Disqus - Latest Comments for poddys

Re: How to Block YouTube Channels From Appearing in Your Feed

Tony Payne — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 10:36:36 -0000

Took me a while to fully comprehend but finally got there! From the home page one of their "fake news from Ukraine" videos came up and I was able to not recommend them. Handy to know!

Re: Book Writing Software: Top 10 Pieces of Software for Writers

Tony Payne — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 09:51:10 -0000

Thanks Terry, great advice.

Re: Is Youtube Premium worth it? What you need to know - Android Authority

Tony Payne — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 06:54:02 -0000

I have thought about signing up for this for a while as I use YouTube a lot, but the monthly subscription is quite a lot of money. However, I'm now watching music videos 1-2 hours most days while at the gym and it's not always easy to skip the ads when you are working out, plus the frequency of ads has increased in the last few months. Being able to download videos to watch offline would also be a big benefit for me, as I don't have data access on my phone and it would be handy for watching videos when travelling. What's not to like, except the price of course.

Re: Book Writing Software: Top 10 Pieces of Software for Writers

Tony Payne — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 09:28:03 -0000

Great information Joe, thanks very much. I'm just starting to write my first book and looking for advice on formatting and just about anything and everything before I go too far, so I hopefully don't have to then re-jig what I have written at a later date.

I have used Word for years, but based on a few articles it looks like Google Docs might be a good place for me to start.

What I haven't been able to find any information on though is writing a long book by creating different chapters/sections as separate documents. There has to be a time when editing a massive document becomes cumbersome, from the time to open and save it to the time required to navigate it. Then there is the problem of reorganizing chapters if you decide to change the book around. That's got to be much harder I assume if it's a large book with a lot of chapters.

I was thinking of writing my book using separate documents and incorporating them into a "master" document for viewing the whole thing. I know you used to be able to do that in Word, but it doesn't look like it's something people are doing these days.

Meanwhile, I'm going to outline my chapters and get started.

Re: New app turns smartphones into speed cameras

Tony Payne — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 14:28:44 -0000

We live on a road that is straight, about 1/3 mile long, enough room for 2 cars to pass if there are none parked. However, cars are parked along most of the road, so most of the length is effectively a single lane, but it doesn't stop morons from literally trying to see how fast they can go before they have to brake!
The road is a 30mph limit and almost half the drivers think it's ok to go 40mph. Some go in excess of 50-60mph which would prove deadly if a child ran out or an elderly person or mother with child was trying to cross the road.
Why wouldn't I want to use something like this to try and prevent people from speeding?
There is also the noise from speeding, which is really annoying, especially at night.

Re: Radiator Valve Guide

Tony Payne — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 16:41:46 -0000

https://uploads.disquscdn.c... I am hoping you can help as you seem to be an expert when it comes to radiator valves and I'm struggling to find an adapter that will enable me to fit Hive TRV's onto my radiators.
The old valves appear to be M28 and Hive do provide an adapter, but the pin on the old valve is too long and the thread is also short. I tried another adapter but that didn't work either because the pin was too long.
I have added a couple of photos of the existing valves, which seem to have DN15 and what looks like ART65410.
A plumber quoted me £600 to replace the existing valves and drain the system, which is excessive. I really would like to use the Hive TRV's if possible (already purchased when we recently had a new boiler fitted) https://uploads.disquscdn.c... https://uploads.disquscdn.c... as we have my elderly MIL coming to live with us and will need to keep one room HOT while we want the rest of the house cool.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Re: Caching WordPress Pages at the Edge using Cloudflare

Tony Payne — Wed, 05 May 2021 13:37:58 -0000

Following these guidelines I have been using the WP Cloudflare plugin for a few weeks and it's made a huge difference to my page load performance by caching everything for pages.
I have had to not show the Admin Toolbar as this was being cached. It just means to access the backend pages I have to manually go to the dashboard as no link shows.
The biggest problem I am aware of is that if I edit a post, when I Update it and Display it, the Edit button shows and the page is cached as if I was signed in. I have got around this by then clearing the CF cache and opening the page again in another browser where I am not signed in. Hokey but it works.

Also, I use a Pinterest browser addon to add posts to Pinterest. I have to make sure I do this from the 2nd browser where I am not signed in, otherwise the signed in version of the page is linked, including the Cloudflare plugin parameter on the url.
Having said that, the site performance is much improved by caching everything in Cloudflare. I'm just waiting for Google to catch up and raise the ranking. Fingers crossed.

Re: Looking Back at 2019 – A Year in Review

Tony Payne — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 16:20:50 -0000

Wow quite a year! Hoping 2020 is also wonderful and eventful for you. Next time in the London area, the Harry Potter Studio Tour is absolutely amazing. I took my daughters when they came over from Florida and they loved it.

Re: Hiking the Cinque Terre

Tony Payne — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 15:08:03 -0000

This is somewhere I would love to go and hiking the coast would be amazing. Just a shame my wife would struggle on the hills, but if I had the opportunity I would leap at it.

Re: What Are Backlinks And How Do I Get Them?

Tony Payne — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 15:06:29 -0000

Thanks Russell. Yes I am on LinkedIn, but don't tend to use it much these days.

Re: How I've Tripled My Blog Views January 2020 | Kayleigh Zara

Tony Payne — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 09:25:29 -0000

I really do need to work on boosting my traffic (and hopefully earnings) this year as well. Things used to be good about 5 years ago, but I ran out of time to write articles that required research time, and also ran out of steam.

I think that sometimes going back and editing old articles is also a good thing. I wrote some brilliant articles over the last 10 years, but looking back on them now I'm not so sure! There is a lot to be desired as regards SEO optimisation as well as the occasional grammatical or spelling mistake, and re-hashing an article can sometimes give it a new lease of life.
I am also revamping my post tags, giving both tags and categories descriptions, so the archive pages have an identity of their own.
Good Luck with your blog, wish me well with mine.

Re: A Wintery Break at the Roman Camp Hotel.* [Gifted]

Tony Payne — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 09:19:04 -0000

Wow the hotel looks really quaint on the outside, and inside like somewhere out of time. I wonder if they have filmed any tv shows or movies there.

Re: 10 Benefits of Integrating Cloudflare in WordPress

Tony Payne — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 01:22:07 -0000

Especially if the server seems overloaded I guess. Thanks, I will try turning the minification plugin off and see if there are some improvements in performance.

Re: 10 Benefits of Integrating Cloudflare in WordPress

Tony Payne — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 15:24:03 -0000

I'm in a similar situation. Even with low traffic, each of my 3
Wordpress sites on my X10Infinity account create faults and overloads
with frequent page load errors. I am hoping that Cloudflare will help.

If I understand right, it's not worth minifying the JS/CSS using WP plugins as Cloudflare will do it anyhow?
I am also minifying the HTML using a plugin .
Using Async Javascript, Autooptimize and WP-Optimize.

Re: 10 Benefits of Integrating Cloudflare in WordPress

Tony Payne — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 15:15:05 -0000

I have been paying ever increasing registration fees to GoDaddy for my domains. Such a shame I only found out the lower cost for using Cloudflare yesterday as one domain renewed today and I don't have time to change it over. But the rest will be switched shortly for sure.

Re: Caching WordPress Pages at the Edge using Cloudflare

Tony Payne — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 15:10:11 -0000

Thanks Gijo.

Re: What Are Backlinks And How Do I Get Them?

Tony Payne — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 15:05:40 -0000

Makes sense Russell, thanks.
The consistency in posting is one of my problems. Posts often take time to research, and time is often short. Then there are those posts where I can almost type on auto-pilot...

Re: What Are Backlinks And How Do I Get Them?

Tony Payne — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 03:20:03 -0000

Thanks for the backlinks tips.

The problems these days are that so many sites listed on Google for any given keyword (for example jokes blogs) haven't been updated in ages, still don't use https, or don't allow comments. It does make searching for a good site to use for backlinks, to "trade" backlinks (I hate that term) or to leave comments on, pretty time time consuming.
It's only worth it of course if it's a good quality backlink.

Obviously some topics are better than others. Something like crafts, gardening etc does have a lot more options when it comes to blogs.

Re: Caching WordPress Pages at the Edge using Cloudflare

Tony Payne — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 02:57:58 -0000

Thanks very much for this article. It's the only one I have found that gives a good guide on how to set page rules for Wordpress sites using Cloudflare.

The only query I have is that in Cloudflare they recommend the following settings for wp-admin pages:

*famouspeoplefrombournemouth.com/wp-admin/* Disable Security, Cache Level: Bypass, Disable Performance

You only mention Cache Level: Bypass. I wondered if the other settings will improve or break the site?
I only set Cloudflare up yesterday, so still waiting to be sure the DNS is 100% moved across.

Re: 9 Ways to Increase Affiliate Sales!

Tony Payne — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 17:20:56 -0000

Useful tips. One of the problems with my sites is that they are not product oriented, so I do miss out on the revenue and traffic from writing product reviews. That is definitely a lucrative area.
The problem for me is trying to leverage more revenue from writing articles on a range of topics on one site, and writing humorous articles on another, both sites being hard to gain revenue on these days.

Re: Azerbaijan GP: Charles Leclerc fastest in practice

Tony Payne — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 17:15:10 -0000

It's nice to see Charles LeClerc giving Vettel competition. Interesting to see how the Qualifiers and of course the race itself go, as Ferarri seem to have had the fastest pace so far this season in practice, but can't retain that on race day.

Re: sqlrpgle select into extname using freeform

Tony Payne — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 11:43:33 -0000

Aaaaggghhhh!!!
My mistake, I forgot to define a variable in the dcl-pr for the program that was used later in the code.
For some reason this caused the errors with the data structures.
All fixed now though :)

Hi Nick,

Finally I found a post where someone (you!) are experiencing exactly the same problem as I am, however your solution doesn't work for me for some reason. I'm wondering if it's because we are on 7.1 and maybe we need a PTF applying.

The relevant sections of the code I have (generated in RDI) is as below:

Data structure definition from external file
// Stock master data structure dcl-ds stkmstpfDS extname(stkmstpf) qualified; end-ds;

Note: Unlike your code, mine compiles without quotes around the external file name, but fails if I add them.

SQL select
exec sql select * into :stkmstpfDS from stkmstpf where skmno = :pStkItem;

SQL insert
exec sql insert into stkmstpf values(:stkmstpfDS) with NC;

I am using this to retrieve a record from this file. I then want to create a new record, updating and resetting a number of the fields (including the key) before doing the insert.

On both the select and insert statements I get this error:

SQL0312: Position 18 Variable STKMSTPFDS not defined or not usable.

I wondered if you or anyone else who reads this has any thoughts.

Thanks in advance.
Tony Payne

Re: Baked sweetcorn fritters with Mexican-style salad recipe

Tony Payne — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 15:55:45 -0000

This sounds really good for work.

Re: GB aws-amazon-web-services

Tony Payne — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 16:24:11 -0000

Can't get into Simcity Buildit in the Kindle Fire. When I try to access parts of the EA site on the laptop, the Amazon AWS sections won't load.

Re: Javascript parseInt gotcha (All browsers)

Tony Payne — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 05:08:00 -0000

Just had the same problem, pushing a row onto an array using Jquery and an integer had been formatted to have leading zeros. This is definitely a weird one, something you wouldn't expect to have to program around, but at least if you are aware of it, it's easy to fix.