WordPress, Cloudflare, Caching & Version Numbers

December 23, 2015 | Comment

While I love WordPress one thing that really bugs me is its insistence on adding the version number to the end of resources, so you end up with links links this:

http://www.spokenlikeageek.com/wp-content/themes/required/style.css?ver=4.4

The version number is added to enable browser caching of files thereby speeding up page loads. The issue with this is if you make a change to the resource it is difficult to get the changes showing without clearing your cache. Additionally, as I am using CloudFlare this step by WordPress is superfluous.

All is not lost however, you can remove these version number by adding the … Read the rest

Twitter Cards Validation Error

January 26, 2015 | Comment

Twitter have had a neat feature for a while now that allows for additional information to be included with a tweet that is then displayed when you expand the tweet. This is how it looks:

And on a mobile client:

To enable these you need to set-up some meta data on your website (there is a good guide here) and then validate this information with Twitter here. When I did so I was greeted by the following message:

ERROR: FetchError:exceeded 4.seconds to Portal.Pink-constructor-safecore while waiting for a response for the request, including retries (if applicable) (Card error)

This … Read the rest

Your Own Link Shortener (Yourls)

December 4, 2014 | Comment

I have written about the Yourls system previously that allows you to host your own link shortener. I have been using it for years now and it works incredibly well.

However, when I logged in last week I noticed that it had been flooded with spam entries. I immediately changed my api key and password but neither stopped the entries. I was confused until I read this post on the Yourls blog.

I removed all the sample-*.php.txt pages and all the spam went away so I strongly suggest that you do so too. I ave looked at the latest … Read the rest

What to do in the event of an NTP attack

August 1, 2014 | Comment

Earlier this week the server that hosts this blog and other sites that I run became unreachable. I know this because it is being monitored by New Relic and I got notifications emails. I couldn’t access the server either via HTTP or SSH so all I could do was reboot it and hope I could hop on. The issue had the feel of a DoS attack and so once I was back on the server I stopped Apache and inspected the logs. A while later, I restarted the service and all seemed ok.

Then I received this worrisome email from … Read the rest

A Tale of Two Chromebooks

May 30, 2014 | Comment

A couple of years ago I spent weeks searching high and lo for a Samsung Series 3 Chromebook which was the first of the really affordable cloud laptops. I finally found one and paid £240 – nothing compared to the price of some Windows and especially Mac laptops.

Initially I was amazed at the start-up time of seconds and the fantastic battery life. I found that I could access my email and calendar through the browser (as I had been for a while since ditching Outlook) and do all my general web-browsing. I was hooked and decided that, away from … Read the rest

Sneaky LinkedIn

February 21, 2014 | Comment

So what’s the difference between the two images above? Well at first glance they would seem to be the same. Both invite the individual to connect with you on LinkedIn, right? Well almost but there is a very subtle difference that if you miss it you could end up spamming people who are not already on LinkedIn.

At some point in the past I must have let my guard slip and allowed LinkedIn to suck up all my contacts from my address book and since then it has been keen that I connect with everyone. Of course, not everyone is … Read the rest

The Restart Page

February 13, 2014 | Comment

This is just brilliant, a page that brings together all the restarts of the major operating systems. This includes several flavours of Windows and Mac complete with start-up BIOS screens and chimes.

http://www.therestartpage.com/… Read the rest

Accessing Amazon RDS Instance from Remote phpMyAdmin

February 3, 2014 | 7 comments

One of the great services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) stack is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). This is a properly managed database server that you can run alongside your existing application server instances allowing the load to be spread.

This all works well but management can be a little tedious especially if you have been used to managing your existing MySQL server through phpMyAdmin. However, do not despair as it is possible to manage RDS from phpMyAdmin running on a remote server and this post shows you how.

This article assumes that you already have both RDS and … Read the rest

3 Things Evernote is Missing

January 30, 2014 | 1 comment

I an a keen and active user of Evernote paying for the service not just to gain access to the “pro” features but also because I want to repay Evernote for the use I derive from it.

That’s not to say that it is perfect though so here are three things that I would add to it from the normal to the whacky.

Better table support

Evernote has support for tables but it is pretty basic. Once created you cannot add new columns, change the width, add new rows anywhere but at the bottom and you cannot apply any styling … Read the rest

What I learnt from my 2013 side project

January 3, 2014 | Comment

In 2013 I worked on a side project, The Chubby Challenge, which I continue to develop and move forward. This was built in response to another goal of mine – to lose some weight. I have found in the past that like so many other things in life it is far easier to reach a goal if you are working toward it with others. So the idea is that you challenge others to see who can lose the most weight over a given period.

The system works well and was a great opportunity for me to learn a whole … Read the rest