple Silicon machines. Nevertheless, the writing is on the wall, and it's only a matter of time before the Mac Mini will need to be retired. My plan was to bide my time, make the Mac Mini last, and wait for a good deal on a new machine.

One of the things I appreciate about my Macs is their longevity. It's 2025, and, while showing signs of its age, my Macbook Pro 2012 is still useful. In fact, I only recently replaced it with a used 2018 Mac Mini, out of which I hope to get several more years while I figure out how to solve the problem with running Windows applications on ARM-based/M-Series/Apple Silicon machines.

I was recently re-purposing an old Macbook Pro (2012) which was originally purchased through a school district. I installed a new SSD and booted from an external boot disk, then downloaded and installed Mac OSX 10.14 Mojave on the new drive. After restarting, I went through the setup and a window popped-up stating that the machine could be remotely managed by the school district. I had completely forgotten where it came from (this is 2025), so this was a bit of a surprise.

The long road to Drupal 11

Slow network speed? Check the stupid stuff first...

$ ffmpeg -i <video_file> -vf cropdetect,metadata=mode=print -f null -
$ ffmpeg -i <video_file> -vf crop=w=1440:h=1080:x=240:y=0

$ soffice --headless --convert-to txt:Text TEXT_DOCUMENT.odt

$ ffplay -vf eq=gamma=1.3:saturation=1.1 <video_file>
$ ffmpeg -i <video_file> eq=gamma=1.3:saturation=1.1 -c:a copy <output_file>

$ ffmpeg -i <INPUT_FILE> -aspect 16:9 -c copy [OUTPUT_FILE]

$ sudo port install dd
$ diskutil list
$ sudo dd bs=4m if=/dev/diskX of=DiskImage.img