Category: Blog
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Containerizing My WordPress Blog: Part 2 – Exporting the Live Site
These are my notes, to help remind me what I did…. The goal Get everything out of the live WordPress install and into a staging directory that Docker can work with. Nothing here touches the live site. It’s all copies. Create the project directory Get the config files in place I had docker-compose.yml, env.example, and…
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The Case of the /index.php/ That Wouldn’t Leave
For longer than I’d like to admit, every URL on this blog wore a little badge of shame: /index.php/ wedged right into the middle of it. Not /2026/06/the-post/ like a civilized website, but /index.php/2026/06/the-post/, as if the server wanted everyone to know exactly which file was doing the work back there. It also meant my…
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Adding Google Analytics from a Hotel Room
These are my notes to remind future me how I did this because it was a bit unconventional. I found myself stuck in a hotel room for a few days with a laptop that could not connect to the server of my blog. There’s a few projects I’ve been meaning to get around to. One…
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Containerizing my WordPress Blog
I’ve decided it’s finally time to learn containerization and am going to start with this blog. I’m running Ubuntu 24.04 and will be installing from the offical Docker repo since it’s the latest release. The Ubuntu repo often lags behind the official release. Step 1 – Check if ca-certificates are installed. In order to download…
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The 2 MB Upload Limit that Came Back from the Dead After an Ubuntu Upgrade
I upgraded my blog server from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04 only to realize today that I couldn’t upload pictures — that ancient 2 MB default cap had quietly reasserted itself. The reason it came back: the upgrade installed a fresh PHP 8.3 with a clean php.ini, so all my old tuned values were left behind…
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Chrome Looked at my Video and Said Nothing
This was driving me nuts. When I upload videos recorded from my Pixel phone onto my WordPress blog, they would not render on the post page. Here’s how I found the problem and how I fixed it. The problem is the codec. An mp4 file is just a wrapper. What matters is what’s inside it.…
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Some Mistakes I Made Trying to Automate Backups of My WordPress Blog
I’m giving myself some side projects to keep my skills sharp. Well, I’m going to apply for a supervisor position soon and I’m worried about losing my technical skills so I’m giving myself fun tech projects at home. One I’ve been thinking about lately is backing up my blog. I wanted a cronjob script to…
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Upgrading Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04 While Running a Live WordPress Site
I was today years old when I realized that my hosting service (Linode) allows for one snapshot. This finally gave me the impetus to upgrade Ubuntu since I’m comforted knowing there’s a one button rollback. First thing I did was update all my WordPress plugins. Then I ran the following sequence: Everything worked fine except…
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Traxxas Disruptor Day 4
Day 4. Today I remembered my phone has slow motion capture and gave it a go. Turned out interesting. It’s a lot easier to see what’s going on in the wipeouts… Got some sunrise glow on the rooster tail….
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Traxxas Disruptor Day 3
Great morning. Gave it half a dozen full throttle pulls. Some texture on the water though preventing it from going smoothly. This model likes to skip around on the surface. It moves like a fish, sudden darts in tangential directions. Unlike a fish though, it really doesn’t want to be in the water. It loves…