A fundamental reason why I refuse to get Facebook

I don’t have a Facebook account, and as much as people try to convince me to get one, I invariably refuse for a number of reasons. Among those reasons, there is one that stands out. Yes, privacy is a concern, but this reason is even deeper, more fundamental, than that.

Image credit: FSF

I always say that getting a Facebook account would compromise my principles, but nobody asks how. Let’s start with a superficial reason for not getting an account: I don’t want to provide my real personal info. This, of course, stems from the privacy concern mentioned earlier. “Alright,” you might say, “but lots of people create accounts with fake names. What’s the issue?”

Everyone doing something doesn’t make it right. Everyone lies, but lying isn’t right.

If you actually take the time to read Facebook’s Terms of Service, you will encounter Section 4:

Custom domain support added to WordPress.com stats sparkline script

My stats sparkline script has been updated to v1.1.0! This version adds support for custom domains.

If you have auto-update enabled for the script, you should receive the update soon. Otherwise, you can force an update check for the script in your extension or head over to Greasy Fork and install it manually.

If you own a custom domain, you have an extra step to do, again because of technical limitations. By default, the script won’t run on your custom domain because it doesn’t know about it. To fix that, find the script in your user scripts extension (Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, etc.), go to the script’s options and add the following as a user include, where example.com is your custom domain:

https://example.com/*

If your extension doesn’t support user includes, you will have to edit the script manually, although doing this means you won’t get automatic updates and you will have to do this every time you update. If you need to this, add the following line after the existing @include line:

// @include https://example.com/*

A big shout-out goes to Dennis for alerting me of the bug and helping me test! This release couldn’t have happened without him.

If you’d like to read about the technical details of the update, continue reading. Otherwise, if you have any questions or experience any issues, please leave a comment. Happy blogging!

Restore the WordPress.com admin bar stats sparkline

The staff at WordPress.com are at it again, removing useful features for the sake of consistency with the “unified experience” vision. This time, it’s the stats sparkline in the admin bar that was introduced in 2011. It still lives on hidden in the sidebar that appears when you click “My Sites” in the admin bar, but its usefulness is greatly reduced because it’s hidden in the sidebar and not immediately visible in the admin bar.

This was unacceptable, of course, so I wrote a script to bring it back. Unfortunately, because of certain technical limitations, this script can only run on URLs that have wordpress.com in the domain part. If you want to add support for your custom domain, you will have to extend the script’s include directives. You can add one in the script’s options in your extension. If your extension doesn’t support adding custom includes, you can add it yourself by adding a custom @include line to the script, but you won’t be able to receive automatic updates.

The sparkline is restored

If you’ve already installed one of my previous scripts, you’ll know how easy it is to install this one. If installing user scripts is new to you, don’t worry; it’s very simple. If you don’t already have one, install a browser extension that allows you to run user scripts. Then, install the script from Greasy Fork.

If you have any questions or experience any issues, please leave a comment.

You don’t need to know how the script works to use it, but if you’d like to know the technical details, read on. The source code is available on GitHub.

Happy blogging!

Classic Stats Redirect script v2.1.0 released!

v2.1.0 of my classic stats redirect script has been released! As I had mentioned in my previous release post, v2.1 of this script features support for redirecting when there is no blog domain in the URL. This is the case for /stats, /stats/insights, /stats/day, and the others stats types. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the solution, the page must load first before you are redirected. Fortunately, though, this probably isn’t a very common case.

The script was updated earlier today, so you may have already received the update if you have auto-updating enabled for the script. Otherwise, you can install the new version manually from Greasy Fork. Leave a comment if you experience any issues or have any questions.

Technical details follow.

Classic Stats Redirect script v2 released!

Version 2.0.0 of my classic stats redirect script is out! I had actually released it on Thursday, but I didn’t get a chance to write this post until now. If you have auto-updating enabled for the script, which is the default, you should have already received the update. Otherwise, you can head over to Greasy Fork to install it manually. This new version redirects instead to the classic dashboard stats page. Thanks goes to PiedType for alerting me of the problem and to Dennis for the idea for the solution.

If you would prefer to use the new stats page and would like to use your screen space a little more, you can install my stylesheet that does that.

If you’d like to learn more about how the script works, keep reading. Otherwise, you can stop here and enjoy your classic stats! Leave a comment if you have any trouble setting it up or if you have any questions.

Hotfix for WP stats redirect script

PiedType informed me earlier that WordPress.com has killed the old stats page and redirected the URL to the new one. Anyone with my stats redirect script would have encountered an infinite loop as the script would redirect to the old stats page, which would redirect to the new stats page.

I have put out a temporary hotfix that disables redirecting altogether so the infinite loop stops happening and am working on redirecting to the classic dashboard stats instead. If you have auto-update enabled for the script, you should receive it soon. Otherwise, you can either disable it until the new version comes out or you can reinstall it.

More details to come in the next post.

Logo Orientation Matters

Find a laptop and flip the lid open. Which way up is the logo on the back? On pretty much any laptop on the market today, including ThinkPads, the logo will be the “right way up”.

The back of the Lenovo ThinkPad T460. Note the logo’s orientation. [Laptop Mag]

The logo is oriented this way so that anyone looking at an open laptop from the back will see the logo properly. However, if you look at pre-2013 ThinkPads, you’ll see that the logo is upside down when the lid is open. I think the ThinkPad logo should be this way and not follow everyone else. Why?

I have Twitter!

In celebration of what will be my 1024th Tweet, the one that will be generated by this post, I’d like to announce that I have a Twitter account!

As you might expect, my handle is @tpenguinltg. It’s actually been over a year since I got it and it’s been getting more activity lately than all of my blogs combined.

I should blog more.

— tPenguinLTG (@tpenguinltg) June 6, 2016

Wait, didn’t you say you wouldn’t ever get one?

There was a time when I said that I’m not one for microblogging and there was no way I’d get on Twitter. If I wanted to follow anyone on Twitter, I could subscribe to an RSS feed. I had my blogs, so I thought there was no reason for me to do any microblogging: I held (and still do to a lesser extent) that microblogging isn’t “real” blogging and that it’s better to spend time and thought into a well-crafted blog post if one had anything worth saying.

Boy, was I wrong.

Fixing a broken laptop hinge

I'll take #FunctionalityOverForm any day. #ThinkPad pic.twitter.com/ImIuCcrYUL

— tPenguinLTG (@tpenguinltg) April 9, 2016

My ThinkPad‘s left hinge broke about a month ago. I didn’t think to take a picture of it, but it broke in a way that prevented the lid from closing properly.

Can Easter be called “Zombie Jesus Day”?

A couple of days ago, I overheard some people calling Easter “Zombie Jesus Day“. I’m surprised that this is my first time hearing it because it has apparently been around since 1999, gaining popularity after the mid-2000s. Easter is the celebration of when Jesus died and was resurrected, “just like a zombie“. Except it was nothing like a zombie.

The header on ZombieJesusDay.org