Stationary Journey

Update October 15, 2023

Terry Finney — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 08:23:35 +0100

Well, it’s just over 5 years since the last update. A lot has gone on in the intervening period, but Stationaryjourney.com isn’t dead, just continuing to rest for a while. It will be back, but I can’t give a timescale a the moment.

Best wishes to you all.

The post Update October 15, 2023 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

Recent Links March 03, 2018

Terry Finney — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 17:06:51 +0100

A post of recent links. I aim for weekly but rarely achieve that.
* Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @ViewsBench on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @ViewsBench on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @ViewsBench on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @ViewsBench on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @ViewsBench on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @marcoarment on Twitter
* Tweeted Tweet by @terryfinney on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @tranquilcityapp on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @_youhadonejob1 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @helenhousandi on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @OfficialBagpuss on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @Hisnibs1 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @Malboury on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @Malboury on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @VejrnerH on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @folpe17 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @_youhadonejob1 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @AMAZlNGNATURE on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @OnePerfectShot on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @_youhadonejob1 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @JamesBlunt on Twitter
* Scribus – Open Source Desktop Publishing bookmarked to Pinboard
* I Bring Stones To Life By Painting The Living Spirit Of The Being I Feel Inside The Stone (New Pics) | Bored Panda bookmarked to Pinboard

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Recent Links January 28, 2018

Terry Finney — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 17:30:15 +0100

First post of 2018 and it’s a links post. Must do better.
* Avengers: Infinity War – Official Trailer (2018) Marvel Movie HD liked on YouTube
* Favourited Tweet by @dodo on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @RealBobMortimer on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @robertoglezcano on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @_youhadonejob1 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @_youhadonejob1 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @GeorgeTakei on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @morse1960 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @_youhadonejob1 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @ShimermanArmin on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @BBCArchive on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @AMAZlNGNATURE on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @AMAZlNGNATURE on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @_youhadonejob1 on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @AMAZlNGNATURE on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @OnePerfectShot on Twitter
* Tweeted Tweet by @terryfinney on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @nilerodgers on Twitter
* Favourited Tweet by @OnePerfectShot on Twitter

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Recent Links February 21, 2017

Terry Finney — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 13:02:55 +0100

Yes I am still alive, and I’ve clearly been spending too much time on Twitter and YouTube. I also seem to be favouriting tweets by accident when I’m just scrolling through them on my phone – need to watch that in future. Looking back I’ve been doing it for a long time but I haven’t spotted it until now. I think I’ve successfully caught the most recent ones.

Favourited Tweet by @Pinboard on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @Donalds_Diary on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
Here’s everything Google Assistant can do on the Pixel | Android Central bookmarked to Pinboard
Favourited Tweet by @OnePerfectShot on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @tvaziri on Twitter
San Junipero (Black Mirror) – Heaven Is A Place On Earth ᴴᴰ liked on YouTube
Favourited Tweet by @JarettSays on Twitter
Hayley Atwell the Queen of Dubsmash – Part I liked on YouTube
Hayley Atwell the Queen of Dubsmash – Part II liked on YouTube
Hayley Atwell the Queen of Dubsmash – Part III liked on YouTube
Agents of SHIELD/Agent Carter Dubsmash COMPLETE COMPILATION liked on YouTube
Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @OnePerfectShot on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @CoolPastPics on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @CoolPastPics on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @CoolPastPics on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @PulpLibrarian on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @OnePerfectShot on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @its_love_tym on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @OnePerfectShot on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @Donalds_Diary on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @porksmith on Twitter
Tweeted Tweet by @terryfinney on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @MarvelStudios on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @pencilcaseblog on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @OnePerfectShot on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter
Favourited Tweet by @oldpicsarchive on Twitter

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Why we can’t have nice things

Terry Finney — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:55:46 +0100

My wireless SD card, an Eye-Fi Pro X2, bought in 2013, was a nice little card that went in my camera. When I took photos the card synced them to my phone, geotagging them in the process. The photos would then sync to Flickr when the phone was next connected to Wi-Fi. If I wanted to use mobile data I could share them from my phone almost immediately. Most of the photos on this site used that process. There was also a desktop app which didn’t reinstall when I upgraded my desktop PC to Windows 10 last year as I rarely needed to use it – the phone app was still working fine and I was very happy with it.

When I bought the Olympus Pen E-P7L in 2015 and found the wireless features to be effectively unusable I quickly bought another Eye-Fi card which was available at that timne, the Eye-Fi Mobi. I didn’t put much research into it, so I can only blame myself for not realising that its features were more limited. I do remember reading about Eye-Fi Cloud, but had no intention of using it because I was happy with the Flickr syncing with the other phone app. In practice I didn’t use two cameras at once, didn’t find the Mobi reliable and wasn’t impressed with the features so I kept using the Pro X2.

I haven’t been posting anything recently or taking many photos. I also managed to miss and email that I received in June saying that the Pro X2 would stop working in September. So I when I took some photos yesterday for the next review and wondered why they wouldn’t sync to Flickr a few minutes searching on Google reminded me why we can’t have nice things (or we can have them until someone realises they aren’t making enough money out of them).

If I believe the official line the Pro X2 had security vulnerabilities which could not be addressed through software. So for my own good the card won’t work any more, other than as a standard SD card. A desktop application has been provided which is supposed to allow wireless transfers, but I can’t get it to work and in the process it had eroded any remaining confidence I had in Eye-Fi to provide reliable software.

The Mobi card will still work (lucky I could still find the activation code), but with a different app now confusingly called “Keenai”. Oddly this wanted access to my contacts – should I be worried? It wouldn’t even show a thumbnail of a transferred photo until I rebooted the phone. It doesn’t sync to Flickr, although Google Photos will see the transferred photos and sync them, at least at the moment. It doesn’t seem to GPS tag either – I’ve read somewhere that the card is supposed to, but can see no option to do it in Keenai. It looks like to get full use of the Mobi I need to pay for the Cloud service which at $49 per year is nearly as much as I paid for the Pro X2 in 2013. Alternatively I could get the latest Mobi Pro version which has a year’s free Eye-Fi Cloud however based on my recent experience that’s not going to happen, so I’ll blunder on the the Mobi and its limited features until something better comes along.

To conclude, my suspicion regarding the Pro X2 is not that it had a security flaw but that it was just too good. It had all the features I needed so there was no need to upgrade or buy into the Cloud service which provided essentially the same features at a higher price. I have no illusions that this is about me individually – but I think that enough people didn’t use Eye-Fi Cloud that the company realised it had a problem. It was being denied the income stream that its investors expected, so it appears they decided to go the route of enforced obsolescence. This post dating back to 2012 seems quite prescient SmartBear, especially as 2012 is the same year that phasing out of the Pro X2 began. Of course other companies try this on a regular basis – I’ve already been on the receiving end of it repeatedly. However my direct experience of that so far has been to stop receiving software updates – not a piece of hardware that abruptly stopped working as it has previously. I am aware of the Revolv and the publicity over that has has been enough to put me off ever buying anything from Nest. This latest experience will put me off buying anything from Eye-Fi ever again.

Better get back to work on the overdue reviews.

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Situation Normal

Terry Finney — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 13:07:27 +0100

After two changes of operating systems involving two reinstalls and a change in hosting provider, I’ve decided the point has come where I need to give less attention to around with the server and start posting again. Along the way I went down the rabbit hole and explored Google PageSpeed Insights, where improving the score is possibly the darkest art I’ve come across across since I started setting up websites. Change one thing to try to improve the score and instead it makes it worse – reverse the change and the worse score remains. Flush all the caches. It still stays at the lower score.

And don’t get me started on “Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content”, which seems to be baked into the core of WordPress – only way of stopping so far has involved accepting a Flash of (or even permanent) Unstyled Content, which in 2016 I’m not prepared to do. So I’ve taken things as far as I can for the moment and the only negative at the moment is that my Gravatar doesn’t appear properly on posts. Any more substantial PageSpeed improvements would involve a fundamental redesign of the site and to do that I think it would be better to stop changing the existing site and instead set up a test one and gradually build it back up from scratch. I know that’s really just good practice but this experience has reminded me that what starts out as a bit of apparently harmless tweaking can open up a world of pain on a live site.

The day job also hasn’t helped but without that I doubt I would be posting in the first place. Now I have a serious backlog on reviews and limited time, so no more wittering on a bout the server. A links posts will follow this one – it will be obvious that I’ve not been reading much in the last 3 months either!

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Stationary Journey

Update October 15, 2023

Recent Links October 14, 2018

Recent Links September 14, 2018

Recent Links August 19, 2018

Recent Links May 20, 2018

Recent Links April 07, 2018

Recent Links March 03, 2018

Recent Links January 28, 2018

Recent Links November 28, 2017

Recent Links September 15, 2017

Recent Links July 29, 2017

Recent Links April 08, 2017

Recent Links March 19, 2017

Recent Links February 21, 2017

Why we can’t have nice things

Recent Links November 21, 2016

Situation Normal

More Server Problems

Recent Links August 28, 2016