Counter
Here’s a way to put a counter that updates once a second in a page. It’s based on the time. This isn’t some earth-shattering discovery, it’s trival. But somebody asked me. 123 is the count now!
Translating php’s imap extension in WordPress
I’m using php’s imap extension in a WordPress plugin (Post from Email) to fetch email messages from POP3 email servers. I had to figure out how to internationalize (i18nize) the error messages from imap_errors(). These messages are English-language text strings. I had to try a lot of scenarios to work out what English messages are … Read more
Stupid credit bureau tricks
Today I tried to create an account at the web site for the Experian credit bureau. I followed the instructions to the letter. On the second screen of the signup form when I pushed Submit, I got a message saying “An error occurred. Please try again.” No explanation. Nothing saying “we need your zip code” … Read more
Slow WordPress Queries
Index WP MySQL For Speed, the WordPress plugin, allows users to monitor their MariaDB or MySQL database traffic and upload the results of those monitors. It gathers information about the queries, including how long they take and how many there are. Analyzing the uploaded monitor data allows me to identify the most frequent queries and … Read more
SQLite3 in php — some notes
I’ve been working on the SQLIite Object Cache plugin for WordPress, so I’ve had to figure out a few things about using SQLite itself and php’s SQLite3 extension. Here are some notes. There are various versions of the SQLite software around. If you will run your code on multiple different hosting providers and server configurations, … Read more
Solar Panels for Central Congregational Church
Since last fall (fall 2022) Ollie Jones has been working on a project to get solar panels on the roof of Central Congregational Church. This is an explanation of the project, with some questions and answers. The proposal: to authorize the reinvestment of up to $70,000 of the church’s endowment fund to build this solar-panel … Read more
Newburyport’s Resiliency Brochure 2023
See also https://cityofnewburyport.com/resiliency.
Newburyport’s Community Choice Power program
My municipality recently announced a program that will cut the cost of electricity supply from $0.339 / kWh to $0.218. That’s great. But it’s not great that public utility pricing is going the way of pharmaceutical pricing, with almost everybody needing to rely on opaque deals to get reasonable pricing. There’s a Massachusetts law enabling … Read more
Testing internet over 5G wireless
tl;dr This didn’t work out. Why not? Random disconnects requiring user intervention, and a very weak 5G signal. The LTE signal was strong enough, but it looks like the less congestion-prone 5G isn’t really provisioned in my neighorhood as of mid-December 2022. I’m testing a T-Mobile internet-over-5G service. My phone is on T-Mobile, so they … Read more