There are so many pop ups on web sites anymore that one is reminded on the mid 2000’s when pop up windows were the rage. If you use the Safari browser you may want to give hush a look.
It targets those insipid, never-ending, utterly pointless “cookie notices”, popovers begging you to join email newsletters, and other bits of tracking. It kills dickbars and dickbar-like annoyances. I’ve been running it for days and it’s the sort of thing you don’t notice at all until you disable it and all of a sudden you’re back to approving cookie access every single goddamn time you load an article at The Guardian and squinting to find the hidden “X” that closes a popover asking if you’ll sign up for something you don’t want and never asked for.
I’ve only tried it on iOS but will test on MacOS later. If you get the chance to test it there let me know if it works. Lord knows I don’t need to see anymore of those damn dickbars.
tldr; Yes you should as it can reduce wait times by up to 40%.
You know the scenario: You are driving down a highway with two or more lanes. In the distance you see a construction sign warning that one or more lanes are closed up ahead. For some people this is a signal that it is time to move into the lane that will remain open and wait your turn. For other people this is a signal to speed up and get to the merge point quickly to get ahead of everyone.
What is the correct option? Be courteous or be a jerk?
Research shows that using the entire open road and then merging at the lane closure, when traffic is congested, will result in the shortest wait time possible for everyone. The issue is that we do not educate drivers in the US about proper merge techniques. So drivers are left to their own devices for figuring this out. From that we get the two generalizations: be polite and wait, or be aggressive and pass everyone.
Instead we should drive cautiously to the merge point and then alternating merging together one car at a time:
If roads are clear enough that everyone is already driving close to the speed limit, zipper merging isn’t as effective, but in the case of congestion, Johnson said that this method reduces backups by a whopping 40 percent on average, since both lanes approach the merge with equal stake in maintaining speed. “When the queue backup is reduced, the access points behind a work zone, like signals or ways to get on and off the freeway, those aren’t blocked,” Johnson pointed out. “People have a better opportunity to get off or on the system at that point.
So go on use the entire roadway and help everyone get through the bottleneck faster. Just do it cautiously and keep an eye out for people pulling in front of you.
In my day job I migrate WordPress websites from various web hosts to Kinsta.com. I get to see a wide variety of WordPress setups and configurations. One consistent issue I see is how people choose to backup their websites. This is mainly due to the host they have not supplying an easy to use backup system by default. It is also due to people not understanding how and why they should be backing up their site.
Get a good host
When it comes to web hosting one of my main methods for judging a good one from a not so good one is the backup options included with the plan. To me a good hosting plan includes an automated and manual backup solution by default, and those backups are stored separately from the production/live site files.
Naturally the company I work for, Kinsta, meets this measurement. There are others that have this too but I don’t work for them so you will need to do your own research. At Kinsta you get daily automated backups and 5 manual backup slots. They also make a backup when you push a staging site to live in case you need to restore it. You can learn more here.
Why backup your site?
All software is susceptible to bugs. When ever you update any software you should make a backup of your files in case there is an issue. This is true of your desktop computer and also of your WordPress website.
Anytime you update a plugin or theme you should take a backup. In the rare event that an update corrupts and breaks your site you can quickly restore to the backup.
How to backup your site
There are a lot of ways to backup your WordPress site. Most people use a plugin because their hosting plan does not include a backup option. There are free and pay to play plugins. Most free plugins save your backup file in the wp-content folder of your site.
This seems convenient because the files are right there and can quickly and easily be restored. One problem with this approach is that if your wp-content folder gets corrupted your backups are also corrupted. If you update a plugin that corrupts your backups then you may not be able to restore your site.
Another problem is that this is using up storage space on your hosting account and makes your site larger. Depending on the host this may increase your costs. It can also make moving your site more difficult if you do not exclude those backups.
For these reasons backups should be stored separately from your production/live site. Most backup plugins offer this as a pay to play option. Kinsta backups are stored this way. If something goes terribly wrong with your site you can then restore it and be back in business.
For an extra layer of security and peace of mind you may consider storing some backups on a 3rd party system. These are generally referred to as external backups. Kinsta offers this option but it is outside of the default plans. They do allow you to download your backups as well.
This option allows you to restore the site even if something catastrophic were to occur with your host. If your site produces any amount of income this should be something you do on a monthly basis. At Kinsta you can download a backup once a week by default. Its a pretty simple process and gives you access to the site from your own computer.
Another option is using a staging environment to make updates and then pushing that live. This way if something goes wrong with the update you only break the staging site. The production/live site remains unaffected and you can either fix or delete the broken staging site. Kinsta also includes a staging environment by default with every site you host there. When you push to live an automatic backup is made just in case there is an issue.
One more thing…
Another option is to use a local development environment as part of your backup/workflow system. In this scenario you download a copy of the live/production site to your local computer and are able to work on it and preview it locally. Then when you are ready you can push that to the staging environment and then push that to live.
This option gives you the freedom to work offline anytime. The updates will be faster since you aren’t reliant on the internet. This can be a trickier option as you have to setup a local web hosting environment to be able to preview the site.
The great and awesome news is that Kinsta has recently launched a tool to make this as easy as clicking a button. It is called DevKinsta and is available today. It is free for anyone to use. If you want to push a site live you will need to have a Kinsta.com plan.
At the start of most yoga classes the teacher will take a moment to have you set an intention for the class. For a long time I have almost exclusively made my intention kindness. First of all I am intent on being kind to myself during class. I do not want to injure myself and I also do not want to judge myself if I cannot do a pose.
Secondly and most important I want to carry that kindness with me for the rest of the day. I want to keep being kind to myself but I also want to extend my kindness to everyone I interact with. There is no cost to me for being kind and there is no expectation that others will return in kind.
If I start with an intent to be kind my hope is that I will remain optimistic in all situations. There are times where kindness needs to be less gentle but in the end I am striving to help and solve an issue.
Many people call this naive and unrealistic and I wish them well and move along with my life. If I have learned anything it is that there can never be too much kindness in the world. I am far from perfect in this regard and fall into the trap of distrust and fear of others intents.
Is it possible that people will take advantage of my kindness? Absolutely and over the years this has occurred and I have learned not to deal with those specific individuals. The challenge has been to prevent those experiences from prejudicing me from ever treating people with kindness.
Kindness is a choice. You can choose to treat everyone kindly or you can choose to distrust everyone. I prefer to live in a world where we choose to be kind to each other.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr (MLK) Day in the US. MLK was a proponent of non-violence and human equality and a major persona of the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s. He is best known for his I have a Dream speech in which he described a dream in which he saw people of all colors and walks of life living together in harmony.
Today we appear to live in a world that shows an incredible amount of kindness and at the same time a vast lacking of kindness. It feels like the answer it to just tell everyone to be kind to each other. Unfortunately hate blinds people from seeing, giving, or receiving kindness.
I have been doing at least one yoga class a day on the Apple Fitness+ app since it came out Dec 14th 2020. I have discussed the app before and continue to be impressed with the quality and quantity of classes they keep outputting.
Today I did this 45 minute class with Jessica Skye which focused on movements that open the chest and hips. I think my favorite move is the ninja pose cause of the name and also cause its very challenging for me.
Yoga is something I started doing in 2003 when I needed something to counter sitting at a desk all day. That was also when I was doing phone support and sales, which was a pretty stressful job. Yoga helped me either prepare for the day or wind down at the end.
As I get older yoga has become more important to ensure I have full mobility. This will allow me to keep staying active and hopefully avoid injury. I know I mention wanting to get better at pullups but while we are away from home I am just focused on maintenance.
Currently I have 40 posts in draft mode for this site. These are posts that I started writing and then for some reason stopped and did not post. Most of the time I stopped cause I wasn’t sure what someone would think of me for writing it. I second guessed my initial thought that I had something to share with the world. I thought about someone specific reading that post and thinking: “Holy cow that guy is an idiot.”
First of all I have seen my analytics of how many people are reading this site. Let me just say that if you are reading this right now you are in rare company. Also if you are reading this, thanks.
Secondly the purpose of this blog is to share ideas in a non-professional manner. It may be shocking to hear this but I do not get paid to write here. 😂 Instead I am writing here to develop my writing skills and to share ideas and experiences.
I am listening to the audiobook of The Art of Possibility and the 3rd chapter is titled ‘Giving an A’. Its based on the idea that grades are made up concepts that allow us to rate ourselves compared to everyone else. Therefore an A is something that can be given to anyone at anytime as there is no cost to doing so.
The purpose of ‘giving an A’ is to validate someone’s effort and encourage them to continue trying. We can always improve and encouraging someone to improve is always more helpful than criticizing their current output.
Giving an A is something we can do at anytime and with anyone in our lives. It costs you nothing and can mean everything to the person you give it to. The book gives some great examples of how this works, albeit mostly in a music class and symphony setting. However the examples can easily be extrapolated to any part of life.
I am not a huge self help book person but this one is really good and I recommend it. The authors, Rosamund and Benjamin Zander, are married and also read the audiobook. The swap reading parts of each chapter and are very engaging to listen to. Rosamund is a therapist and Benjamin is a conductor. They use various stories from their professions and use them as examples for why you should practice their ideas.
A new trend in browsers is hiding the full path of the URL/domain you are visiting. For example if I goto the Kinsta Features page in Safari the default display of the URL looks like this:
Notice the kinsta.com in the location bar?
This is being done for non-expert users to make things more ‘simple’ for them. That is my guess as to why they do it this way.
If you go into Safari Preferences and click the Advanced tab you can have it display the full URL:
Click that button!
Now lets return to the Kinsta Features page:
Oh look at that a full URL!
This gives me a lot more information than the default setting in Safari. There are limitless reasons why seeing the full URL is helpful and very few reasons to not show it. My recommendation is to click that button to show the full website address in Safari.
Apple released new MacBooks last fall running on Apple Chips known as the M1. These use arm architecture chips to keep power use low but still run really fast. Its the same type of chips that the iPhone and iPad have been using for 10 years. They replace the Intel style x86 chips that have been in use for well over 10 years in all Apple computers.
The last time I purchased a new MacBook was in 2012 when the MacBook Pro Retina’s first came out. That machine allowed me to run my business making websites and editing videos for small businesses to get exposure on Youtube. It was powerful and still a laptop. I still have it though its performance has decreased.
The machine I have been using for a few years now is a hand-me-down 2014 MacBook Pro Retina from my wife. It has been a great machine but suffers from the failed butterfly keyboard in the R and more recently E keys. The R key working 70% of the time has been tolerable for about 8 months now but the E key gets used so much more that it has become untenable.
So I got a MacBook Air with the M1 chip last night. This machine has been pretty well hyped up not just by Apple and its fanbois but by multiple PC people such as Linus Tech Tips:
So my expectations are pretty high for this machine. The battery life and performance had a pretty high bar set from the various reviews I have poured over in the last few weeks. Even though I no longer do any video work it appears that I could use this machine for those tasks.
Last night I pulled it from the box and got to work getting it ready to use for work the next morning. I went with the 8 Core, 16 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Gold model:
Apple has a Migration Assistant tool that helps copy your old Mac files and software to the new one. However I decided to go with a fresh install and gradually add the preferences and software that I use for work.
My goto article for setting up a MacBook is this MacOs setup guide by a Google Machine Learning Engineer Sourabh Bajaj. In the past I have tried to do everything he has in the guide. It turns out that this is overkill for what I need and do. So this time I took it easy and did just what I need for work.
I am going to briefly cover what I took from his guide here. If I don’t mention a section it means I did not use anything from there:
iTerm2 – Pretty much everything on the first page then zsh and Oh My Zsh. I use the terminal all day for work and iTerm2 is so much better than the app that comes with MacOS that this should be the app that comes with MacOS. For now I have gone with the Synthwave Everything iTerm2 theme and am enjoying having more color in my terminal.
Thats pretty much it as I am not a programmer. If you are then you should check out any of the sections that are applicable to you.
Trackpad
The new Macs have a new trackpad that has a force click option. Basically there are 2 clicks available. The first click is what allows you to select items or text. The second or Force Click allows you to look up things like dictionary definitions for works.
Personally I was having issues distinguishing between the two and would often end up Force Clicking when I was just trying to select some text. I have changed Force Click to only occur when I tap with 3 fingers. I am playing with adjusting the strength of the first click. All of this is located in System Preferences > Trackpad. I also have set the Tracking speed to a little bit faster. I will try to remember to keep speeding that up till it is on max.
First Impressions
This new Mac is the best one I have ever owned. It is small but capable. I have now spent 13 hours working on it, including 2 one hour Zoom video calls and the battery is only down to 10%. My old machine had 3 hours of battery life down to 5%.
With my old machine I had to use a plastic wedge to keep the heat of the laptop from melting my legs. I have spent the entire day with this laptop on my lap and have not felt any heat from it at all. There is no fan so I haven’t heard anything other than my typing.
The brightest I have had the screen has been 50% and that was more than enough. 100% brightness is unbearable indoors. Maybe I need to start working outside to test it?
The Air does not have a Touch Bar and I am very pleased with that. I don’t know anyone who has a Touch Bar and is happy about it. Considering I have to spend more for the Pro model to get a Touch Bar I am even happier that I don’t have one.
Overall I am extremely happy with this purchase and look forward to having this machine for years to come.
The COVID vaccine is out and I will get it as soon as it is offered to me. I believe in science and I trust our scientific institutions more than I believe or trust any other large institutions.
I also make jokes about vaccines like: “I will get it but I don’t want to be first.” or “I am glad the guinea pigs are getting it first.” Saying things like that may be 100% a joke to you but to anyone listening it may cause doubt about the safety of a vaccine. This hurts us all because if we don’t all get the vaccine then it does not work.
With up to 40% of frontline workers in LA county refusing Covid-19 inoculation experts warn that understanding and persuasion are needed
That doesn’t sound good. One of the quotes in the article is from a critical care nurse in Alaska: “But for this one, why do I have to be a guinea pig?” 😬
So I am no longer making jokes about any vaccine. I trust that if the CDC tells me to take a certain vaccine then it is good to go. I understand enough about the process of making and approving a vaccine to know that if something is wrong, it is caught well before public administration. I also understand that if I personally have a concern or question about a vaccine then I should turn to someone qualified to give me factual information so that I can then make an informed decision. Getting information from some website or person on social/media does not qualify as informed, that is entertainment only.
COVID is a serious infectious disease killing way too many people. We have to get vaccinated to stop it. Vaccines are not funny or cool. They are just what we get so that we can have a modern society.
If you have any doubts or questions please leave a comment or better yet, visit these sites to learn more:
