Blogs

Google reCAPTCHA with Firefox Focus on iOS

If you have Firefox Focus installed and enabled on iOS then Google reCAPTCHA challenges are filtered out. Depending on the site configuration you’ll likely see an error after submitting a form and wonder what is going on, because you never saw the challenge.

The only solution I know of right now is to change the default settings in Firefox Focus.

Start Firefox Focus and go to the settings, by tapping on the gear icon in the top right.

Windows 10: sync shared calendar via Google Calendar

I am using the Windows 10 calendar. It is conveniently there, and it seems to do an OK job. But it is not possible to add a shared calendar via a URL. The only options are international holiday calendars.

However, I also have a Google account added to the Windows 10 calendar/mail/contacts, so I decided to add the shared calendar there and sync it with Windows 10. However, it did not show up there.

Comment spam flood

For the first time I disabled commenting for anonymous users. Whatever little I have to write, can be done without it. I simply lack the resources to deal with hundreds of useless spam comments in the queue.

Edit: using an external filtering service allowed me to open up comments and eliminate spam completely.

Step 7: ANY pointer parameter

When writing a function / function block, you need to determine what parameter types you will expect. Sometimes, it would be nice to be able to determine that depending on the application.

For example, in the post Step 7: analog signal normalization the output parameter could be a pseudo percentage of type INT or a motor current of type REAL.

Gave up on Flickr

I have just canceled my Pro subscription. It was scheduled to renew in two days from now. I also deleted almost all of my thousands of photos from the service, most of which were set to friends and/or family.

Drupal 7: page title contains EM tags when editing node

Drupal

Using Drupal 7, Page Title 7.x-2.7.

When editing a node, the page title for this post would be:

Edit Blog entry Drupal 7: page title contains EM tags when editing node

With the page title module the <em> tags are part of the <title> tags:

<title><em>Edit Blog entry</em> Drupal 7: page title contains EM tags when editing node</title>

This was also reported on Drupal.

Drupal: remove link to forum container

Drupal

For anonymous users that don't have access to forums, I don't see why they should be able to access the forum container (and the message "no forums defined"). In order to send an anonymous user to a 403 page on /forum I first tried what I thought was the easiest, Drupal's drupal_access_denied(). This still rendered the action links, so I hid those first.

Drupal 7.x: allow users to delete their own comments

Drupal

The module Comment goodness from jessebeach adds some functionality to the commenting system, such as sorting comments, as well as a new permission to allow users to delete their own comments. If you are just looking for the delete option then the other options may not be very useful. They also can, as was the case for me, interfere with existing templates and preprocess functions.

iOS 8.1.1: first update to leave Bluetooth untouched

iOS 8.1.1 may very well be the first update to leave the Bluetooth setting untouched. It was disabled prior to the update and I was pleased to see this was still the case after the reboot.

I understand it may benefit Apple to encourage users to enable it, but it has always struck me as very odd that the setting was completely ignored.

Hopefully this will be the case with future updates.

Drupal: lean page template for 403 and 404 errors

Drupal

In order to reduce the server load and data sent on a 404 (not found) or a 403 (access denied) I prefer to serve a slimmed-down page without any blocks, etc. I copied page.tpl.php as page--error.tpl.php and removed most of the regions/blocks, breadcrumbs, menus, etc.

iOS 8 gripes

Here are a few issues I've encountered with iOS 8.0.2.

App Store update badge

The App Store app always indicates there are updates while the versions listed are already installed. Tried killing the app, rebooting the phone, syncing, force a refresh (tapping 9 times on the update button in the app). Nothing helps. Only if I download updates directly from the iPhone it detects it and reduces the counter in the app badge.

Siemens TIA Portal V13 issues

(Updated June, 2016.)

Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) is the current Siemens engineering framework for automation. It is vastly different from the 5.x version and it took me time to get used to. Overall, it has been improving steadily with each new version but there are still a few pesky issues that can be a bother. This is valid for version 13 service pack 1 update 9 (June 2016) but some of these issues have been present in earlier versions.

(I will update this post regularly.)

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