A Lovely 10C Site!

Here’s a nice bit of kit. Mac Minis do not have mictophones and the ones offered by webcame or iPhones used as wecams are too boomy or exho too much. I have some good over-the eat headphones with an excellent boom mic but being the over the ear type, too much audio is blocked out.
Earbids like my Anker Liberty 4s ot AirPods Pro work OK bur their limited battery is an issue for the longer Mac User group Zoom meetings which run from 8:30am to 4pm on the first Saturday of each month.
What I needed was a good USB mic and I’ve bought one, just happened to be on sale at a local retailer with a ⅓ price discount. Comes with gooseneck and tripod mounts, I use the latter with it perched on top of the Mac Mini.
A great mic, no more boominess or echoes. And its volume up/down buttons also control the mac’s system volume.

Got all the new bits together for the Mac Mini: a Satechi dock/stand incorporating a 512GB M.2 SSD to complement the Mac's 512GB of storage. The dock adds three USB-A data ports, one USB-C data port, audio out and SD/Micro SD card readers. None of the dock's ports can charge an iPhone or iPad, or connect an Apple SuperDrive but the back of the Mac Mini has a Thunderbolt 4 port and two USB 3.0 power & data ports, all unused. The Sound system is a combined 15W subwoofer/2.1 stereo external sound card and powered 3-port USB 2 ports. I just use one of those for a new 1080p webcam but I can use a mobile phone for that job.
A couple of months ago I bought a 28-in 4k monitor that looks really good. The last piece of the assemblage arrived today: a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID.

@matigo It has yet to finish indexing, that tends to slow things down a bit.

matigo.ca.

M1 Mac Mini set up and working fine. Now.
There was a glitch in System Settings whereby no apps were appearing in the Full Disk Access, Files & Folders and Accessibilities sections of Security and Privacy. I couldn't add apps manually either.
Reinstalling macOS 13.0.1 fixed the problems.

My Mac Mini was delivered today. I won't have any time to set it up until Sunday though. I'm recording a couple of hours of a Zoom meeting I'm participating in tomorrow, so I want a reliable machine to do that with, the Mac mini is untried.

The fact that there's a highway to Hell and only a stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.

@matigo No. It's only likely to be 10 to 15% faster than an M1 anyway.

matigo.ca.

Back in June I applied for income assistance believing I qualified for a disability pension. Much uploading of various documents and forms from various medical specialists led to me receiving unemployment benefits with medical exemption (I didn't have to apply for work) from early September until today.

Today I am scheduled to receive one month's worth of the disability pension, which is 50% higher than the unemployment rate. I also qualify for a low-income health care card which gives significant concessions for utility bills, medical practitioners and pharmacies. I also get a reduced vehicle registration rate.

The first pension payment is $8 less than the purchase price of the new Mac Mini and its various bits.

Order placed. M1 Mac Mini with 512 GB storage, Gigabit Ethernet and 16 GB unified memory. As this is a build-to-order device it won't be ready as early as more basic configurations. Delivery expected between Dec 6th and 8th.
Black Friday deal of a A$160 Apple gift card for future purchases is included. I also bought these things: https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B097CJMY9M/ref=ppxyodtbasintitleo01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B086BGWNY8/ref=ppxyodtbasintitleo00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1plus a discounted Magic keyboard with Touch ID.
Recently received inheritance from my late mother's estate has made this purchase easily possible.

Just started a variation on risotto in the rice cooker: I'm using farro instead of rice.