If you’re a fan of Fawlty Towers, the hit British comedy from the 70s, then you’ll love The Dining Experience. Apart from the entertaining “shows” the three actors put on, you’ll, of course, be eating a three-course meal. In Cork, they performed in the Metropole Hotel, so the food was great. Portions were small but it’s the experience you’re paying for and I have no hestitation in recommending it if you’re at all familiar with the show!
WordPress
Speculating on what to load next
The Speculative Loading plugin for WordPress is a plugin you should probably try out on your site, especially if you use WP Super Cache or Jetpack Boost to cache things. It uses the new speculation API that Chrome/Edge supports to load pages in the background if you even hover over a link. It will dynamically prefetch or prerender pages before they’re requested by the visitor on your site, which means that the page will show instantly when the visitor actually clicks the link. It doesn’t work in Firefox yet, but it won’t hurt either, as the browser will just ignore […]
Podcasts
Enough of the Moon already?
With the solar eclipse in the United States, and Ireland and the UK getting a partial eclipse, you’re probably sick of Moon coverage, but I would just like to point you to a couple of podcasts you’ll enjoy if you want more. Both shows are great, but if you’re only going to listen to one, listen to The Rest is History, sorry Radiolab. But you should listen to both! If you have even more time to spare, you should listen to the Omega Tau podcast episodes on the Apollo missions I listed in this blog post about Apollo. Fascinating listening. […]
Travel
I’m a little tired after walking home
It’s good to be back in Cork today, even with Storm Kathleen on the way. I forgot to end my tracked walk when I got to Gate 26 in Schiphol Airport, and Google Fit somehow managed to pick up GPS signals every now and again as we flew home. So, it looks like I walked from Amsterdam to Cork. 🙂 I’ve no idea how I walked 2km off the coast of Ireland, somewhere south of Waterford. There was some bad turbulence on the flight, but we weren’t quite bouncing up and down in our seats!
Web
The Netnewswire Reader View rocks
Netnewswire is an RSS reader for macOS and iOS devices. You know podcasts? Like that, but for reading. RSS readers have been around for a long time, long before social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. They allow you to follow updates on your favourites sites, which could also include the personal sites of people you know. Twitter used to have RSS feeds, Facebook never did (AFAIR), but Mastodon sites (and other Fediverse services) do. This blog has an RSS feed. You can follow my interesting posts there. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you already know all this. Anyway, […]
Photography
R.I.P. John Free
John Free was a very talented street photographer in Los Angelus, who I have admired for many years. I saw on Facebook that he passed away last night. If you’re at all interested in photography, have a look at his YouTube channel, where you will get a taste of his excitement, enthusiasm and energy for photography and people. I forgot he posted a video from the Musée D’Orsay a few years ago, but I’m extra happy that I visited there last year, and as John suggested in the video, I was able to balance the subject with the art.
General
TIL there’s an underground roundabout in the Faroe Islands
11Km of tunnels were built between some of the islands of the Faroe Islands, and right in the middle of one of those tunnels, 70 metres underground, is a roundabout. It enables drivers to go to Runavik or Strendur. It cuts travel time from just over an hour to 16 minutes. Hugely impressive.
Music
Keith Jarrett – The Cologne Concert
I’d heard of the troubles Keith Jarrett had when he played in Cologne but forgot to find out what his music sounded like until I came across the incident again this morning while listening to Cautionary Tales. Jarrett was due to play in the opera house there and requested a particular type of piano. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find the one he wanted and provided him with a beaten up rehearsal model. It was out of tune, the pedals were sticky, and it was in a terrible condition. He refused to play at first, but after the promoter, an 18yo woman […]
WordPress
Gimme all your cache!
Today saw the release of updates to two plugins I work on. The first, unsurprisingly, is WP Super Cache, and it’s a bug fix release. It fixed a PHP8.2 warning, adjusted some labels on the settings page, solved a problem with “late init” and POST requests, and some other changes, but the major news I want to share is not about that plugin at all. I’m on the Jetpack Boost team in Automattic, and for the last month or so, we’ve been working on adding a full-page cache to the plugin! Jetpack Boost is already a pretty remarkable plugin, with […]
Ireland
You’re voting today in the referendum?
Here in Ireland, we are holding a referendum on changing two sections of our constitution. If I were to summarise the changes, I’d say: On this, International Women’s Day, many of the woman I know are voting NO to both changes. Here are the main objections I see: I’m still not sure how I’ll vote. It will probably be no-no, but I may vote yet to the family one, as any ambiguity about the definition of “durable relationship” may be less trouble than the positives of having more relationships recognised. That’s up to the courts, however, which makes voting for […]