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Parenthood – The journey begins

Parenthood is a never-ending journey and every day is a new adventure into making mistakes while trying to keep some sanity. Parenthood has no rules, guidelines or even a reference guide but it is still a great thing to be a part of. I entered upon this journey on June 7. Okay not entirely but that was the day my little boy, Salvador, was born so I will count that as the actual day the journey began. I will add more and more pages as time goes on and I get time to share these little life lessons.

Parenthood:

Parenthood is a never-ending journey and every day is a new adventure into making mistakes while trying to keep some sanity. Parenthood has no rules, guidelines or even a reference guide but it is still a great thing to be a part of. I entered upon this journey on June 7, 2012. Okay not entirely but that was the day my little boy, Salvador, was born so I will count that as the actual day the journey began. I will add more and more pages as time goes on and I get time to share these little life lessons.

Parenthood and the rules

Really there have been no rules for either one of us since SJ was born. SJ because his middle name of course begins with a “J” and if you were to look at my little man you would say that is a big name for a little guy. Now I’m just getting a little off track. The things that both of us have learned are things that people often tell us. A good example is when people tell us that we won’t be getting any sleep. I’m used to not sleeping so that is not really new to me. My body has been so REM deprived over the last years that I am more than capable of functioning on three or four hours of sleep a day. The one thing that has changed about that is that the so-called sleep pattern is more random that ever.

Parenthood and the guidelines

Okay the basic guidelines are pretty simple when you get down to it: Don’t kill the baby. That is the basic guideline and the one thing to really follow. Everyday is an exploration into a world of how to. How to keep the little one entertained while keeping your sanity, how to keep him quiet long enough to make a bottle so he won’t scream your ears off. No one thing will work the same way the next day. That is one thing you can count on to be true. There are moments when you will want to be alone to think, read or do something so simple as taking a shower but it can feel like forever because you are changing, feeding, burping and then changing again just to keep your little one from bawling.

What can oftentimes make things easy is having somebody there to help out to accomplish those basic everyday tasks like doing laundry, eating, cooking, cleaning or taking a bath. Unfortunately, I know some people out there don’t often have that luxury and I often wonder about how they manage to do it and have a huge amount of respect for them for being able to pull it off.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5

Random tinkerings

The other day I started another random little project. I’m actually very excited about this one because I know that I will be using it from time to time. The other reason I’m happy is because it can be a useful one for others as well.

For quite some time I’ve been doing a lot of support related things and I love it. I do. There are moments when I feel a little out of touch or behind but that’s probably imposter me thinking. Anyway, from time to time I have to share or ask to share some information and at times it can be a thing like a password. Now, there are some services available in the wild but at work it doesn’t always mean it would be a good thing.

The thing on that is that using a 3rd-party system can be sort of a bad thing since you don’t have control of the data. This can mean maybe creating your own version of said thing. Well I did that. I took a repo ( PrivateBin ) and am slowly building out a site for what I hope to be mostly internal use.

It was a little to get things up and running at first because this was somewhat new to me. I had to dive into some of the code to see how things work, which I haven’t done in a really long time. That’s the one thing I really do like doing too. The other part is getting it all styled to the way I would like. That’s the part I’m really looking forward to the most now. I have an idea of what to do and use so I’ll have to look at how to handle that. I did see the code and do understand how it gets loaded too so this really will be fun for me.

And the other part is also that I’m trying to follow that mini community as well and other projects that I try out or have so far. The other day I even tinkered with Stage and Sage because I wanted to understand more of how the framework did things. It was super neat to see how all the things loaded and how it broke. Yes, I broke things along the way.

It was fun doing that.

This project so far has been pretty fun. I’ll have to keep that momentum going too if I really want to get this fully going. The next thing is getting the template going. Time to open up Photoshop and Illustrator now.

On self learning

For about the last 3 months or so I’ve been trying to learn something new to me or at least exploring it. One of the things I looked at first was the Go language. I did one of those free online courses to get an idea of how that works.

It was fun.

I actually liked learning about it and some of the basics. Learning some of the syntax was cool too. I know there is more to potentially learn too but that will be more down the line as well.

This time I went and looked a bit more into GraphQL because it really piqued my interest when learning Go. The line that really got me was, “A query language for your API.” It reminded me a lot of Redis and part of that is because it is agnostic.

It’s been really fun both reading and watching videos on those two languages so far. The hard part for now may just be actually using it somewhere. It’s great and all knowing something but when it comes to using it that is another thing.

I still haven’t fully finished the GraphQL course but am liking it so far. There were some moments where I spaced out and wasn’t paying attention so I know I’ll have to go back and re-watch one or two videos but I’m okay with that. A lot of it does make sense to me so I can’t wait to put that skill to use one day.

I think a lot of that is also since I’m not sure what I want to build out just yet so these things I’m wanting and trying to learn have been super fun for me. Don’t get me wrong it’s great that I can add that to my resume and skill set but for now it really has been sort of a hobby for me to look over a lot of those languages.

I think the coming months will be fun for me in learning not just languages but other things as well; I’m really wanting to read other things outside of code too.

Using MySQL on here

Today I went to try and clean things up a little bit since I haven’t really done that in some time. At least it feels that way to me. I looked at the comments and realized there were some in the trash. I didn’t think much of it since you know it’s just trash.

There was one time where the comment was from a real person so that was also part of the reason I went and looked.

I saw there were quite a few being posted on images. I thought a little odd but not too crazy since those are to an extend considered posts. Or at least a post type. Yeah. About that.

So I wanted to see how I could just mass disable all of those without having to resort to a plugin because that’s always the solution, right? Not having to use a plugin is the best thing in the world. You would think.

Anyway.

So I set to figure out a filter and of course there was one. I didn’t want to go that route since I honestly wanted to try something a little different. So I tried to see if it could be done using a query. A database query to be a bit more exact.

The cool part was that I really was able to do that and for my site it really only took about less than a second to do. There were only about 75 or so media files that had an open setting. Well, attachments to be precise on that.

The reason I say “attachment” is because that’s how WordPress stores that information in the database. For those who may want to do the same, the query I ran was:

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = "closed" WHERE post_type = 'attachment' AND comment_status = 'open';

The cool part was that it ran really quick since it was directly connecting to the database. The even better part was that I didn’t have to create a plugin for that though I think I may have to at one point down the line if I forget to change that setting when I upload another image.

I don’t know.

Creating a plugin may just be quicker down the line too. I just don’t want to do the maintaining thing I guess.

On learning languages

The other day I wanted to start a new project, experiment thing to to learn how something worked. I got totally distracted and forgot what I wanted to work on. This seems to happen more and more lately too since there are so many things I really want to learn. I get so distracted with reading about those things that I forget to actually even start the thing.

I did finally start the one thing I did say I wanted to start though and that is to learn a new programming language. For the last 3 months I’ve wanted to dive into something new. A lot of that being because I actually like to know how things works and communicate. That was one of the bigger reasons I wanted to learn PHP and JavaScript.

The other day I jotted down on a piece of paper what I wanted to learn and because the way my brain decided to work the next day I wound up looking up random NodeJS things and that wasn’t even what I wanted to look up. It was in fact the Go language.

I began a course on it and what is super nice is that I am glad I did. There are somethings that I felt very comfortable with and some which were new to me. This was a great feeling. I do miss that.

The part that really caught my attention the most was I had already completed two courses on the site. One was SQL and the other being React. To be honest I forgot I even took the React course so that made me chuckle a little bit.

I think the reason I really liked it was because I do see a lot of the similarities between all the other languages I’ve wanted to learn and have learned.

I was able to get through at least half way done with the course today so that was a good thing. I’ll have to get back to it throughout the week and hopefully do more down the line too.

Temp theme

The other day I swapped out the theme here because the upcoming Twenty Twenty One theme was introduced. It is still being developed and worked on so that means I do expect some of the things on here to break. I’m used to things breaking though.

For those who do want to either follow along with the development or contributing then I would recommend going to: https://github.com/wordpress/twentytwentyone

The other thing I’m trying to do is follow along with the notifications project. Reason being I do want to contribute to this one more. The WordPress notification system is something that has been needed for a long time. If you want to contribute to that, please go to: https://github.com/WordPress/wp-notify

The team does also meet every Monday morning in Slack if you wanted to chime in as well.

Reading other things

The other day I was trying to understand something and began to search the web. This lead me to a random rabbit hole because isn’t that usually the case with a lot of things too?

The thing I wanted to understand more was MySQL because there are things I know I don’t really know. I want to know more though. I do.

So I went and began to search for a book to read or even a video to help me understand a bit more. I wound up getting a book. I went and got Understanding MySQL Internals. I’ve read the first two chapters so far and am liking it so far. Part of the reason is because it dives more into the code of MySQL. The functions, the classes, and files used.

It really wasn’t what I was expecting but I love that. I guess you can say it almost rekindled my passion for reading those books again. It’s been too long since I’ve read a book like that and it’s been because I just didn’t think much about it.

Honestly, that is the biggest reason I haven’t read much either when it comes to those type of books. The other being that some are just not my type of read. I need to pick up more of those books though. I still haven’t finished reading one from a few years ago. Not sure I will though.

Indecisiveness

There are a lot of things that I do think about. One of which is how I want to present the content on this site. Some days I just like to write those out and it leads to other random things.

The other day I was looking over random themes because I still like web design and still want to mess around with this site for design things. The other thing is because I really can’t just decide how I want this site to look or rather how to display all the posts I have so far.

There are some themes I do like the look up of but I know most just have all sorts of random code that isn’t being used.

It’s a little painful to see that too.

Not fully sure on how to truly react just yet. I think a lot of that is because I haven’t done a theme review in such a long time. I really haven’t. It’s something on my short list of things to dive back to. That and photography.

I have been drawing a bit more too so that’s been good. The other thing I haven’t done though is read an entire book since I keep just putting it off. I don’t really know why I do though. I see the Kindle by my computer but just don’t really read.

I need to find my routine once more. I had one but I think that one didn’t completely involve me writing on here. Might just do that for a bit. I know part of the reason I chose to write on here more was to really use the WordPress editor more. I’ve been using Gutenberg for quite a long time too so I’m fairly comfortable with how things both look and act.

I will say there have been quite a few things that have changed over time with the plugin and how it is merged in with core. I personally have no quarrel with it since for me it’s just this simple site.

By the end of the year I do want to get more projects started at least so I can really see how other things work inside of Gutenberg.

Random post and random thoughts.

Being a guinea pig

The other day I was wanting to experiment with FSE.

Sigh.

Yeah. A bit of a weird term. Acronym really. More to the point another thing that may just confuse a few more people. The reason I say this is because it stands for Full Site Editing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to this. I am. The reason being is that it may help a lot of people in creating their sites to suit their wants. The how is the part I’m kind behind on. I haven’t completely kept up with many of the things being done.

Why now?

The reason I’m posting this now is because some time ago I was reached out to by member of the Theme Team. I haven’t done a theme review in a long time. I mean that too. I haven’t actually looked at theme’s code for things in quite some time. Part of that is because I do have a few other things I was doing. I spent most of my free time just relaxing. It’s something I haven’t really been able to do. The other reason being that I never really set a schedule for outside of work so any free time would be anything.

With that being said, I went and tried to setup something on my local installation. This hurt a little because I opted to not install a lot of things. I wanted quite literally the bare minimum to just get up and running. I installed XAMPP and boom. Got things working in under maybe 30 minutes.

I mean it wasn’t much.

  1. Install Gutenberg
  2. Activate Gutenberg
  3. Enable Full Site Editing

Not much to it. Now the other part that took a bit longer was actually seeing how I could maybe partake in contributing with either docs or code.

Let the fun begin

This part was a little more. More time. Okay, like almost an hour of trying to install one thing to make everything work. Now, you’re probably asking or even wondering, but Jose, why not use something like VVV or Docker to set up your environment?

Again, I wanted the bare minimum to just start. This is where things actually took a bit of a turn. I did already have NodeJS installed so that was sorted. I already had Git because that was one of the other things I installed when I got my Windows machine fully built. The things I needed were:

  1. NodeJS
  2. Git
  3. Python

Yeah. Python.

In all honesty I’m not sure if that was one thing I did the first time I set up my local machine which a very long time ago when I was first starting with WordPress. I might have done it when I wanted to learn random languages I know that much but don’t really recall doing that times after that. It might be because after switching to something other than Windows, Python might have already been installed and running.

Anyway.

The part I that I really wanted to experiment on was following the guide on getting the Full Site Editing experience going. Part of that reason I do still like dabbling with code when I can. At least when it comes to WordPress theming code. Plugins I still just love to look over how they work and break more than anything.

Now, I’ve been doing things like this for some time but it really did feel like something was missing when I was following the steps. It really almost felt like I was out of the loop with how things worked. There were some things I had to actually read in order to understand what was going and how to do it.

The part I am really looking more forward to is being able to use HTML template parts. I think it is that inner part of me that loves the simplicity of it. I love knowing that it does have a low barrier of entry. It is part of that reason I genuinely love WordPress.

That is the biggest reason I love code too.

Always a work in progress

Yesterday I was able to change out the theme to this site. I spent most of the day just fiddling and trying to get things to just work. I took a theme from the free repository and scrapped a lot the unused files.

Yeah.

There were quite a few that I didn’t really need. Many of which were WooCommerce ones. Maybe I’ll get back to that one day but for now, this site will be for just random code things I guess.

The thing I do need to get working is the SCSS compiling because there are a lot of classes that are not really being used. And then getting the JS minification as well. I went the super old school way and just copy-pasted code from one file to another. It was fun getting back to basics. The fun part was actually getting to use a decent header image that I took a long time ago.

Being able to use a photo of my own definitely makes it more fun too. I honestly don’t recall when I took the photo but I do know that I wanted to use it for something.

I’m sure there are more things I probably missed along the way but for now it works and the site is a bit faster too. I do want to improve on that little but that’s going to be for some other time.

🤣

Random spring cleaning

Today I spent some time on the support forums answering some questions and just trying to help some people out.

I also cleaned things up a little bit on this site. The one thing I did was clear out random tables from the database and just tinkered with other things along the way. I was able to fiddle around with a little Drupal as well so that was really nice.

The one thing I liked was looking at metrics. Part of the reason is I like looking at numbers. The first thing I noticed was the size of the overall database. It was just under 7mb which really isn’t much when you think about it. I ran a few commands on them and they sort of helped. A little bit but not like super, crazy, insane good.

One thing I liked doing was running two queries. The first one to get all the posts because I wanted to see how fast it would be and now many there were as well. I ran:

SELECT * FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = 'post';
/* Affected rows: 0  Found rows: 166  Warnings: 0  Duration for 1 query: 0.172 sec. (+ 0.312 sec. network) */

I found it pretty cool that I do have 165 posts on here. The other cool part is that it was able to retrieve all of those in well under a second. Now granted that is how many databases are and function as well. Pretty quick when doing those directly.

The one part I was happy about was being able to reduce the size a little because I realized that there were a few tables from plugins I no longer used and some rows that were also removed that I know I won’t be using ever again. Many of those were just widget settings from random themes I had tested on here.

Did I need to do that? Not really. It was mostly because I wanted to practice things. It really has been way too long since I’ve even done anything like that. I’ve been enjoying that since that’s what I spent most of my day on.

The other thing was tinkering with JavaScript and some JSON responses. I was having some fun with the WordPress api and just getting some things to actually render properly on the page. Not using any external libraries as well so that was pretty fun to do.

I have a post right now in draft that actually does go a bit more into frameworks too. Or at least the ones I’ve read some documents of and have tried. This is the part where I just say if there were more hours in the day I would be able to explore all of them.

Hopefully I can look over more things next week.