What is a Battery Cycle Count?

A battery cycle count is the number of times a battery has been charged from 0-100%. This doesn’t mean that a battery cycle count will only occur if you completely drain the battery and recharge it.

It would still count if you use it 50% and charge back to 100%, then you use it 50% again and charge it back to 100% that would make a cycle count.

However, Macbook batteries are designed to last way longer and even if you have charged it many times it will continue working normally for months.

How to Check Battery Cycle Counts in MacOS?

Here is how to check battery cycle counts in Macbook Pro.

1. Click on the Apple logo at the top left corner of your screen and then select ‘About This Mac’.

2. This will bring up a popup where you need to click on the ‘System report button.

3. Under system report window click on ‘Power’ in the left column. After that you will be able to see your battery cycle count in the right column under ‘Health Information’.

Does keeping Macbook plugged in to a power source save battery cycle counts?

Apparently not. Even if your Macbook is fully charged, keeping it plugged in is not recommended by Apple. The battery will continue charging and it will drain your battery cycle count even faster than your normal use.

On the other hand, I head opposite advice on the forums that MacOS is capable of preventing overcharging and will use power adapter as the power source when connected. This makes more sense to me.

However, it is not recommended by anyone to continue using your macbook on 100% charge and plugged in all the time. Lithium ion batteries need to be charged and used in order to keep them healthy enough to maintain current.

How to Maximize Battery Life of Your Macbook Pro

Here are the few tips that will improve your macbook’s battery life.

1. Use energy preferences to dim your display when inactive for both on battery and on power adapter modes.

2. Avoid graphic intensive gaming when battery charge is less than 40%.

3. Don’t store your Macbook fully charged for longer period of time. Keep it 50% charged when storing it for few months. However, it is recommended that you charge it 100% and drain it back to 50% at least once during that period.

4. It is ok to keep your Macbook plugged in to power source. However, you still need to use the battery to at least 20% once a week so that it can stay healthy.

5. Keeping it plugged in will not save battery cycle counts.

The reason why Macbooks are so popular is because they are durable machines and last longer than other computers. Even if you have to replace your Macbook battery in two years, it should still work fine with the new battery for years.

Speak to any Pakistani, and they would tell you how this Qawwali has made their eyes wet, gave them goose bumps, or evoked strong emotions of love, devotion, and hope.

Tajdar-e-Haram is an emotional roller coaster, and Sabri Brothers steer you skillfully with the help of chants, tabla, harmonium, style, narration, and wonderful fusion of Urdu, Persian, and Arabic verses.

I appreciate Coke Studio​ for trying and would praise Atif Aslam for trying. They were just simply out of their depths.

Not that I am any kind of expert, but generally speaking, In Qawwali there is great emphasis on devotion, poetry, and chanting. Atif Aslam’s piece was missing devotion and chanting.

It had the same poetry as the original Qawwali. But Atif Aslam was unable to put the emphasis on just the right words at the right time. He even failed to pronounce Urdu words properly like ShoQ and Kidhar.

The instruments were great but they were not as beautifully coherent or as artistically incoherent that they would make you swing and sway. A good combination of sounds is not always good music. Pitching at high nodes is not always good singing.

I liked it, and it was beautiful effort to recreate something so beautiful. They just didn’t get it quite perfect and that’s alright too.

Thankfully, most my countrymen agreed with me and did not give PTI clear cut majority in the general elections of 2013. PTI did win in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan’s North Western province. They formed a coalition government there with Jamaat-e-Islami.

Since the very first day of elections, Imran Khan and his party PTI continuously protested the election rigging. According to the party, there was massive pre-poll rigging in selected constituencies throughout the country.  Imran Khan said he has proofs, documented evidence, eyewitnesses, video clips and enough material to prove that elections were rigged in favor of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf organized a country wide protest called Azadi March. PTI leaders including Imran Khan, camped outside Pakistan’s Parliament house for 126 days. During this sit-in, Imran Khan was alleged by a senior member of his own party, Mr. Javed Hashmi, as well as other political parties in Pakistan for collaborating with Pakistan’s military establishment to derail the government. Mr. Khan and Pakistan army both condemned and denied these allegations. PTI continued the protests and organized massive rallies not just in Islamabad, but also in all major cities of Pakistan.

Government had support of all political parties and the parliament. All opposition parties gave Nawaz Sharif full support. This was a big blow for PTI as they had submitted their resignations to the speaker of the National Assembly. Technically speaking, many legal experts believe that those resignations are automatically accepted and all PTI’s MNAs are no longer MNAs.

After months of tough negotiations, PTI agreed to hand over the matter to a judicial commission. The commission was tasked to listen to all the complaints of election rigging and present its report. Government agreed to organize re-election in the constituencies, if judicial commission found any evidence of rigging.

The Judicial Commission presented its report concluding that there was no significant evidence of any mass rigging in elections. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif addressed the nation and asked all parties to move forward.  PTI has accepted the commission’s report.

As for people questioning the report issued by Judicial Commission and its findings. The commission could only give recommendations based on the evidence, arguments, and documents presented to the commission from both sides. It seems like PTI was ill-prepared and had bad legal counsel. They were unable to prove any wrong doing.

This is unbelievable, the general consensus is that all Pakistani elections are a mess of irregularities. Candidates often try to influence polling process using all legal and illegal means. There should have been enough evidence to prove that. I cannot understand why PTI failed to bring in that evidence to the commission.

Now the Pakistani media, PML-N and PPP leaders are asking Imran Khan to apologize to the nation for wasting 126 days with his protest. Imran Khan and PTI refused to apologize.

I totally agree, they should not apologize.

It was good for democratic system of Pakistan. I didn’t like the way PTI formed alliances with the worst elements of Pakistani society during the protest. But I think that the protest will lead to good things.

I hope PTI will continue to build pressure on government to bring forward a thorough electoral reform legislation. This legislation should be aimed at shutting down all the loopholes in our electoral system that allow non-democratic elements to interfere and even engineer the election results.

I came home and plugged in the USB device. I was checking the modem’s settings when I discovered that the available data on my plan was 998 MB. I panicked because my daily usage far exceeds 1 GB data. I called the customer support center and was informed that the 30GB volume is segregated to cover the whole month. In simple words, I can only use 998MB per day.

So basically you have the volume but Telenor will decide how you will spend it. It is basically a cap on a capped data plan. A very dishonest thing to do. If they had this cap on the capped volume they should have advertised it so that customers can make informed choice when buying the product. This restriction made it Telenor 3G USB dongle quite useless to me. My job requires posting high quality screenshots, making gifs, and browsing lots of websites every day.

I continued using the device for the day and I crossed the data limit in 5 hours. After which the device remained connected but I didn’t get any data.

The next day I reconnected the Telenor 3G USB device and got the error “Can’t connect device. Please retry later. If the problem persists contact your service provider”.

I called the Telenor customer service center again, the untrained Telenor staff thought that since I am calling from a Telenor phone number I am complaining about 3G on my phone. They kept wasting time unless I interjected and reminded them that how they can lookup my information without asking the SIM number of my Telenor 3G USB device? The staff then asked my sim number and put me on hold. After 5 minutes she came up with the brilliant response.

“Sir, I have forwarded your complaint. It will be resolved in 72 hours.”

I protested that are you out of your mind, I will have to wait another 3 days just to hear back from you? She replied:

“No sir, I didn’t say that you will hear back from us. I said your complain will be resolved.”

At this point, I have had enough and asked her if I can return my Telenor 3G USB device for a refund. She replied

“Sir please visit our customer care office for this.”

My Review of Telenor 3G Connect Device

I used it for 1 GB data. The speeds were nothing impressive I got 1.5 MBPs to 3.1 MBPs through out my usage. The cap on the already capped plans is ridiculous and it will make your daily usage very minimum.

If you are a professional and thinking of using it for some reliable work sessions, then Telenor 3G Connect Device is absolutely useless.

On the other hand if you just want to occasionally check emails and have other backup internet solutions, then you can try it out.

Conclusion

I will visit Telenor customer care office on monday and will try to return the device. I will update the post with my experience there. I am expecting that the staff there will also be just as poorly trained as phone support. I am expecting that they will try to ask me to call phone support or do this and that. I am also certain that they will not give me a refund. So lets see…

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

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Government unblocked WordPress.com today. Apparently, it was blocked for Pakistan day parade in Islamabad. Pakistani Army is fighting a terrible war against terrorism in the country. Pakistani government occassionally blocks mobile phone services too based on intelligence reports. This usually happens around national and cultural holidays and in selected cities only.

The blockage of WordPress.com was not due to censorship. Even though, the country’s strong establishment has a reputation for censoring information sources like YouTube, which is banned since 2012. While the government cites blasphemous content and a court order as the main reason for the ban. Critics believe that it is due to the growing number of propaganda videos by Islamists, Baloch separatists, and other anti-state elements that triggered the ban.

These things have a damaging impact on Pakistan’s growing ICT industry. YouTube is a very important cultural phenomena in today’s world. While Pakistani internet users can still access it using VPN and Tor, but its so much trouble that many users don’t even bother.

Some experts believe that the ban will give a chance for some local businesses to grow. For example, tune.pk a local site that has thousands of YouTube videos copied and displayed illegally and without permission or consent from their publishers and without any usage rights.

This kind of moral corruption in the IT sector of Pakistan is tolerated by local IT community at large. In fact, many in the industry even feel jealous that why didn’t they cashed in the idea first.

For a real, sustainable, and powerful impact on the country’s economy our IT industry needs to be innovative, inventive, and creative. Sadly, government’s policies are a major hurdle in that path. This includes a shitty educational system which produces dumb workforce, crazy monetary policies which make online micro-transactions extremely difficult and costly, and lastly the random blocking of internet which creates uncertainty and doubt in the hearts of foreign investors.

The short blockage of WordPress.com was just a small scene from a long and painfully predictable comedy. Pakistan needs to get smarter if we want to survive in the future.

Sending Files From Android Device to Mac OS X

First you need to turn on Bluetooth on both devices. Then on your Mac computer, go to System Preferences and click on Bluetooth.

This will bring up Bluetooth settings page. Your Mac will now look for Bluetooth enabled devices and will show them. Click on your Android device in the list and pair both devices.

Don’t worry if your device appears not connected even after pairing.

Now go back to System Preferences and this time click on Sharing.

On the next screen, check the box next to Bluetooth to turn on file sharing service via Bluetooth.

You can also choose folder where you want to store files you send from Android to Mac OS X.

That’s all, I hope this article helped you learn how to share files via Bluetooth between your Android phone and Mac OS X.

For someone who spends almost all day on the internet, this means that I am getting article suggestions throughout the day. These suggestions are derived from my interests, and are written by professionals who have mastered the craft of writing catchy headlines.

For example, if I open my Facebook timeline right now I will see a dozen stories by The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Quartz, Buzzfeed, Guardian, BBC, etc. Most of these stories will be focused on topics that interest me and all of them will have interesting headlines.

I mean, I love reading about signs of extraterrestrial life as much as any other nerd, but do I really need to read each article speculating about possible signs of water on some faraway moon?

Why I must read every article about developments in Ukraine, ISIS, fossil discoveries, and ancient extinct species?

I love reading and it makes me feel powerful. But for someone who hardly speaks to any person other than my wife, my brother, and my boss, where I am going to use all this information? Its not like I can use these stories as conversation pieces anywhere.

I am also unable to write or blog as often as I would like to. This means I can’t share these stories on my blog. Besides, why would anyone want to read my thoughts about early humanoid species when they can learn about it from experts?

May be I should try to control what I read every day. I was thinking about trying to limit my leisure reading activities to a fixed 30 minutes period. Instead of reading things as they pop-up on my timeline, I should just ignore them till my reading time.

If I decide to read more on what’s actually related to my profession and useful for me, then I should probably read more about why cute kitten videos go viral? Any recommendations on that topic will be much appreciated.