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  • Goodbye YouTube Embed – the end of my WordPress plugin

    Goodbye YouTube Embed – the end of my WordPress plugin

    YouTube Embed was one of my earliest WordPress plugins. But with tight integration of videos in WordPress by default, particularly with the block editor, it’s become less and less relevant. I struggled to find time to continue to maintain it, let alone add in block features.

    But, what I didn’t want to do, was just abandon it and leave users not knowing this and, potentially, leaving them open to security issues.

    So, back in 2023 I started talking to one of the plugin’s biggest competitors, EmbedPlus.

    (more…)
  • Sunrise alarm clocks and why Lumie customer service sucks

    Sunrise alarm clocks and why Lumie customer service sucks

    Many years ago my wife bought me a bedside alarm clock with a built in sunrise feature. If you’ve not come across this kind of thing, before the alarm comes on, a light slowly brightens on the clock, simulating a sunrise, both in brightness and colour tone. The idea is that it wakes you more naturally and you’ll feel more refreshed than being awoken suddenly by a loud noise.

    It was made by a British company called Lumie, who solely creates products based on light therapy.

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  • Apple TV 4K? Make these 2 changes to improve your display output

    Apple TV 4K? Make these 2 changes to improve your display output

    If you’re rocking a 4K Apple TV then there are a couple of settings changes that you can make that could help improve the display quality.

    Head into Settings -> Video and Audio, and change the following…

    1. Change Format to 4K SDR

    If you have an HDR TV, then switch this to SDR. Also, head into Match Content and make sure that “Range” is “On”, which will mean that it will fall back to SDR when necessary and only switch to HDR when the format is such. This should prevent the black-screen flickering that you’ll see in YouTube.

    However, some say menus and screensavers look worse as a result.

    [Source]

    1. Change HDMI output to RGB High

    It’s more accurate for SDR on the Apple TV 4K box due to a bug in the way it processes YCbCr signals. For HDR10 & Dolby Vision content, the setting makes no difference.

    [Source 1][Source 2]

  • Mac going at a snail’s pace and occasionally stopping entirely? Try this out

    Mac going at a snail’s pace and occasionally stopping entirely? Try this out

    I was having issues recently with my MacBook Pro M4 Pro (one of the most powerful laptops you can get), where it kept pausing for a few seconds. A quick look at Activity Monitor highlighted the issue – process corespotlightd was consuming 150% of the CPU.

    A quick check online and I found the potential cause, and it’s one that appears to be quite recent, so possibly a recent bug in the OS (or a specific app).

    (more…)
  • How to open a MacBook or plug it in without it switching on

    How to open a MacBook or plug it in without it switching on

    Sometimes you just want to open up your MacBook, or plug it in, without it deciding to power itself on. Most of the time the behaviour makes sense but sometimes you don’t want it – wouldn’t it better to allow the. user to decide?

    Until now, changing this default wasn’t possible, but with M-powered MacBooks and MacOS Sequoia onwards, you can now do this.

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