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Author Archives: Ian Dunn
Replacing Exclusionary Terms in Tech Jargon
There are a lot of cringe-worthy terms in technical jargon, but in addition to being exclusionary, they're also often bad metaphors, and more descriptive alternatives exist.
Gutenberg and WordCamp.org’s Shortcodes
Corey McKrill presented a case study at WordCamp Portland about the process we went through to build Gutenberg blocks for WordCamp.org.
How (misusing) Slack is Ruining Work
Rani Molla recently published a great article on how misusing Slack makes it harder to get work done, not easier.
Best Good Practices
In episode 18 of the React Round Up podcast, Alex Moldovan articulates something I've been feeling lately, as I dive deeper into the modern JavaScript world.
Setting up WordPress Multisite with SSL on DreamHost
Setting up a Multisite instance on DreamHost isn't as easy as it should be if you want to also have SSL certificates, but it's possible with the right settings.
Guest on Hallway Chats
Tara Claeys and Liam Dempsey have a really interesting podcast where they talk to people in the WordPress community about what it means to be successful.
MySQL Fails to Start After `brew upgrade` from Version 5.7 to 8.0
I upgraded from MySQL 5.7 to 8.0, but found that the service wouldn't start. I was able to fix it by manually re-running the upgrade process.
Automatically Run Tests While Solving Exercism.io Exercises
I've been learning Ruby during my sabbatical, and found the exercises from Exercism.io a great way to do that. Manually running the unit tests was tedious, though, so I setup Guard to do it automatically whenever I save a file.
Moving a Theme Between Theme Roots
WordPress allows you to have multiple theme directories, but moving themes from one to another may result in a fatal error. It's possible to fix that by updating a few options and clearing a transient.
Inspiration
"Even though we might have some very, very strong disagreements as we develop this thing called WordPress, at the end of the day, I think we all agree that when it impacts people's lives positively like that, it's really really special."
Stop Breaking the Web
Reading Stop Breaking the Web by Nicolás Bevacqua's feels like a breath of fresh air.
He writes about how several common practices in the JavaScript community have led to poor user experiences, and violated some of the fundamental principles that made the Web what is today...
Dropping QuickTime Recording from Stereo to Mono
If QuickTime exports a stereo recording with an empty right channel, you can use ffmpeg to easily copy the left channel to the right one, for a proper mono recording.
List of Ideographic Countries
I needed a list of countries where ideographic languages are common, but couldn't find a pre-made one. I was able to build one myself, though, which will hopefully save others from having to do the same.
Recording Skype and a Mic on Separate Tracks in GarageBand
I wanted to figure out how to record both a Skype conversation and my mic in GarageBand, but keep them on separate tracks. None of the tutorials worked for me, so I'm posting the settings that did.
Exposing Custom Post Type Meta for Only a Single API Endpoint
I ran into an undocumented and unexpected problem when registering custom post type meta fields for the REST API.
register_meta() exposes meta fields in all REST API endpoints, which can lead to privacy leaks. To avoid that, it can be called conditionally. `WP_Widget::form()` returns a value
Ever wonder why your IDE complains that your widget's
form() method isn't returning a value? Restoring Lost Commits After a Failed `git svn dcommit`
If
git svn dcommit fails, it'll appear as if your local commit have been lost, but there's a way to recover them. How Open Source Can Mitigate the Harms of Employer Copyright Claims
Almost every software company claims copyright on their developers' side-projects in order to protect themselves from lawsuits, but there's a way to do it without taking away the employee's rights.
Accessing Post Meta and More Via $post->meta_key
It turns out there's a much better way to fetch post meta than get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'foo', true ): $post->foo.