What Should I Play next?

December 16, 2024 | Comment

I’ve got a lot of records (At the time of writing 1,076 Discogs tells me) and I always seem to gravitate to the same ones. I decided I needed help to selecting something to play so I wrote Now Playing to help guide me.

The Discogs API

Like many, I record details of my collection on the online service Discogs, which contains a user-generated database of audio releases in whatever format they are or were available. It also has an API that allows you to access certain information that is held within its database. If you are authenticated that … Read the rest

Where’s Santa?

December 10, 2024 | Comment

I had an unusual request from my friend John recently – could I help him map the location of Santa as he goes about his deliveries? Ok, it wasn’t quite like that. He is a member of the Lions, and every December they take out a sleigh with Santa on the back through the streets to the delight of lots of excitable children. The issue was that parents didn’t know exactly when he was going to appear in their streets and were constantly looking and waiting for his arrival. If there was a map of the live position, this would … Read the rest

Handling unicode and missing link card images in php2Bluesky

December 8, 2024 | Comment

I have just committed a couple of changes to my php2Bluesky library. This release includes a simple change to enable the support of international characters in hashtags and a more complex (to explain) change to the options for link cards.

International support

This was a change to the regex used in the library to identify the start and end points of hashtags. The previous code used /#(w+)/ which matches only Alphanumeric characters: [A-Za-z0-9] and an underscore _. This meant that hastags such as #Gütersloh failed to be recognised correctly. Now the regex is /#([\p{L}\p{N}]{1,})/ this now supports:

  • Latin
… Read the rest

An update to php2Bluesky

December 6, 2024 | Comment

I’ve just committed a couple of changes to my php2Bluesky library based on suggestions and/or code provided by others. These are:

  1. new function, permalink_from_response, which will return a permalink given the response from post_to_bluesky (@BobaFettFanClub)
  2. you can now provide your own image for a link card just include the link in post_to_bluesky (@bearlydoug)
  3. start of some error checking

Clearing Some Confusion

I have also received some feedback that the blog posts written when I was first investigating posting to Bluesky are confusing if you are only looking to be able to use the library itself. Looking … Read the rest

Posting to Bluesky via the API from PHP – Part Ten – Adding ALT tags to Images

November 18, 2024 | Comment

NOTE: This post is mainly about how I developed the php2Bluesky library. If you are looking for information on using the library in your own code please see here: https://github.com/williamsdb/php2Bluesky/

I have to admit that I didn’t think I’d be back with another post on my php2Bluesky library quite so soon but Dr Paul Lee on Bluesky pointed out that while you can post images from the library you can’t also send ALT text to go with them.

But what is ALT text?

Alt text is descriptions of images added to the HTML or metadata of a post on social … Read the rest

Posting to Bluesky via the API from PHP – Part Nine – Handling Hashtags

November 17, 2024 | Comment

Bluesky has gone from a very niche platform to one that is getting more coverage and seeing explosive growth thanks in part to the actions of the overlord at Twitter. The following was the count of users when I wrote this post.

Bluesky User Count

Expanding functionality

At the same time as the user growth, the platform itself has been growing features to bring it more in line with what its competitors are offering. This includes hashtags, which are now fully supported both in the app and API. What this also means is that I can now add support for … Read the rest

When Did I Last? (WDiL) – Version 4

November 14, 2024 | Comment

It’s been a while since I last pushed a new version of WDiL but finally I got round to adding the few things left that I wanted in the app – most notably notifications. Read on for details of that and everything else that’s included.

New Functionality

Let’s take a look at what has been included in this latest release:

  • the interval between triggers is now shown on the trigger stats page
  • added a user account page to allow setting of Pushover details
  • send reminders notifications via email and Pushover
  • fixed some bugs.

Notifications

One of the things I felt … Read the rest

When Did I Last? (WDiL) – Version 3

October 4, 2024 | Comment

I’ve pushed another update to WDiL adding lots of new functionality and bug fixes. The most impactful of these is the forgotten password routine as this now requires the addition of the ever reliable PHPMailer. However, the most useful and visible are the changes on the activity stats page which now includes more statistics and a graph showing trends.

New Functionality

Let’s take a look at what has been included in this latest release:

  • graph of triggers and intervals on stats page
  • details of the general interval trend on stats page
  • you can add a comment to a trigger
… Read the rest

Forwarding SMS from US to UK via Twilio

September 23, 2024 | Comment

I’m going to the States soon and have been looking at booking up some restaurants while I’m away. In particular, I wanted to book for Cheesecake Factory, but when I went to do so, I found I could only do that if I registered. Fair enough, so I went to the registration page. I discovered that you needed a US mobile number that they could text a code to. 🙁

I suspect that at this point most would have given up and joined the wait line at the restaurant but not me. I needed a solution to this pressing problem … Read the rest

When Did I Last? (WDiL) – Version 2

September 16, 2024 | Comment

When I launched WDiL earlier this week I knew that it was what might be politely described as a MVP. And while I like SimpleCSS it doesn’t make for the most attractive sites. Therefore, I set about making it more appealing while also adding more functionality.

Moving from Simple CSS

I spent quite a bit of time looking for a pre-built theme that I could use as the basis of WDiL but none seemed to be where I wanted to go. In the end, I plumped for vanilla Bootstrap which with its pre-built components allowed me to get a … Read the rest