Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

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Stars and Stripes Theme Progress Report

I have been working on restoring our old theme the “Stars and Stripes” format that we’ve been used to since 2008 or so. The news is generally good since I found and corrected the major incompatibility with WordPress 5.8.2. There was a code module that was attempting to connect to the database and I commented it out without really troubleshooting it. The old theme now works without crashing, but there are still some bugs in it so I have not enabled it yet.

The remaining bugs have to do with the way the drop down menus work and most importantly, how the comments section works. The former is no big deal, but the latter – comments – is a big problem. The theme modules apparently are not recognizing a logged in user and requiring a new login each time a comment is to be submitted. I’ll be looking into that.

Assuming that I cannot find and fix those bugs to my satisfaction, I am also looking into upgrading the theme format to a later version that I can modify to sort of resemble the old theme but with new “blocks, widgets and menus,” none of which I am familiar, so it may be a while before I know enough about the new stuff to be able to put it to good use.

Meanwhile, the “default” WordPress theme is still functional. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.

17 Nov 2021 by Blogosphere Technobabble

WordPress and PHP Upgrade Complete

Arizona CardinalToday, we upgraded both WordPress on the blogsite and the Version of PHP on the server side. It turned out to be a several-step process with two intermediate WP upgrades in addition to the final WP update. We should be good for a while now that everything is copasetic with the Server configuration.

Image – An Arizona Cardinal is easily spotted hiding among the thinning leaves of our backyard mesquite tree. Click on the image to enlarge.

As you can see, the WP stock default theme is being used in lieu of our custom theme from before the change. This will be the theme until I can find a replacement theme that I can customize to resemble the previous theme. This may take some time since most of the WP themes I have been looking at are unsuitable for our familiar two column arrangement.

Thanks for your patience while we go about getting things customized. I still have our Food Blog site to upgrade, so I better get to that.

08 Nov 2021 by Blogosphere Critters Retirement Technobabble

Autumnal Equinox and 16th Blogiversary

16th-blog.png

Our blog turns 16 today on the same date that autumnal equinox occurs in the northern hemisphere.

Our first blog post was about our rebuke of Senator Feinstein’s NO vote for John Roberts confirmation to SCOTUS. At the time, we thought Roberts was the man for the job, but after his Obamacare vote and several other squish opinions, we’re not so sure that Feinstein’s NO vote was wrong, but for different reasons, of course. A lot can change in 16 years.

That brings us to Equinox – our Arizona weather is showing some signs of letting up on our hot summer temperatures with the thermometer topping out at under 100° the last several days. Our night time temperatures have been in the mid 70s but quickly heating up to over 80 at just after sunrise. Looking at today’s solar ephemeris, the sun is above the horizon for 12 hours and 6 minutes at our latitude. The days will be now be shorter than 12 hours for the next six months.

I really don’t have an update on the upgrading to the blog that needs to take place prior to December 2021. I previously blogged about the potential for discontinuing blogging depending on the upgrade outcome, but being lazy with a perception of plenty of time left, I have done nothing other than some research on how to get the job done. I sort of told myself that we would do some of it during my down-time with the hernia surgery, but the healing and recovery are doing so well that I am almost as active as before the surgery – I guess that’s a good thing in the long run. I’ll post when we start the upgrade on our other site when I should have an idea how arduous the blog conversion task might become.

Our blog has covered a lot of things over the years – the last few years we were employed to the first 11 years of our retirement. We have had a lot of fun reporting about our travels, our tragedies and our triumphs. We hope to see you here next year on our 17th.

22 Sep 2021 by Blogosphere Environment Notions

CB&D Weblog Going Down? Maybe/Maybe Not

sinking.jpgEarlier this week, I received notice that the version of PHP used by this website is going to disappear from the Internet Service Provider we use. Pursuant to their notice, I dutifully went to the ISP control panel and directed that this site be switched to the newer, supported version of PHP. Well, when I switched to the new version, it resulted in a big crash. When attempting to view the site in a browser, I get a “This Page isn’t Working” message in my Browser.

Image: An artist’s rendition of the SS Kalifornia’s Final Voyage. We certainly don’t want to be doomed like them. Click to enlarge.

After consulting the WordPress help pages, I tried a few thigs to see if I could wake the website up, but to no avail. Since I am using a VERY OLD (ca. February 2008) version of WordPress, it appears that I am going to have to upgrade the WP package in order to proceed.

WordPress recommends that I do the upgrade incrementally (all old versions of WP are available) to avoid potential problems that could be encountered by trying a “long jump” upgrade. I am at version 2.3.3 and need to upgrade to the current WP version which is 5.7.2. That sounds like a lot of incremental upgrades but there is a saving grace; if I can get version 3.7 going, the WP team tells me that there is an upgrade “button” that will take me to the latest version.

I do have some time to get all this done, not only to this blog, but two others I maintain on the same ISP. The deadline for removal of the old version of PHP is not until December of 2021, so there are a few months in which I can get thigs fixed. I will probably start on one of the blogs soon and others to follow later.

Some of the custom gadgets I use will be gone since I modified their code to do a few things I like to have like the image viewer and a few others. I also expect the overall appearance of the blogs will change since I do not think the old templates to be compatible.

Maybe this is all for the better, but if you get a splash page saying the blog is gone, then I might either be working on it or it is gone forever. I will let everyone know the results.

23 May 2021 by Blogosphere Cyberspace Technobabble

Fifteenth Blogiversary

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It’s time for the annual milestone to mark yet another year of blogging on CB&D. Our statistics for the past year show that we have posted about 52 times, or, on average, once a week. That’s nowhere near the “old days” when we made 300 or so posts yearly, but it’s not to bad (in our opinion).

Just because we’ve gone sort of silent on posting does not mean that we’re out of blogging in the reading sense. We have an RSS feed reader browser extension with some 27 blogs that we read daily (or as often as they post) several of which post many times a day. We think that we’re getting the news we need through them.

In the coming year, we will probably be doing just about the same as this past year, noting when there are special events or personal activity, not the least of which we hope will be travelling in our motorhome to new and interesting places as well as some old favorites. That may resume in springtime assuming this COVID-19 crap goes dormant and there are no riots where we’re going.

Lest we forget, today marks The Autumnal Equinox, a.k.a. “first day of fall.” Here in AZ we are still having what we call “second spring” with cactus flowers and our Pride of Barbados shrubs in bloom. We see bees, hummingbirds and butterflies regularly and will probably continue to have them well into winter months. What will disappear from our skies are the ubiquitous Turkey Buzzards who will soon be headed to Mexico for the winter. Happy Fall, everyone!

Thanks for keeping us on the blogrolls. Let us know if we’re not reciprocating.

22 Sep 2020 by Blogosphere Notions Retirement

Fourteenth Blogiversary

fourteen.jpgThe Cap’n Bob & the Damsel blog is actually a little older than fourteen years; we had it on an earlier platform (BBLOG, I think) for a few months prior to converting to our self-hosted WordPress platform. The first post on the new blog was on September 22, 2005 regarding Feinstein’s NO vote on John Roberts’ confirmation to Chief Justice.

Since that first WordPress entry, we have blogged about politics from time to time, but not so much anymore. We’ve become mostly a diary of our travels and activities with the occasional politiblog thrown in for good measure. We still like to point out the idiocy of the climate changers and Democrats in general, not that it does any good (it keeps getting worse) but it gives us a chance to vent our disgust with the political system in the US and elsewhere.

So, here we are, fourteen plus years down the road, enjoying retirement (coming up on ten years now) in our little desert cottage and occasionally writing about “things,” Perhaps we may still be here fourteen years hence, doing just about the same thing, The Good Lord willing.

22 Sep 2019 by Blogosphere Nostalgia Notions

New Glass for the Canon T6i and SL1 Cameras

Canon SL1 and EF-S 18-135 mm LensEarlier this month, Tam wrote about trying different glass to replace a zoom lens with not-so-great performance. That post gave us the idea that we too might benefit from lens upgrades for our two Canons – Damsel’s is an EOS Rebel T6i and mine (shown at right) is an EOS Rebel SL1 – both DSLR cameras.

Since the stock lens that came with both cameras was a zoom with a focal length range of 18 mm -55 mm, we decided in getting a better lens with the same starting focal length and stretching the maximum focal length out to 135 mm.

I took the above image of the SL1 with the EF-S 18-135 Lens attached with my little Kodak FZ152 Pocket Camera. Click on the image to enlarge.

Although we haven’t put the new optics through extensive evaluation, we see that the performance is pretty good. I went out this morning to get a few pictures to see how the performance was in general. The following two images of the RV and a hummingbird demonstrate the extreme wide and narrow focal length performance. Click on either image to enlarge.

18 mm zoom 135 mm zoom

As we put the new lenses into use we should get a feel for how the new optics performance will be. Just from today, I can generally see that the Image Stabilizer does an effective job of keeping the camera steady and I can’t readily detect a lot of chromatic aberration at maximum zoom.

We hope everyone had good St. Valentines and Presidents Days.

19 Feb 2019 by Blogosphere Comrades in Arms Photography

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