Upgrade of my Debian 8 server was long overdue; however, went headlong into it and ran into problems the first time round (i.e. MariaDB wouldn’t start properly. So I restored the server back to 8 (thanks Vultr for snapshots!) and tried again. This is what worked the second time round:

1. Shutdown MySQL/MariaDB before attempting to upgrade Debian (a step I noticed after the failed first attempt; Section “Upgrading to MariaDB 10.1 from MySQL 5.5” of MariaDB’s documentation “Moving from MySQL to MariaDB in Debian 9”).
2. Follow Steps 2 to 5 of phoenixNap’s guide– it had the easiest sources.list edits for switching to Debian 9 repositories.

As the primary function of this server is to serve PHP applications, it was also an opportune to upgrade the PHP version as WordPress will soon require at least version 7.2.

1. Follow Steps 1 to 3 of Computing for Geeks guide – this will upgrade PHP to version 7.4
2. Follow Section “Activating New PHP Version in Apache” in JiyuuLife’s guide for the quickest way for Apache to use the new 7.4 instead of the previous version (7.0 for Debian 8).

I want to Airplay a YouTube video to an Apple TV. According to this official support document from Google/YouTube:

As a reminder, if you’re casting from a mobile device, make sure to download the YouTube app. Casting from youtube.com in a mobile web browser is not currently supported.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7640706?hl=en

So, downloaded the YouTube app, can’t find an Airplay icon anywhere. Some users claim its now subsumed under the Cast icon – no luck there for me either.

Turns out, playing the YouTube video directly from Safari shows up the Airplay icon.

*Sigh.

I must say, the form factor of the new Motorola Razr has me tempted to go back to Android. I love the pocketable design and with retro cool to boot! I do hope it was the ThinkPad team that Lenovo deployed to consult on the hinge design.

But its not even in the realm of possibility with that $1500 price tag …

My new found favourite (free) stack for WordPress frontend work – and a little bit of backend tinkering are:

• Drag-and-drop layout: Elementor
• Base theme: Astra
• Ready made templates: Astra Starter Sites, which with my choice also installed the following:
  • Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
  • WPForms Lite

What is interesting is that Elementor and Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg is aiming to do the same thing – provide ready made widgets to drag and drop into the layout. However, I think its best to keep each page/post using one or the other; and both have widgets that are useful and not found in the other.

For the backend, I’ve been using Code Snippets for a long time. But recent discovery of PODS has revolutionised how I create, extend and change Custom Post Types and Custom Fields. It was simple to extend the Post type to have a Custom Field of Date, and easily display it in an Ultimate Addons Post Grid using a Hook in Code Snippets.

Shout out to Integromat, an online service that connects other web services together, using a visual paradigm. Great customer service, even for the free tier.

After working out a few kinks, I’m now able to pipe custom fields from a Woocommerce order into a Airtable base, with relative ease.