artiss.blog

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  • It’s Twenty Twenty Five already…

    It’s Twenty Twenty Five already…

    Last week WordPress 6.7 was released. With it came a new default theme, Twenty Twenty Five. I was already using Twenty Twenty Four on this site, so I thought I’d try the new one out. As I write and publish this, if you visit the site now you’ll see the end result!

    Just as a caveat, the changes aren’t complete. But the new theme is in place and most of the elements implemented, other than final tweaks that I need to make.

    I’ve not deviated the site look from what it was. Apart from some obvious typeface changes, it seems much as it was. What they both have in common – note, whoever does the design – is that the templates come with a lot of vertical space between the blocks. With both I spent quite a lot of my time reducing that space down.

    Otherwise all looks good, particularly if you’ve not worked with a front-end block theme.

  • Social Shuffling

    Social Shuffling

    Although I do like to “reserve” my user name on pretty much any social media site going, that doesn’t mean I have a presence.

    I closed my Twitter/X account some time ago – I could see which way that was going, and I wasn’t wrong.

    I’ve been active on both Mastodon and Threads since, but have been disappointed with both. The former is still too complex and yet basic for most people, so has been limited to “tech” people. Threads, well it’s by Meta, so I should have guessed. The algorithms are terrible and my feed is full of people doing performative engagement baiting (“what does this do?”).

    Although both of those accounts remain open my heart and time is now going into Bluesky, which is also the only network where my blog will auto-post too. Find me here.

  • Now how many R’s are in ‘Strawberry’, ChatGPT?

    Now how many R’s are in ‘Strawberry’, ChatGPT?

    Last month, the latest ChatGPT oopsie went viral – the fact that, if you asked it how many r’s were in the word “strawberry”, it would say there’s 2. However, get it to spell it out and it changed its mind and got it correct. For some people it would not only double down but would, when pushed, even change it’s mind and say it’s just 1.

    However, it’s been a known issue since June.

    But, now, it’s fixed. Or is it?

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  • Seek… locate… refrigerate

    Seek… locate… refrigerate

    If you enjoy long, boring posts about refrigerators then you’re in for a pleasant surprise!

    The story starts at the weekend where, I was checking my recent power consumption, according to the smart meter stats held by my energy company. No, this isn’t get any more exciting than this! Since April there’s been a sharp rise in electricity usage (kWh, not cost) during the day. I expected the night one to go up due to my car charging, but not day time.

    My power company does a usage breakdown, which is a rough estimate of where the electricity appears to be going – it only gives you the breakdown for the current and previous week and shows usage her device, not any kind of trend. But, the biggest user of power in my house is… refrigeration.

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  • 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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