Ollie

Counter

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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!

Stupid credit bureau tricks

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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

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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

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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

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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 Community Choice Power program

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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

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Photo of 5G gateway device standing on its shipping carton in front of a window. The device is nine inches tall.

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