This is a quick update. Yes. I know I say that a lot (or at least, I certainly think it when I start a post). This one really will be quick.
First, background. My main computer, a 2018 Intel Mac Mini, has been having its internal drive fill up. Regularly. To the point that apps crash without warning overnight, backups fail, Mail stops working, etc. In February, I traced the main source of the problem to a folder called SpotlightKnowledgeEvents (I’m just gonna say SKE most of the time.) At the time, this folder had over 37 gigabytes of data in it.
A few days ago, as I write this, Kelly Guimont posted the following question:
Let's say you have a data set made up of a selection of songs by one artist.
Let's also say you want to slice and dice information from said dataset like how many songs come from each album, or average song length.
As of now what I want to know is the easiest way to "ask" my data set for this information. Do I have to type everything in a spreadsheet and filter? Can I use this to learn a teeny bit of python or something?
Suggestions welcome, and thanks in advance!
Discussion ranged widely, as really, there are uncountable ways to do this. Suggestions included pivot tables, perl, python (especially using a framework called “Pandas”), spreadsheets, and SQLite.
Disk Usage Woes: Day…whatever. How long has it been since I installed macOS Sequoia?
I’ve been struggling with the disk constantly filling up on my Mac Mini. See my last two posts for a deep and wonky dive into the situation, and lots of data collection to confirm my suspicions (or not).
At this point, I’m still continuing to collect data, but it’s more in the realm of “just making more graphs for reference” than actually figuring anything out. I think the fix is pretty clear at this point: I need to delete extraneous data from time to time. I just now have a better idea where to find the best low-hanging fruit for deletion.
My main day-to-day machine is a 2018 Mac Mini. Over the last year, and especially the last 6 months, it’s been a struggle to keep adequate space free. About two weeks ago, I’d had enough, and went on a deep dive to figure out what was wrong. In my last post, I described the journey I took to identify the likely problem.
Simply identifying a “likely” culprit wasn’t enough, though. I needed to take a methodical approach to testing different settings and recording the results.
My everyday desktop is a 2018 Mac Mini. Last summer, I started noticing that some apps would crash overnight, mostly Ivory (my Mastodon client).
I assumed it was a memory thing. My disk space wasn’t great, but I had like 5 gigabytes or so free on the 256 gig drive, and wasn’t seeing any “your disk is full” errors. I wasn’t getting crazy “Your system is out of memory!” errors, either, but memory pressure seemed like a good explanation. I tried a few lazy tricks to get some data, try to collect logs, etc., but got nowhere.
Apr 18, 2025 - 700 Words -