Timeline

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.

Darn command line

I don’t remember when I did this but I did find it a little funny. I wanted to install SVN on my Windows machine because I clearly like to torture myself. Right?

Okay, but really.

I wanted to install it because WordPress is still using it for now. I do think it is a good tool to learn first when getting started with version control. Or really any version control system for that matter before jumping into Git. That’s me saying that.

Anyway. As I was glossing over the pages I had to try and recall what I had done the first time I had even done that. I had to think back to 2011. Yeah. That long ago when I actually tried to do that. At least I think it was. Might have been a little later but around that time.

I couldn’t recall what I had used to I did the super trusty method. I overflowed that stack and then recalled that I used TortoiseSVN.

Sweet!!

Super easy and not hard to install. I ran the thing and boom went that dynamite. I had SVN installed on my computer. I opened up my Git bash instance and tried to checkout the trunk repo and was met with failure. The command wasn’t recognized.

I swear, I had done it right.

I look up the path settings. It wasn’t there. So I try to add.

Nothing. Still fails.

I restart the computer because you know support and resetting things.

Nope.

Okay. Now what?

Had I actually missed something?

🤔

I clicked the installer again and began to read all the screens. Yes. All of them.

And yep. I had missed something.

I forgot to click the add command line checkbox.

Sigh.

Let me repeat that. I read all the screens.

Yeah, even I will sometimes forget to actually check the things.

Oh well. The good news is that SVN is running fine and I can break my machine even more with

Extra or missing characters

The other day I was tinkering with a random test site and was driven to near madness. Why? I kept forgetting to add the ending semicolon. Every single time. It wasn’t that I would miss the key stroke it was that I just legit didn’t press the thing.

I spent a minute or two every time I would press enter to try and run what I was doing and it would give me a new line. Nothing would happen and I would just stare at the command line. Like, what did I just do? Why isn’t it returning what I know should be returned? Why was I forgetting the simple thing to enter the semicolon at the end of my statement? You’d think after the first 10 times I would have realized, right?

No.

I still did it an hour later and that’s when I realized that I really wasn’t pressing the button. That damned key. My finger just didn’t want to press it. It was afraid of it. It ran from it.

Okay, but really it was because I forgot what I was actually doing and where it was begin done on. I was futzing around with random MySQL queries on the command line and I would forget the ending semicolon.

Yeah. I really did get so used to using a GUI tool that I nearly forgot the syntax. This is now me sighing. This is now me laughing because it really was a simple a mistake that can easily be missed and forgotten. Now, granted it took me 2 hours to retrain my brain to do that but that’s 2 hours of muscle memory that will be super useful down the line.

Diving back to frameworks

The other day as I was getting ready to clock out of my shift, I saw a question that really piqued my curiosity. It was a question I had seen before but didn’t really have a definitive answer and part of that was because it dealt with a framework I had read about.

The funny thing about this being that I don’t even recall the name of the framework now. There is a reason I like to know about those and it’s because frameworks are interesting to me. They help others in many different ways in not only building things but learning as well.

Obviously a good example here is WordPress. It has helped a lot of people in learning about PHP as well as CSS, JavaScript and perhaps other things along the way. For me it was learning code in general. Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to work and do things that relate to code. A lot of it being PHP.

The other reason I really wanted to dive back into frameworks is because I do want to see how others create these solutions and want to better understand the problem it does solve. In some cases it really does help the language progress. JavaScript is one example that comes to mind. Without jQuery a lot of the things that currently reside in vanilla JavaScript would not be around.

I don’t know, a big part of me is also a little hesitant since I do want to be doing a lot of other things as well. I still have a project that I never fully finished. I really should too. I think that’s what I’ll be doing over the coming weekend. Just take the entire day to finish building it out.

Editing and creating

I have been using Gutenberg since it was announced. I haven’t honestly typed a lot with it in the last year unfortunately. Again, it has boiled down to time. I haven’t put that time aside to create posts here.

I just haven’t.

I do need to change that and I hope I can pretty soon too. There are so many things I do want to learn along the way. I think the biggest challenge may just very well be in the how.

I have slowly shifted in doing WordPress related things a little and I do feel good about that. It may sound a little strange for some but it is very true. When I began working at Pantheon, I knew there would be a lot of things I would need to learn. Drupal being one. Now, I want to say this because this is exactly how I feel, I like both of them.

They each have their positive and negatives. Each is a tool that can be used and just like any tool it does take time to master it. I am by no means a grand master on either one but I do want to get more familiar and comfortable with each one.

When I created this site it really was to tinker with WordPress and get comfortable with code. I added the tagline, “Life. Code. WordPress,” because that was what I would write about. Life being the first, code second, and WordPress last. Over the years I did a lot of code and WordPress posting and from time to time life events. As much as I would love to be able to have a post every week I just can’t do it. At least not yet.

Hopefully in a few weeks I can share some news and more information as well. For now, I’ll keep drafting things and just publishing when I can.

Too many ideas

Here is the deal, I’ve been reviewing themes for quite some time and I really haven’t made one for myself. I’ve made a child theme for this site but that’s about it. It’s nothing super fancy but I know that I could do more.

The biggest reason at the moment is that I really haven’t been visually inspired.

I have been sidetracked. Not going to lie about it.

There have been other things that I’ve prioritized as well. I will say though when I do finally get enough time I will be grinding away on that side. It really has been great just exploring other things in the mean time.

I think that part of it is also that I haven’t really used this site as much as well. That part has just been sort of neglected for too long. I would love to be able to post more things but I’ve hit a mental block it feels like.

It also has been way too long since I looked at core code to see how things have changed. I may need to do that one of these days to get a better clue on what I really want to be doing as well. I know I have some posts that go over some functions, some hooks, but what I really want to be doing is perhaps a little more than just that.

Themes and plugins are and always will be super interesting to me. I think a lot of it is also that I haven’t really had puzzles I personally want to solve. I need to get on those forums more often and just dig more.

Sigh.

All in time, I guess.

Extended learning

I’m really bad at updating this site. I know. A lot of it being I just haven’t been able to really jot things down here.

Over the years I’ve posted several things. Many were to keep track of things I learned. There were some that were possibly random. Again, I learned from that. As this year start to come to an “end” I think about this site and the content I want to be posting.

For me, this site was a test. To get more and more familiar with WordPress and how things worked with code. I’ve learned quite a lot too along the way. The biggest one being how themes are loaded and function. There is a lot of magic that goes on. It’s super crazy and cool to see the code that runs so many sites on this crazy place we call the web.

I was also able to meet a lot of super amazingly talented people along the way. There are still a lot of people I will meet and I do look forward to meeting all of them too.

I keep getting a bit sidetracked on this too.

As the years went by, I wanted to keep learning new things. I looked at random online course that I could take on. Yes, there are quite a few out there some are really good. Some are just okay in that I would just copy the code, make a small edit, paste and not really learn much from it. Other than keyboard shortcuts are super nice for things like that.

The other day I was looking over some of the places I had enrolled in or rather had my name attached to. 3 sites that I found in my password manager. I’m sure there are a few I may have missed but still those were just free resources.

The real test now will be enrolling in courses simultaneously for an actual degree. Yes, I started the process and will be actually going for one shortly. This will be good. I know it will take a lot of effort and a lot of time but it will be amazing once it is all said and done.

So if you don’t hear from me that’s probably why.

I do want to keep posting here about WordPress things I do find and come across as well it just will be a bit longer now.

Local woes

This morning I woke up like I usually do around 4:15. Actually got out of bed like ten minutes later. Went to my desktop and when I went to log back in I saw that everything was somewhat reset.

Turns out there was an update that had been run.

Now, I don’t mind those but when things get broken, that’s when I get a little upset. You see when I looked at what programs were running I saw that a few were no longer running. The main two were Sublime Text and Local by Flywheel.

I reopened Local and it asked me to install.

Nope.

Big old pile of nope.

How did this happen?

So I think initially that it upgraded to the latest version. No. That wasn’t it either as it continued to install version 2.4.6 on my computer. Odd in that it wasn’t the latest which I’m currently fine with. So I then look and it turns out the containers are missing.

Fabulous.

All the sites I has on there were now missing.

I’m not angry, I’m just upset now.

Reason being is that those are still there it just can’t find them. So now I have to connect them all.

This will be a fun day.

Brain farts and code

As some of you know I like to read and I like to read code. I also like to read about code. The other day it hit me that I haven’t done a full theme review in a long time. It made me a little sad.

I do miss that.

There is a partial reason why I haven’t. Okay there are a few.

  • Time
  • Rules may have changed a bit
  • Backlog of approved but not live
  • Life

The biggest one being time. My priorities have changed over the years. I went from helping out on the support forums and reviews after I would get off work or even before work to having to almost schedule times for that. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but when I feel like I need to schedule that it almost becomes work. I don’t want that.

I love helping people.

However I can. I think this was also part of the reason I chose to be the lead organizer for this year.

Other things

The last couple of weeks I have been practicing classical guitar songs because that is how I first began to learn guitar. That later transpired to learning to play Flamenco style. It’s been awesome and a great side hobby.

I have recorded myself playing here and there and even setup a Git repo because I felt like it. Also so others could use them however they wanted.

There are a few which don’t reside on there as well. A good example is some of the songs I’m trying to learn like Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tarrega.

Recuerdos de la Alhambra progress

My fingers are still trying to get familiar with a lot of the chords and fingerings used throughout the song. In time I’ll get it though.

Breaking things

The other day I decided to try and update all the things on my laptop. Let’s just say it was some fun.

I say that because I am running Ubuntu on my laptop. I changed it so it is always running the latest version. Even for latest releases. When the laptop was running Bionic Beaver I ran the updates and forgot about that so things changed to use Cosmic Cuttlefish and a few of the things broke along the way .

The one that did was Docker. I installed, removed, installed, removed, and nearly gave up. I read a lot and just walked away for a day. Came back to it and read a few other things and was back up and running.

Always a good feeling when you can get things back to working condition after not having paid attention to what you did.

Now granted that was on one of the laptops I have. The other is a Mac Book Pro and I went ahead and updated to the latest OS. Part of me wants to just start over on that one and remove everything so I can install everything from scratch. It will require a lot of time but I know it will be a bit more manageable. And I know it will clear up quite a bit of space as well since I know I haven’t used some things on there and most likely won’t.

Learning other things

It is no surprise to some that I like to read. One of the things I started recently was reading about Python. I want to learn to program in the language because I feel like I need to do this.

For the longest time I wanted to get more into web development. Python is just another tool I want to familiarize myself with. Ruby is another. I understand some of it because I took one small crash course a few years back but that doesn’t mean I’m an expert in it.

Languages fascinate me. Programming languages even more so. Part of that reason is because I like to solve little puzzles, those little mysteries that can happen. That began when I first encountered an error many, many years ago on Windows 95. I wanted to know what it meant. To this day I don’t think I ever figured out why it would crash at a certain point.

Oh well, that’s in the past now.

This year will be full of many readings. Hopefully I can find the time to share a lot of that here.