Category Archives: Call Me a Geek

The things I do and think about computers.

Blog Problems Resolved

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It looks like I’ve finally fixed the Home page issues here.

Back in March, my blog started acting weird. I’d post something new and it wouldn’t show up on the Home page for everyone. It showed up for me, though. At least sometimes.

Permalink Settings
Permalink settings for my WordPress blog.

Then I started having issues with the permalinks. You see, WordPress (the blogging platform I use) stores all of its content in a database. Blog pages don’t exist as regular HTML pages like a regular Website. They’re generated on the fly as needed. The permalink is a formulated URL that brings up a specific blog post or other content. For some reason, my permalinks insisted on including a double slash (//) after the domain name. When I tried to restore them to my preferred format (www.aneclecticmind.com/year/month/day/post-name), my blog would cease working.

This was driving me nuts because I couldn’t figure it out for myself and because I was traveling extensively and simply couldn’t take the time to troubleshoot it with my hosting company. When I got home from traveling, I tried once or twice to get it resolved and failed.

I tried again when I was in Ketchikan last week with my laptop and a few hours to spare. My ISP, Bluehost, escalated it up to Tier 3d. Someone did something and they fixed the permalink issue — although they did set it incorrectly. I corrected it today and it “stuck” without causing the whole blog to come crashing down.

But the Home page refresh issue continued to rear its ugly head. I posted two blog posts earlier today — one as a test and the other to get some half-finished content online. Two individual people contacted me to tell me that the post appeared at the link provided on Twitter but not the Home page. I checked and found the same thing.

I logged in to make sure the posts hadn’t been somehow deleted. They were there. I went to the Home page and they appeared. As they should.

I logged out and checked again. They were gone. The most recent post that appeared was the one I’d written back on March 8.

What the hell?

I called Bluehost to set up another ticket. It took a few tries for the support guy to duplicate the problem. He was certain it was related to caching.

I used to use a caching app to speed up the site. The tech support folks had told me that it might be causing the Permalink issue so I deleted it.

The Bluehost guy couldn’t fix this issue, but he promised to open a ticket and move it up to Tier 2. I thanked him and hung up.

I was unhappy. I like to blog. I’ve been blogging here since 2003 — 16 years in October. There were a lot of things I wanted to say, a lot of stories I wanted to share about my recent travels. I can’t add new content to my blog if my blog isn’t working right.

So I rolled up my sleeve and started poking around in the WordPress files that aren’t in the database. I found a cache folder. Inside the cache folder was a folder named all. That folder was full of numbered folders, including some that corresponded to years and, within them, months. Just like WordPress organizes my post permalinks. There was also an index.html file. I opened it up and guess what I found? The home page that kept appearing for people who weren’t logged in.

I called Bluehost tech support again. Of course, I couldn’t talk to the same guy. The guy I got wasn’t quite as knowledgeable. I told him about the problem and what I’d found. I asked him if he thought I could delete the all folder. He didn’t think that would be a good idea. How about renaming it? Sure. I could always restore the name.

So I renamed all to _all. And I went back to the Home page of my blog. And it properly displayed my most recent post at the top of the Home page.

I asked him to look at it. It showed him the same thing.

I got on Twitter and asked my followers to try it and report back. A handful of them did. It was working right for them, too.

Problem solved.

I deleted the _all folder and everything still works fine. Then I reinstalled a highly recommended cache plugin and turned it on. Still fine.

So at this point, my blog seems to be mostly fixed.

I say mostly because I need to update WordPress to the most recent version and I can’t because the whole blog is running on an old version of PHP and I can’t seem to update it. That already has a Bluehost ticket in Tier 2 going.

Why can’t things be simple?

A New Laptop

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I finally replace my aging MacBook Air.

Back in the days when I wrote books about using computers — roughly 1991 through 2012 — I used to buy a new desktop computer every two years and a new laptop every three years. 2011 was my last big computer purchase year: I bought a 27″ iMac and an 11″ MacBook Air.

I used the iMac for seven years, replacing multiple parts under AppleCare, before it finally got so unreliable — think spurious rebooting — that I had to replace it with another 27″ iMac last year.

MacBook Pro
Unboxing my new laptop this morning.

The MacBook Air was killing me with its sluggishness. I bought some time my deleting as many files as I could from the hard disk — mostly removing all music and most photos — so there was plenty of free disk space for the operating system to play with. That helped a bit, but so did running only one application at a time. Soon, even that didn’t help much, so I replaced it the other day with a 13″ MacBook Pro.

I still haven’t decided how much I like the new machine. What’s interesting to me is that the new MacBook Pro weighs about the same as my old Air and is the same width — despite the fact that the new one’s screen is considerably larger. They keyboard feels good, but the trackpad just doesn’t feel right at all. It is wicked fast — well, compared to its 8-year-old predecessor.

Oddly, back when I wrote about computers for a living, I really looked forward to getting a new machine and setting it up. Back then, it took a lot of work — digging out installation disks, manually re-entering configuration information, troubleshooting little problems to make sure the new computer worked just like the old one. These days, setting up is a lot easier with basically all the software available online for download and configuration information copied from iCloud or elsewhere, but I dread doing it. I bought this computer on Monday and it sat on the countertop on my kitchen island waiting for me to open it, which I finally did this morning.

What do I use my laptop for? Mostly blogging, emailing, and keeping track of my accounting records, etc. when I’m traveling. But this laptop should have enough power to edit 1080p HD video, so I can get more videos online without being a slave to my big computer up in my loft.

I’m hoping I have an old laptop sleeve that’ll fit it. It would be a shame to scratch it up.

This blog post, by the way, serves two purposes:

  • First, it’s a test for my installation of MarsEdit, which is my blogging tool of choice. It looks like it’ll pass the test.
  • Second, it’s a test for my actual blog, which has been having permalink problems for the past three months that have been resulting in broken links and missing files. I’ve really got my fingers crossed that it works the way it should. I have a lot of blog posts that need publishing; if this works right, you’ll see a flurry of other ones over the next few days.

Breathing New Life into Old Hardware

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If it still works, why not use it?

Since moving into my home, I’ve been looking for a speaker solution that would allow me to play music or podcasts throughout my home and garage. I did all the wiring for my home, but I (sadly) did not think of wiring it for audio. Repeated Googling and Amazon shopping did not give me the kind of system I wanted: a wifi-based speaker setup that would work with my phone. All I could find was Bluetooth solutions, which were a real pain in the ass — every time I moved out of range, the sound would cut out, sometimes requiring a manual reconnect.

I was on Apple’s website this morning looking for a Homekit-compatible light switch. That’s a whole other story and I’ll try to tell it briefly: I have high ceilings in my living space and my heating ducts are pretty high on the wall. Two of them are actually up on my loft. Heat rises so, in the winter, it gets pretty warm up on the loft (and high up in the living room and bedroom). I have a temperature sensor in the loft that works with a smart plug to turn on a fan there when the loft temperature exceeds 74°F and shut off the fan when it drops back down below 71°F. (It also stays off at night since it isn’t exactly quiet and I don’t want to listen to it when I’m trying to sleep.) The fan pushes the air out into the living room where two standard ceiling fans push the warm air down into the room. It works great and keeps the furnace from running all day long, but I have to manually turn on those two ceiling fans. I want smart switches that’ll use the temperature sensor in the loft to turn them on and off automatically. So that’s why I was at Apple’s website: to see what smart switches they offered.

While I was there, I reacquainted myself with Airplay, which I actually blogged about way back in 2005 when it was called AirTunes. Back in those days, I was writing books about using Mac OS and had to buy all kinds of hardware to write about it. I’d bought an AirPort Express base station and later bought another one. I think I used them for music or printers or both. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.

Well, I still have both of those old AirPort Express base stations. For a while, I was using one of them for remote printing from my color laser printer, which I kept in my loft. My office is up there now and the printer is directly connected to my iMac so I don’t need the AirPort Express. I started wondering whether I could still use it for speakers.

The short answer: Yes.

Of course, it wasn’t easy to set up. Even though my desktop Mac is now about 6 years old and is running an old version of Mac OS — 10.10.5 Yosemite — the version of the AirPort Utility I needed to configure a 12-year-old AirPort Express would not run on my computer. I even fired up my old MacBook Pro, which is running Mac OS 10.9, and it wouldn’t run on that, either. I knew I’d configured it just a few years ago for the printer and had to do some Googling to remember how I’d done it. That’s when I found the ZCS AirPort Utility Launcher. This free utility fools AirPort Utility v5.6.1 into thinking it’s getting launched on an old version of Mac OS. That gets it running so it can configure the old base station.

An Old Version of AirPort Utility
Here’s AirPort Utility 5.6.1 running on a Mac with the Yosemite OS installed. Both of my old AirPort Express base stations are configured for speaker duty.

Even then I had trouble getting it to see the base station. I had to use an Ethernet cable to connect the damn thing directly to my ACUS router. And reset the base station by pressing in the tiny button with a pen point.

But once the software could see the base station, it configured it without any problems. I had it connect to my 2.4 G network. Then I hooked up a pair of cheap powered speakers that I used to use with my Mac, and got it playing music from my iMac and, later, from my iPhone. Success!

I went down into the garage and tracked down the other AirPort Express. I set it up the same way. I hooked that up to a stereo clock radio in the bedroom that I rarely use. I might even put it by the bed.

I still have an old Time Capsule somewhere; if I can find it, I’ll set it up for the living room and move the Express down into the garage. I’ve got an old boom box down there with great speakers; it should work fine with AirPlay.

Of course, the next hurdle to jump was being able to play music on multiple AirPlay speakers at the same time. After all, I wanted my music all over the house and garage when I was playing it. My phone could only stream to one device at a time.

More Googling. This time, I learned about an Apple iOS app called Remote. I could install it on my iPhone, pair the phone to my computer’s copy of iTunes, and be able to access my computer’s music from my phone. It works. And it sounds pretty damn good coming from speakers all over the house.

I know this blog post makes me sound super geeky. Deep down inside, I am. I especially love taking old computer hardware that most people would have thrown away by now and use it for a new purpose. Sure — I could go out and buy new AirPort Express base stations at a cost of $99 each. But why should I when the old ones I have still work?