Published by

Finding the rhythm

I’ve finally fallen in to a decent daily rhythm, it’s taken a while post-move.

My ideal routine seems to involve being at my desk around 8:30am, then calls and correspondence with UK+EU clients and collaborators until 10 or 11.30am (depends on the day). A bit of toast or something, then try to get my head down on a particular dev task for 1–2 hrs before lunch. Not a lot of time to finish any one thing, but can usually at least progress with something. This is a good window for writing, actually! After lunch, a bit more correspondence with folks in North America and then try to get my head down again until the end of the day. That’s usually when I get the most tricky stuff done.

Of course not every day looks like that, but I think that’s what I need to aim for. When it’s thrown off, particularly when I have to interrupt the head-down time for some reason, I tend to feel like I haven’t accomplished anything in the day. Which is garbage, b/c of course I have got some stuff done. Still, it’s not a nice feeling.

Also I was doing so well with exercise before we moved, now have fallen of the horse. Need to work that back in somewhere.

I also need to be careful about not working too long of hours… It seems easy to slip in to overworking during lockdown since there’s SO LITTLE TO DO. But inevitably I start to feel burnt out after a few days of carelessness, even if the overworking is on projects I’m super thrilled about. Just need to keep tabs on it.

Published by

You are your environment

SF has felt like a tech monoculture for the past 10 years. It’s one of the big reasons we were originally planning to be in / around NYC instead.

I’m sure there’s more to it, but it’s kinda hard to find in the current situation, especially in our neighborhood. The worst thing is the possibility of slipping in to it personally, becoming one-dimensional.

Been on my mind since a lot of the indoor things I usually love doing (reading and cooking are two of the biggies) aren’t ticking the boxes at the moment. It might not be the city, it’s probably more related to the move or the pandemic. Maybe I need to check out Oakland? I guess time will tell, I’ll try harder in the meantime. You are your environment.

Published by

Independent live music venues in San Francisco

A list of independent live music venues in San Francisco sorted by capacity. Obviously not for right now, but I’d like to check them out when possible. Most of the list is from this 2018 article on the DNA Lounge blog (came across it on Twitter but can’t find the original tweet now…).

If someone reads this and goes “hey, that’s not independent!”, tell me and I’ll tweak the list.

In terms of outdoor venues in the Bay Area, I think that Stern Grove and Jerry Garcia Amphitheater are owned by the SF Parks Dept. and the Greek Theatre is owned by UC Berkeley? Not sure. I imagine some of their gigs are organized by the major conglomerates, but it looks like the Stern Grove Festival is independent.

For independent venues elsewhere in the US, incl. The White Horse in Austin ❤️, check out the National Independent Venue Association.

Published by

“Keep your eyes on the skies and your butt close to home”

Been interested in the Feminist Bird Club ever since we talked about them at an early FemOS meeting and Sophie kindly sourced some 2020 patches for a few of us. They’re not doing events right now of course, “Keep your eyes on the sky and your butts close to home”. So I signed up to the SF Bay Area chapter’s mailing list for updates. Gonna read up on some things and go for a few good walks.

Published by

Sorting out WordPress error “Updating failed. Error message: The response is not a valid JSON response”

I moved a brand new WordPress site on to new hosting recently and was confronted by an “Updating failed. Error message: The response is not a valid JSON response” error. Seemed kind of inexplicable, not a lot of info in the console either. I’ve done the same thing a bajillion times with this and other hosting providers and have never run in to this error, so it seems kind of weird.

This issue on GitHub outlines a lot of the potential causes, but this comment specifically sorted out my problem. Turns out you just need to flush the permalinks? Another off-then-on-again type of fix.

I think the WordPress devs might eventually create a more helpful error message for this, but in the meantime this is worth keeping in mind.

Published by

WordPress “Upgrade database” process hangs on Laravel Valet

I’m working on a WordPress site for a client that involves importing a whole bunch of their legacy content. I decided to work with a copy of their old database for this. I set it up locally in Sequel Pro, accessed /wp-admin, and was met (as expected) with a “You must upgrade this database”-style screen. I clicked the button and… nothing. Eventually I had a 504 error.

I use Laravel Valet to develop PHP sites locally on my MacBook Pro, so I checked the NGINX error log ~/.config/valet/Log/nginx-error.log for hints about what was going on. I repeatedly saw an error along these lines (highlighted bits are altered by me to be more generic):

YYYY/MM/DD HH:SS:MM [error] 52486#0: *14 upstream timed out (60: Operation timed out) while reading response header from upstream, client: 127.0.0.1, server: , request: "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/Users/username/.config/valet/valet.sock", host: "hostname"

I searched online and found a bunch of suggestions, about checking the valet.sock file, about increasing the fastcgi settings in the NGINX config, etc. Nothing seemed to work.

I then came across this issue which sounds super similar, and they seemed to resolve it with a reboot.

Worked for me too. Turn it off and on to the rescue again. Wanted to mention it here in case anyone else is banging their head against the wall at some point.

Published by

A lone cyclist on the highway

I had my head down working on Sunday afternoon, suddenly realised that I couldn’t hear the traffic as usual. And there were a lot of sirens, police cars driving the wrong way up the Fremont / Folsom off ramp. Protestors had blocked the westbound section of the Bay Bridge. The police blocked all the off ramps and put flares on the road. Interstate 80 was empty all the way up to the Fifth Street exit.

Maybe about an hour in to it, a lone cyclist came down the middle of the four-lane highway at a leisurely pace. He was wearing black jeans and a black sweatshirt, arms spread open wide, head back. They didn’t stop him, but I’m not sure where he could have exited. Hope he’s safe.

Published by

NOW v2: Moved to SF, not much else b/c pandemic

Updated my Now page. Here’s the contents, for posterity.

After a tumultuous few months, we’ve landed in San Francisco 🌉. It is both wonderful and strange to have ended up in the exact place that I left when I moved to the UK 10 years ago. I’m more than a little melancholic—about the friends and family we’ve left, about the complicated state of the city, and more—but I’m also excited to reconnect with old faces and meet new people. As the virus 🦠 allows!

Work-wise 👩🏻‍💻 I’m currently: developing a bilingual website designed by John Morgan studio for a London-based gallery 🖼; developing a new website for Gort Scott Architects designed by Polimekanos; collaborating with Bec Worth on the WIP 🚧 open-source WordPress theme that powers this website; working with Sasha Engelmann and Sophie Dyer on an archive and online community for people that collect NOAA satellite 🛰 weather imagery; and consulting with a few orgs and individuals in North America and Europe.

The most recent sites I’ve developed are the new Open School East site ✏️ designed by Sam Baldwin and “Eternal Return” designed by Jules Estèves for artist Elizabeth Peyton. Read a little bit about “Eternal Return” in the New Yorker. Writeups on the build process for these sites coming soon, hopefully…

I’m still settling in to SF, but I’m very open to new projects and particularly teaching / talking opportunities. Get in touch if you’d like to learn or work together.

Limited free time is currently taken up by: navigating what it means to be an adult in the US; working harder on how I confront obvious and not-so-obvious racism in myself and others; finding a used car 🚗; walking and foraging 🍄; catching up with distant friends on FaceTime or Whereby; figuring out how to make friends in a new place during a pandemic 🤷🏻‍♀️; contributing to the Feminist Open Source Investigations Group; cooking, baking, making drinks; remotely contributing to the choral collective Musarc 🎵; and finding a new choir in the Bay Area.

Published by

Anddddd here we go

Let’s see… since we arrived in the US late on Monday, I’ve signed up for Instacart, GrubHub, Postmates, 1stdibs, and Nextdoor with my “spam” email account. This is an account I only use for things that I suspect might get sketchy with my data. I am filled with regret.

I’m suddenly getting a lot more spam. Even though I’m now living in California under the CCPA, at least one of these platforms—let’s be real, probably a few of them—seems to be disclosing my email address to other unrelated service providers.

Shame on me for signing up, I guess? I haven’t identified the culprit, but I’m going to give it a go. Will also delete a few of these accounts.

I’ve just had a look at deleting my Nextdoor account and of course you have to contact them to do it. Unfortunately 1stdibs, Postmates, and GrubHub are all the same, you have to contact support to close your account. WHY? It absolutely doesn’t have to be like this! Scummy.

This is one of the bits about living in the US that I’ve been most dreading. Whelp, here we go.

Edit at 6:09pm:

I’ve sent CCPA requests to nearly all of them to find out more about the disclosure of my information. I can’t send one to Postmates since I only got through the very first step of signup, just gave them my email address and then never added my phone number since I don’t have a US mobile number yet. According to their privacy policy as of today:

We do not currently have a reasonable method of verifying the identity of non-registered users to a reasonable degree of certainty, as we do not maintain enough personal information to enable us to verify non-registered users with sufficient certainty. Thus, we cannot honor the access or deletion requests of non-registered users at this time.

Bull. Shit. In my humble opinion. Something as simple as a “forgot password”–style link would surely do. If it’s good enough for verifying identity for a password reset, it’s good enough for this purpose.

IDK why this makes my blood boil, but it does.