artiss.blog

Category: Life

Random thoughts on life

  • Bazalgette: Diary of a WordPress Plugin – Part 1

    Bazalgette: Diary of a WordPress Plugin – Part 1

    Back in the 1980s, I loved reading game development diaries in Zzap!64 (these days I subscribe to Freeze64, which also includes developer diaries) and, so, I’ve decided to try one out myself, albeit for a WordPress plugin rather than an 8-bit video game.

    Bazalgette is a plugin that I’ve been trying to complete for a number of years, each time being partially coded and then abandoned, for varying reasons. However, after promising at WordCamp EU in 2023 that it was going to happen, one year later, I thought I really should do something about it.

    Now, I’m going to split this diary over a number of posts and each “day” won’t be sequential, but there may be many days (or weeks) between each entry. However, when a post looks pretty long, I’ll publish it before drafting a next part for later publication.

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  • Be careful posting on Reddit: Cult of Mac may take your content!

    Be careful posting on Reddit: Cult of Mac may take your content!

    There’s lot of news about Reddit selling their content to various companies, particularly for AI, but not, that I’m aware, to Cult of Mac, an Apple news site.

    But Cult of Mac are using it anyway.

    Oh, and then adding their own affiliate links on top of other people’s content, and all without telling them about it.

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  • My weirdest Reddit thread (so far)

    My weirdest Reddit thread (so far)

    So, somebody put up a guide on the worse used cars to buy. It was pretty terrible, with no quoted sources, so I replied with this response…

    Where has this information come from (“Annual Auto Surveys” is a bit too generic)? It appears to be US participants. How many? How “much-worse-than-average” do they have to be to be on this list?

    Data without sources is pretty redundant, imo, and best taken with the lightest pinch of salt until proven otherwise.

    At the time of my writing this, it’s had 2.3k likes. I’ve never known anything like it.

    But, aside from those accusing me of owning a car on that list, which is why they think I’m annoyed at it (I don’t), I keep getting one thing constantly thrown at me, and I never could have expected it.

    And it wasn’t even the person who tried to correct me by saying the expression was “a grain of salt” (both version are valid and “pinch of salt” is usually used in British English).

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  • Pod Point: An at-home EV charger

    Pod Point: An at-home EV charger

    A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I’d bought a Mazda MX-30 R-EV. It’s not a full EV, but a plug-in hybrid, albeit one that go 50 miles on battery alone and the petrol engine is just used as a generator.

    As part of the sweetener from Mazda I was offered a home charger for half the usual price. Considering installing one of these generally adds to the value of your home, it would seem rude not to.

    The Pod Point Solo 3 was the option available to me (there is a 3S but this is intended for those that have solar panels on their home) and it was installed quickly, cleanly and efficiently. But, a couple of months later, how am I getting on with it?

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  • EKIY A1 Mini Carplay Wireless Review

    EKIY A1 Mini Carplay Wireless Review

    Most cars these days come with connectivity for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, albeit it’s usually a wired solution. Being able to do this wirelessly is even more convenient, so there are a number of third party products available to achieve this.

    However, costing anything up to £100 they’re not cheap and most appear to be have drawbacks of one kind of another – whether it’s a slow response between screen and device, or one where you can’t use any other Bluetooth devices at the same time (which would be a problem with me having an Apple Watch, for example).

    To me, the inconvenience of plugging a cable in isn’t worth me spending that amount of money and for it still not being as good in use. But what if I didn’t have to spend that money to try something out? What if I spent just £11.52? Well, that’s exactly what I’ve done.

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