Local WP: Open Site Shell not working on KDE Plasma

Web Dev, WordPress

While running Local WP for WordPress development on my KDE Slimbook, I noticed that the Open Site Shell functionality seemed to fail silently, not opening a terminal window.

It turns out that Local just assumes we are running GNOME and fires off a call to gnome-terminal behind the scenes, hence the failure. To remedy this, we can create a bash script at /usr/bin/gnome-terminal which will fire up Konsole as follows: 

#!/bin/bash
exec /usr/bin/konsole -e  "/bin/bash $@"

Once created, be sure to give the script executable permissions by running the following:

$ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

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Since last year, I’ve been using a KDE Slimbook as my main development machine and recently upgraded to a new machine. This post is part of a series noting down some of the tasks taken during setup, mainly for my own future reference.

Ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67719856/open-site-shell-doesnt-work-with-local-by-flywheel-on-linux

Destructive Rampage

Journal

“Destructive Rampage”

Those are two words that every parent wants to hear when they pick their toddler up from nursery, aren’t they?

While his mother and I go over what should be done, we turn to our respective social networks for any form of opinion or support. Laura-Jane’s friends came back with well crafted and reasoned responses full of advice, experience, links and generally well intended words of encouragement. Mine, on the other hand, came back consistently with the same response…

“Good lad”

I couldn’t help but raise a smile.

 

 

My last stock photograph

For some reason last year I obviously had cause to purchase Istockphoto credits, because I received an email the other day informing me that I had a bunch of them left over and about to expire. Not wanting to take away from working photographers and give to Istock, I  jumped in to look for an image to buy for no other purpose than to use up my 2 remaining credits.

An hour later of spiralling down the stock photo timesink, I got fed up and searched for ‘desperate’, ordered by reverse number of downloads and bought the last photo. For some reason this photo had never been downloaded before. Can’t think why.

Worth noting – it took EVERY bit of energy I have to not buy this photo that came up for ‘weird’, although now I somewhat regret that decision…

HTML5 quote attribution

HTML, Web Dev

I often come across the situation when working on a client site where I need to mark up a  soundbite. Usually a client testimonial or similar in some kind of business site. The problem I find is that these sorts of testimonial quotes all come complete with their own source references and I’ve struggled to find a nice way to mark up this associated data. Usually a name, sometimes a company, sometimes even a company URL are provided. At first glance one might think that the ‘cite’ attribute of our element is an appropriate method, as the spec is clear that the…

Content inside a q element must be quoted from another source, whose address, if it has one, may be cited in the cite attribute. The source may be fictional, as when quoting characters in a novel or screenplay.

Sounds great, but the spec continues that..

If the cite attribute is present, it must be a valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces. To obtain the corresponding citation link, the value of the attribute must be resolved relative to the element. User agents should allow users to follow such citation links.

Quite clearly inappropriate, intended to reference the source document from which a quote has been lifted. It doesn’t really apply in our use case of recounting a spoken quote as a testimonial or similar. Especially when the only attribution that we might have is the name of a person. HTML4 gave us the perfect solution in the <cite> element, providing the following code example…

[html]As <cite>Harry S. Truman</cite> said,
<q lang="en-us">The buck stops here.</q>[/html]

Unfortunately the current HTML5 Working draft lays a big log in our custard by specifically stating that…

The cite element represents the title of a work (e.g. a book, a paper, an essay, a poem, a score, a song, a script, a film, a TV show, a game, a sculpture, a painting, a theatre production, a play, an opera, a musical, an exhibition, a legal case report, etc). This can be a work that is being quoted or referenced in detail (i.e. a citation), or it can just be a work that is mentioned in passing.

A person’s name is not the title of a work — even if people call that person a piece of work — and the element must therefore not be used to mark up people’s names.

The best option it can offer us is the <b> tag or a <span> element, but isn’t really clear as to the best practice – almost hinting that these sorts of attributions shouldn’t be used at all.

Looking back at one of my recent projects, I can see that I chose to use the following markup, which on reflection may also not have been the best solution but provides a level of semantics otherwise not provided

[html]<q>They helped me find a great way of marking up testimonial quotes
<span class="author">A.N. Other</span></q>[/html]

A possible solution – the small element

When reading the HTML5 recommendation for the element we find the following paragraph…

Small print typically features disclaimers, caveats, legal restrictions, or copyrights. Small print is also sometimes used for attribution, or for satisfying licensing requirements.

…which seems to have slipped under the radar up until now. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but the clause Small print is also sometimes used for attribution implies that the best way to mark up the above would be as follows:

[html]<q>They helped me find a great way of marking up testimonial quotes
<small class="author">A.N. Other<small></q>[/html]

It works for me, but can’t help thinking that I’ve missed something or am making a bit of a leap. Otherwise why wouldn’t the W3C list the <small> element among those that could be used for this purpose?

Maybe I need to think this out a bit more, although what’s more likely is that I should maybe think about it a bit less…

Standing desk

Journal

I’m pretty sure that most of my back pain stem from being over 6’2″ tall. Most desks / chairs aren’t really designed for people my size and as I spend the vast majority of my waking hours sat working at a desk this can lead to real problems.

When I had the luxury of being in the employ of a company that cared about these sorts of things, I made it my business to ensure that I had a chair that suited my height, I had some nice desk raisers purchased on my behalf and my screen and laptop sat on their own adjustable stands. All of this not only helped me to achieve good posture so that I could avoid the headaches and back aches that might otherwise have made my working life very uncomfortable, it also drummed into me the guidelines for good ‘workstation ergonomics’. I won’t bore off with those here, but there’s a wonderful image on Wikipedia.

Since going the route of the freelancer and working mostly out of a home office, I’ve found myself without the luxury of an office supplies catalogue, a bank account with thousands of pounds in it and a health and safety representative to badger for this sort of thing. As such, there were old-outdated computer manuals under my screen and a 24 pack of Tesco value cola under my keyboard &  mouse mat. This all seemed to work quite well, and I have been comfortably working with this arrangement for a couple of years.

just lately I have started to become a little sick and tired of sitting down all the time. I sit down to work. I sit down to relax. I sit down on the train or in the car on the way to a meeting. I sit down when having dinner or lunch and then, finally, I lay down to go to sleep at the end of the day…

Sedentary lifestyle, you say? Exactly.

I first heard of the (now becoming very fashionable) concept of a standing desk when listening to Build and Analyze episode 21 , but it wasn’t until I read 5 Ways to Stay Healthy As A Freelancer on that I decided that it might be time to try it out. I think it was while mulling over the paragraph…

If you’re particularly ambitious, you might also want to look into a standing desk. Research has shown that people who stand on their jobs live longer than those who sit.

…that something finally snapped and I grabbed my old tea-chest bass and a wooden shelving unit and away I went…

Will update a fresh blog post with how it’s going very soon!

If you’re interested How and Why I Switched To A Standing Desk is an interesting read on the subject.

Protect your time

Journal

Writing every day – that’s what you’re supposed to do. it doesn’t matter what you write about as long as you just write something.

I’m doing my best with it. I’ve actually managed to take a break from motoring through the 3 web dev projects that I have to finish before Christmas and sit here, drink a big Sports Direct mug of coffee and write a few paragraphs.

That’s right – 3 projects to finish before Christmas. I’m not quite sure how I let myself fall back into the deadline hole again, but it’s certainly not a nice place to be at 3:30 AM.

The problem with being in the deadline hole is not the volume of work that has to be done, but the incredible mood swings it brings out in me as I stomp around the house and generally be obnoxious to my family. I complain of perpetual headaches, yet guzzle through a jar of coffee every two days. I complain of being tired but sleep for 3 hours a night. I complain about the constant interruptions but don’t get up and go and work in the office, choosing to stay at home to ‘get more done’.

I’m going to go on record officially that New Years Resolution number 1 is going to be getting back on the productivity wagon. My pseudo GTD/Pomodoro technique works well, but I’ll also be putting into place some pomodoro sized units of time into my diary and booking everything out again.

Another web dev friend mentioned that he holds me up as a good example of time management while freelancing when talking to other young freelancers, and that’s because he only sees the highly organised side that I pretend to the outside world is always going on back here. When he told me this, it made me realise that it was probably the best way to be.

Rambling on, I think the point that needs to be made is that you should Protect your time. It’s your only real commodity, and everyone is out to get it. Seriously – protect it with your life.