Category: Tech
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Archiving a large WordPress uploads folder
Whilst trying to create an archive (.tar.gz) of a WordPress site uploads folder I was hitting issues with the command getting cut off for various reasons (poor connection, SSH host disconnecting etc). I also found that as the archive grew larger it took longer and longer to add files to it, making it more likely…
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How I use AI to become a better developer
Over the many years I’ve been a WordPress engineer I’ve performed countless launches and migrations. It’s actually one of my favourite things to do. Often times that involves manipulating large amounts of data and as such I’ve learnt about a bunch of command line tools to help me process and manipulate data and assets. My…
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Learning by doing, and more…
Last night my brain interrupted my enjoyment of Time Trap to make me ponder why I’m not particular motivated to learn new things. When there’s so much New to learn in web development all the time, it’s pretty important to keep up, but I haven’t been feeling up to it. Thankfully I remembered that I…
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I’m building Newspack
As a freelancer at the time, contributing to Lichfield Live led to plenty of work in journalism from tiny startups like Hackney Citizen to established publications like Journalism.co.uk. I spoke at conferences and even once advised the regional editors at one of the UK’s biggest media publishers. Thanks to a recommendation, I won one of…
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TIL: array_push() is slow
Today I learnt (thanks Gary) that array_push() is actually kinda slow and it’s probably better to avoid it in most cases. There’s some (not very detailed but interesting nonetheless) tests in this StackOverflow answer.
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Nginx: Redirect everything except the home page
Recently I moved this blog to philipjohn.blog, making philipjohn.me.uk a sort of “homepage” pointing to my various online presences. Previously, my blog was at philipjohn.me.uk so as well as changing the URL (which was made easy by WP-CLI) I need to redirect all philipjohn.me.uk URLs to philipjohn.blog. However, I wanted the root of philipjohn.me.uk to show a…
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Fitbit Surge – one month in
In December I started wearing a Fitbit surge (a work perk) and wanted to share my thoughts/experience. Steps seem largely accurate, although as you might expect it’s not so great at counting them when you’re pushing a pushchair! However, I have managed to achieve my steps target (7k per day) whilst; walking up to bed…
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I keep seeing “encryption” and “WhatsApp” used in the same today. You do realise it’s *not* secure, right? And it’s owned by Facebook FFS, do you’re giving Facebook all your messages. If you want secure, encrypted communications use Telegram. Even better, get yourself a VPN to hide all your traffic from our illiberal, civil rights…
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State surveillance is not comparable to online privacy issues
Often, when opposing state surveillance such as that revealed by Ed Snowden, activists are questioned why they use online services that actively collect data about them. There is one core reason why this comparison is unhelpful and irrelevant. “You are the product” goes the saying, which is true. Companies like Google and Facebook collect streams of data…