Posts from August 2023

I've had davep.org since very late 1999. Initially it started as a domain used just for email; while I did have a website, around that time it was still hosted on my then-ISPs hosting service, with a mirror on a friend's web server.

A year or so later I finally did a proper revamp of my website and finally settled on www.davep.org as the place to point people to. I think, when I made that move, that's when I decided to write my own website engine in php. It was fun. It worked. I didn't want to code backend stuff (I don't think the backend vs frontend distinction was even a thing we were talking about then) so hacking it together in an unholy mix of ruby to generate various static files that live in the filesystem and then php to turn them into actual HTML made sense.

And it worked.

I heavily maintained the site for many years; keeping the same engine, tweaking the styles, adding features and content. I figure some time around 2013 or 2014 I probably stopped being quite so active in messing with it, and then in the last 5 or 6 years I've pretty much neglected it.

The neglect shows.

Meanwhile... php has changed. Quite a lot. It's one of those languages I used back in the day and pay no attention to. Then earlier this week I noticed that there must have been an update on the host and huge parts of my site broke, lots of content missing, pretty much useless and dead in the water.

I did briefly think about breaking out the latest and greatest php locally, setting things up to investigate what's going on, and seeing if I could breathe some more life into it; but really what's the point?

So after all these years I'm finally admitting defeat.

Right now, on the home page, I've just got a placeholder saying that bitrot finally ate my website and that I'm going to start again from scratch. That's my plan: given that I had a good experience moving this blog over to Pelican I think I'm going to build a new www.davep.org with Pelican. Where possible I'll try and drag some of the old content over, but I'm also going to use this opportunity to have a proper digital spring clean.

There's no planned timescale for this, but this morning I've spent an hour or so over coffee, branching the repo for the site and pruning out all the stuff I know I won't need and don't want.

I'll try and drop the odd update in here as things progress.

I almost feel bad admitting this. For someone my age it feels like a thing you should not really admit, but here goes... I only saw Little Shop of Horrors for the first time back in 2020. Don't ask me why. I just... never got round to it. I've known plenty of people who have seen it and loved it. I had a girlfriend for a while in the late 80s who was obsessed with it. She, like plenty of people I know, would quote all the quotes from it.

And yet... yeah, I never got round to seeing it.

Until 2020. On first viewing it became really bloody obvious why so many people seem to love it.

So you can imagine my delight when, earlier this week, I was fighting through the Edinburgh crowds to get to my bus home and I saw this:

Oh yes please! Oh so yes please! Given my desire to try and take in a few more Fringe shows that I normally would, this year, this seemed like a perfect fit. It also solved the choice paralysis problem for at least one week (really, have you seen how much there is on offer?).

So today I booked some tickets for myself and a couple of friends. Next week's "try and see at least one Fringe show" problem is solved: I'm going to go and see a performance of Little Shop of Horrors.

Following on from the previous entry, where I outlined a weird problem I'd started having with syncing Obsidian via iCloud, I finally decided to sit down and try and work out the exact flow of the problem. Today, for example, I'd created an entry in two different vaults on my phone while on the bus into work, and when I got to my desk the vault I use on my work machine had updated.

However, when I got home this evening, the vault for my personal stuff hadn't updated on my home Mac Mini. I tried a few edits, in both vaults, on the iPhone, and nothing came through to the Mac.

So... before I started really diving into things I decided to "turn it off and on again" -- the iPhone that is -- and when it came back I ran up Obsidian, which told me it wasn't allowed to access my iCloud drive!

I took a moment to go into the settings to try and figure it out, didn't find what I wanted right away, then got to thinking that perhaps some of the phone's services were still spinning up, so I ran Obsidian up again (after killing it).

Sure enough, this time, it saw my vaults. With both vaults open on my Mac I made edits to open entries and the edits started to flow.

So, yup, looks like it was a simple case of "turn it off and on again".

Apple: #ItJustWorks.

Since October last year I've been getting into using Obsidian. Not that heavily, not to the extent some people do, but just as a way to keep a daily journal of work-related things. Each day at Textual HQ we finish off with a chat about how our day has gone, stuff we're wondering about, etc, etc... So I don't lose tack of what I've been up to I keep notes and Obsidian is how I do that.

One of the things I really like about it is how I can have iPhone, iPad and macOS versions on the go and have it all sync via iCloud. It generally works well.

But in the last couple of days I've noted the oddest problem, and I've yet to pin down the exact flow. But it seems to be this:

• If I create or edit a note on my iPhone, it doesn't turn up on my Mac.
• If I create or edit a note on my Mac, it turns up on my iPhone.

I think I might have seen variations on that theme but I've not made careful note -- normally I'm made aware of it when I'm trying to get something done.

What's super weird is this: on the iPhone, if I create a note, and then go into the Files app and look at the iCloud folders for Obsidian, the file isn't there! It's there in Obsidian itself, I can move it about, edit it, etc, etc... but it's not in the "vault" as seen from the Files app.

It's the last part that has be really puzzled.

If I get to the bottom of this I'll try and remember to write up what I find. I suspect I'm going to need some proper clear time, without other distractions, and experiment with all the edit and sync options and see what works and what fails.

I've lived near Edinburgh for getting on well over 6 years now and, aside form the odd show here and there, I've never really done the Fringe. As in, really dived in. Since moving up here my life situation didn't quite allow for it and then the pandemic hit and... well, you can imagine. Every year I've been up here I've managed one show, at least, but this year I want to try and make myself get to a few.

Maybe one per week. Possibly.

Might not happen, but I'm going to try. What can I say? I don't live in Edinburgh, I'm not a big "be out amongst people" kind of person, and the activation energy to get on a bus into town vs what I can do in my little part of Scotland is a constant battle.

But this year I'm going to try my best.

This evening I've booked a ticket for an artist I've been a fan of since the 1990s: Nick Harper. I saw Nick quite a few times in the 200xs (see the image above, I think 2009 might be the last time I saw him!) and then my going to gigs tailed off somewhat (again, life stuff). So seeing that he's playing here for a few days was something I could not ignore.

This weekend me can thank Monday me for committing him to doing something kinda sociable. I'm sure he'll be mad at me most of the day it's happening, but once it all kicks off and the music is flowing he'll be thankful.

Right now, at this moment... I'm rather looking forward to it.