Themes

Update below, maybe WordPress isn’t so bad after all?

I broke my WordPress self-hosted/managed site earlier simply by installing a theme, the one named ‘Default’.

The hosts’s AI troubleshooter failed miserably to make any form of difference when I started it.

To fix it ‘manually’ I first attempted to follow the help page linked to in the error message – go into myPHP and deactivate all the plugins.

Nope.

So then I searched for help directly related to WordPress themes and found the way to fix it is to delete the offending theme folder and rename an existing folder to the offending one.

Success, and I felt lucky I knew which theme was active.

And even more luckily everything is back up again.

My hosting plan includes only weekly automatic backups so yes, I just started one now.

Painful isn’t it, how something so complex can be broken by something so apparently simple as a site theme change.

Anyway, I just looked for similar issues with it and eventually arrived at the WordPress.org forum. The only response i found to its incompatibility with a previous version of PHP was the original poster replying to their own post to make a technical change within the theme file definition.

Pointless reporting it if there’s nowhere to report it, so I’ve given up and I’m sticking with ‘Simple Grey’.

Update: While attempting to fix my site I was sent an email from WordPress, “@bazbt3 šŸ” Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue”. I was busy so didn’t notice it. The email described the fault and contained a special link to bypass the dashboard I couldn’t access – to enter a “special recovery mode”. Maybe now I know this is a thing, the next time the site breaks I’ll be more patient?

5 second rule

Originally posted to Reddit on January 26 2024, and prompted in 2025 by this toot by Col: https://mstdn.social/@kibcol1049/113799104744391111.

Last night was Burns Night, when Scots worldwide traditionally celebrate the life of poet Robert Burns by reciting poetry, eating haggis, tatties & neeps. Or something like that.

We couldn’t find a veggie haggis this year so my wife bought a steak for my youngest daughter and me, to go with the veggies. I cooked it medium rare and cut a small slice as it was resting. I’m nurturing a cough started the day before and unfortunately coughed, accidentally swallowing the meat, which stuck in my throat.

Uncomfortable? Hell yes! I started to retch so went to the smallest room, hoping the meat went either down or out. It eventually went down.

Returning to the kitchen hoping to just relax and feel less miserable, Stella, the cat we’ve had since October and adopted in December, jumped off the counter with my steak. It fell on the floor as I shouted and as I reached for it she re-acquired it and ran between my legs, dragging the steak under her.

I finally caught her in the living room, shouted again and grabbed the steak off her. Straight back on the plate, a dollop of tomato ketchup squeezed beside the veg, and I sat down to eat. Finally.

Sure it was cold by that point but I’d won right?

Right?

Biodegradable

We have a local authority-issued kitchen waste ‘caddy’, a bin just large enough for food scraps and peelings. The local authority supplies biodegradable liners on demand – actioned by us tying a yellow ‘flag’ to the main food and garden waste bin and waiting for the collection crew to drop a new roll of bags at the front door.

It doesn’t happen like that. The flag is tied and ignored for a few weeks. There’s a web form to complete which should spur the crew into action, but doesn’t on the next collection day.

So there’s an email address to, erā€¦ email. So I did that yesterday with this subject line:

“[my address] – food caddy bags not left”

I got a reply today:

“Good morning, | Thank you for your email | Please provide your address and postal code so I can look into this for you. | Apologies for the inconvenience.”

(I’ve thrown the response all onto one line for speed of posting).

As far as I know there are only 2 locations with my street’s name in the country and only one has a street number as high as mine, and there’s definitely only one in the very town to which I addressed myā€¦

(big sighs)

My reply back was polite.

“[Preamble | my address] (as the subject line), [postcode] | name]”

Flush

Our toilet cistern developed a fault just before Christmas, luckily only leaking into the bowl. Not a major thing, but we have metered water so it was costing money. The cistern is a low-profile type with limited flush volume to save water, and aside from the one repair a few years ago has handled everything we threw at it, if you know what I mean.

Visit 1

Anyway, a plumber came, looked at it and wanted to break through the tiles around it instead of extracting it after lifting the button bezel. No.

Anyway, I asked if he could confer with his office to query what happened during the previous repair. He agreed, closed the isolating valve to save us money and water Ā¹, and left.

Incidentally, it has a special seal not carried routinely by the national network of plumbers we used.

So I had to rebook.

Visit 2

Instead of ordering the part or the seal based on prior information, during the second visit the cistern was looked at and a part ordered for delivery to our home. So I had to rebook.

Visit 3

The part arrived on Monday, I rebooked immediately, and the plumber completed the work earlier today. Success! No leak, and we have a working flush.

And here is the one the plumber removed.

What a waste.

Ā¹ We have another toilet, we’re posh we are.

Decorations

Public service announcement.

The evening of January 6th is known as Twelfth Night, 12 days after Christmas Day. According to tradition one should take down all decorations around the home or workplace.

The thing to note is that it’s supposedly unlucky to leave them up past this date.

There’s only one way to avoid the misfortune that will surely follow after not taking them down, and that’s to instead wait until February 2nd, Candlemas, the official end of Christmas in mediaeval England, 40 days after Christmas Day.

Your choice.

But I’ve a question. Which one of you reprobates is leaving your decorations up every year and getting possessed by goblinsā€½

Link:

Twelfth Night: When should you take down your Christmas decorations? (BBC Newsround).

Hypo (old)

I was chatting yesterday lunchtime about plans for the weekend, plans for 2025, and just casually mentioned the events that unfolded in my ‘Hypo‘ blog post.

But it reminded me about the first time, years ago, I had to ring for the paramedics to attend to my wife.

A novice at marriage and fatherhood I was more anxious back then, understandably so given the newness of the situation. Being confronted by a sweating, shuddering, gibbering, unresponsive loved one is hard. I don’t know how my wife puts up with me!

Anyway, I’d been slowly feeding her bits of chocolate after the glucose gel pack ran out. There was no improvement after a while so I had to get the professionals in.

When they arrived I was looking after daughter1 and the cats and didn’t think about the implications of just sending the paramedics upstairs.

And then I realised I’d sent 2 strangers up, strangers who entered the room just as my wife returned to consciousness. She’s there, stark naked, spreadeagled on the bed, wondering what the hell is going on.

Time passed, the 2 pros didn’t need to do much other than observations and to advise me to get her something decent to eat.

My first request after she was out of bed, please don’t ring your mum or sister or tell anyone at work that I let 2 complete strangers into the bedroom when you were at your most vulnerable.

I was thwarted.

I probably deserved it too.

Micro.blog initial issues

I’ve had a few fairly fundamental issues since setting up my custom domain on Micro.blog. Though my username is discoverable on Mastodon (Appdot.net) and the blog works at bt3.com with all links looking good, quite a few are concerning me.

I’ve asked for help via help@micro.blog, when they can spare the time, and I’ve posted this here not to whinge about it but so I remember how things started before I start messing about with CSS, styling my blog. šŸ˜±

Ok, the list:

  • Posts no longer automatically appear in my Micro.blog timeline.
  • Neither blog posts nor RSS feeds automatically crosspost to Mastodon, I have either to crosspost from ‘Pages’ or refresh feeds manually on the ‘Sources/Feeds’ page.
  • The comments box under posts is completely absent.
  • None of the comments made by me and others on Micro.blog or Mastodon before or after I set up the domain are visibly linked below the posts. Theyā€™re in the timeline though.
  • My custom 404 page does not display when I test by creating a non-existent URL. It’s the same for both the 404.html and the page at layouts/404.html ā€“ in a custom theme based under ‘Marfa’ or others, and edited wholly from the ‘Design’ page. Here’s the design I’ve used on both: https://bt3.com/404.html/ (a work in progress).

I’ve checked through the Help pages too, and this isn’t unusual.

2025

I’m somewhat hesitant to wish everyone a “Happy New Year!”, leaning instead towards “All my very best wishes for a peaceful and fun 2025.”

Now 2024 wasn’t the best from personal and health perspectives.

Our beloved Ruby dog passed away at the end of June, just 3 weeks before we went on a holiday close to Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland. We scattered her ashes at Warkworth beach, I believe her favourite place on earth ā€“ it’s certainly the place we first let her run free.

Ruby dog, a white and ginger cavachon. RIP 07/2024. ā¤ļø
Ruby dog, a white and ginger cavachon. RIP 07/2024. ā¤ļø

The girls are doing well, the oldest on her final year of 6th form college before university, and the youngest in the first year of GCSE studies in high school. We’re so proud of both.

Our matriarch Mollie cat is 15-ish now and showing some signs of slowing down, whereas Stella cat who joined us last year is flourishing ā€“ so much so that maybe we do need to follow the vet’s advice and reduce her food intake.

My wife is getting progressively more tired of the ineptitude and absence of care shown by her work managers, and her health isn’t great ā€“ as I mentioned in another post.

Me, I’m still getting over the covid from 2023 and the whooping cough from earlier in 2024. And the blood pressure meds mean I can’t eat grapefruit or the juice. No great loss there then.

All that remains then, all my very best wishes for a peaceful and fun 2025; life’s what you make it, right?

January credit card bill

Ouch, how the heck did that happenā€½ Lots of relatively small payments added together, that’s how it happened.

And 2 lots of vets bills for Pumpkin puppy’s squitty tummy definitely contributed.

Pumpkin puppy in the kitchen, looking cute, her head on one side. She's actually looking at the doughnut my wife is holding above my head. Mollie cat is looking on from the background, wondering what the fuss is about. Mollie, our matriarch, does not like doughnuts.
Pumpkin puppy in the kitchen, looking cute, her head on one side. She’s actually looking at the doughnut my wife is holding above my head. Mollie cat is looking on from the background, wondering what the fuss is about. Mollie, our matriarch, does not like doughnuts.

Look, she’s worth every penny of course, but we really do need to be thinking seriously of pet insurance.

The great thing about the size of the bill is it gives me the ability to focus on my New Year’s resolutions for 2025, but more on that another time.

Predictions for 2025

My first prediction, Iā€™ll make New Yearā€™s resolutions. Though I donā€™t always blog about it I talk about making some every year.

A quick, non-exhaustive list.

World and domestic political events are a difficult thing for me to talk about publicly. Iā€™ve no influence and so often keep my views private. Youā€™ll find examples on this blog where internalising just takes too long. Hoping my views are on the right side of history. Searching my blog with a term I carefully pre-selected might be useful to at least startto determine my character.

Anyway, 2025?

  • The Ukraine war will end.
  • The Israel vs Gaza/Lebanon/Iran/Syria/common decency/etc. conflicts will end.
  • Lawmakers in the USA will start the process of changing the amendments to their Constitution to make it easy for unlimited terms for incumbents they like.
  • Still-active emergency powers in the USA will be used against anyone the people in power doĀ notĀ like.
  • The United Kingdomā€™s politicians will lurch towards the right, populism will become the de-facto way of engaging with the public.
  • The NFLā€™s Cleveland Browns will win more games than this abysmally unrelenting 2024 season.
  • Iā€™ll get a new car to replace my 15 year-old people carrier/minivan. Not looking forward to the upcoming repair bills before that happens.
  • Iā€™ll execrice. exorcise. exa. Erā€¦ doĀ exercise. Having a puppy now nearly 6 months old helps a lot with basic fitness. Heck, I even ran a couple of times with her the last couple of days. Not prolonged, incorporated into more of a fartlek-style walk

Youā€™ve my oldest daughter to blame for this, I was only going to say Iā€™d eat more healthily in the new year.

Some of her predictions are:

  • King Charles passes away.
  • Trisha Paytas has a new baby. [Who she?]
  • Cancelled influencers gain redemption by becoming less self-centred.
  • US terrorist attack on a major city, either Chicago or San Francisco.
  • Twitter shuts down, either eschewing a physical headquarters or eliminating links within ā€˜Xā€™ entirely.
  • My Chemical Romanceā€™s 5th album.
  • More CEO deaths, not restricted to the health insurance industry.
  • Jimmy Fallon gets cancelled or loses influence in an altogether more final way.
  • Chappell Roan becomes a full country.
  • The UK retirement ages rise. Again.
  • The UK Heath Secretary is fired, not for an affair but for corruption.

There were more but Iā€™ve determined that itā€™s now teatime!