No sir, I do not want Big Sur

Macos

Maybe I’m just getting cranky after over a year of on-again-off-again pandemic lockdowns, but I’ve had it with Apple’s heavy-handed attempts to get me to upgrade to Big Sur. Mind you, I have nothing against it. It’s just an operating system. I don’t particularly like it’s translucent bubbly iOS look. But I could live with.

But I don’t want it. I depend on a very unorthodox setup. I have a lot of infrastructure tools that depend on certain versions of Python to be in just the right place. Every single macOS major upgrade breaks all of this and I spend days picking up the pieces. I’m tired of Apple messing with it. So when my system launched into what seems like an unbidden upgrade process today, I lost it.

I’m not exactly sure how the upgrade got triggered today. In my frustration I may have hit the wrong button or was otherwise too hasty. But what follows is the documentation of my quest to never face this again.

First, in System Preferences → Software Update, uncheck “Automatically keep my Mac up to date”. I already had this checked; so digging deeper there is an “Advanced…” button to deal with. Uncheck everything in the Advanced pane.

Next up, Terminal. In Terminal (or my preference, iTerm)

softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Big Sur"

which should report:

Ignored updates:
(
)

Software Update can only ignore updates that are eligible for installation.
If the label provided to ignore is not in the above list, it is not eligible
to be ignored.

Ignoring software updates is deprecated.
The ability to ignore individual updates will be removed in a future release of macOS.

There is a nuclear option known as bigsurblocker that apparently does what it says on the tin. I’m holding that one in reserve but it can be downloaded from Github if needed.

Dynamically loading Javascript in Anki card templates

Anki

The ability to execute Javascript in Anki card templates offers users flexibility in displaying data. In Anki 2.1, though, the asynchronous execution of Javascript means that user script functionality is not entirely predictable. This post on r/Anki discusses an approach for dynamically loading Javascript resources and ensuring that they are available when the card is displayed. Since I modularize my Javascript code so that it can be flexibly deployed to different card types, I extended this method to allow the template developer to load multiple scripts in one <script> block.

<script>
    var fn = [
       "_fix_cloze_anything_sentence.js",
       "_expression_cloze_back_pos.js",
    ];
    fn.forEach(path => {
        var script = document.createElement('script');
        script.src = path;
        script.async = false;
        document.head.appendChild(script);
    });
</script>

The template developer simply needs to store the scripts prepended with an underscore in the collection.media directory.1 Then enumerate the script filenames in the fn variable.

  1. This scheme prevents Anki from attempting to remove the files when it detects that they are not referenced in any notes. ↩︎

Fixing CodeRunner jQuery injection

Programming

CodeRunner is one of my favourite development environments on macOS. I use it for small one-off projects or for testing concepts for integration into larger projects. But in version 4.0.3, jQuery injection in a custom HTML page is broken, giving the error:

It’s probably due to some unescaped bit of code in their minified jQuery, but I didn’t have time to work that hard. Instead I reported the error to the developer an fixed it myself. The original (default) run script for jQuery is:

Read more…

Extending the Anki Cloze Anything script for language learners

Anki

It’s possible to use cloze deletion cards within standard Anki note types using the Anki Cloze Anything setup. But additional scripts are required to allow it to function seamlessly in a typical language-learning environment. I’ll show you how to flexibly display a sentence with or without Anki Cloze Anything markup and also not break AwesomeTTS.

Anki’s built-in cloze deletion system

The built-in cloze deletion feature in Anki is an excellent way for language learners to actively test their recall. For example, a cloze deletion note type with the following content requires the learner to supply the missing word:

Read more…

Complete fix for broken Knowclip .apkg files

Anki

I think this is the last word on fixing Knowclip .apkg files. I’ve developed this in bits and pieces; but hopefully this is the last word on the subject. See my previous articles, here and here, for the details.

This issue, again, is that Knowclip gives these notes and cards sequential id values starting at 1. But Anki uses the note.id and the card.id as the creation date. I logged it as an issue on Github, but as of 2021-04-15 no action has been taken.

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Fixing Knowclip Anki apkg creation dates

Anki

(N.B. A much-improved version of this script is published in a later post)

Language learners who want to develop their listening comprehension skills often turn to YouTube for videos that feature native language content. Often these videos have subtitles in the original language. A handful of applications allow users to take these videos along with their subtitles and chop them up into sentence-length bites that are suitable for Anki cards. Once such application is Knowclip. Indeed for macOS users, it’s one of the few viable options.1

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March 2021 update

Update

I’ve decided to post monthly updates to give myself a little accountability and to remind myself that progress is still possible during these long weird months of isolation - now over a year.

Physical activity

Empirically I keep noticing a connection between mental health and physical activity, so why do I not consistently act on it? So I set up a 3 month goal around commitment to exercise. As of the end of March 2021, I’m on-track to meet those goals.

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Generating HTML from Markdown in Anki fields

Anki

I write in Markdown because it’s much easier to keep the flow of writing going without taking my hands off the keyboard.

I also like to write content in Anki cards in Markdown. Over the years there have been various ways in of supporting this through add-ons:

  • The venerable Power Format Pack was great but no longer supports Anki 2.1, so it became useless.
  • Auto Markdown worked for a while but as of Anki version 2.1.41 does not.
  • After Auto Markdown stopped working, I installed the supposed fix Auto Markdown - fix version but that didn’t work either.
  • It’s possible that the Mini Format Pack will work, but honestly I’m tired of the constant break-fix-break-fix cycle with Anki.

The problem

The real problem with Markdown add-ons for Anki is the same as every other add-on. They are all hanging by a thread. Almost every minor point upgrade of Anki breaks at least one of my add-ons. It’s nearly impossible to determine in advance whether an Anki upgrade is going to break some key functionality that I rely on. And add-on developers, even prominent and prolific ones come and go when they get busy, distracted or disinterested. It’s one of the most frustrating parts of using Anki.

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Pre-processing Russian text for the AwesomeTTS add-on in Anki

Anki
The Anki add-on AwesomeTTS has been a vital tool for language learners using the Anki application on the desktop. It allows you to have elements of the card read aloud using text-to-speech capabilities. The new developer of the add-on has added a number of voice options, including the Microsoft Azure voices. The neural voices for Russian are quite good. But they have one major issue, syllabic stress marks that are sometimes seen in text intended for language learners cause the Microsoft Azure voices to grossly mispronounce the word.
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