I can’t recall writing a review for a TV series, but having just finished one of the highest rated TV series on IMDB, I felt like writing one. I’e kept it relatively spoiler free. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, Soviet Union suffered a massive explosion that released radioactive material across Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and as far as Scandinavia and western Europe. Chernobyl dramatizes the story of the 1986 accident, one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history, and the sacrifices made to save Europe from the unimaginable disaster. I think we have all heard about the disaster at Chernobyl. Pripyat has been featured in…
Exploring Bath and Stonehenge
The last weekend was a long one cause of Easter and we’ve typically not done much on the Easter Monday bank holiday. However, Seema and Rodney, who were in London and bunking with us, had already booked tickets to visit Bath and Stonehenge. So, Ashwina and I also tagged along. We arrived at Victoria before 8am well ahead of our scheduled departure. It allowed us to get some decent seats in the middle of the bus. We set out towards Bath first which is about 2.5 hours away from London. We luckily didn’t encounter much traffic given the early start. Bath We reached Bath around 11am on a relatively bright…
Living in a Lighthouse – Part II
When it rains… look for Rainbows When it’s dark… look for Stars If there is a Part I, there has to be at least a Part II. What I didn’t mention in the last post was how big the cottage was. We knew this place sleeps 10 people between the 6 bedrooms. Besides that, there are several other rooms across two different floors. One of our favourite rooms was the one with the ping pong table. It has been a while since we have played table tennis and the bad weather gave us a lot of time to hone those skills. The weather throughout our holiday was pretty lousy with…
Living in a Lighthouse – Part I
It isn’t often that one gets to live in a lighthouse. Ashwina wanted to find out what it feels like to live in one. So, to celebrate her birthday month, she booked us into the Lighthouse Keepers’ Cottage at Lynton, Devon. Getting to the Lighthouse Keepers’ Cottage The Lighthouse Keepers’ cottage is perched on the edge of cliffs in splendid isolation with unrivalled views of the Bristol Channel. On the remote and impressive Foreland Point, the most northerly point in Devon, the cottage sits partway down the cliffs alongside the Lynmouth Foreland Lighthouse that was built in 1900. If you managed to get all the way down to my New…
Better Search v2.2.4 – security fix
I have released version 2.2.4 of Better Search (v2.2.3 was a short release) which fixes one very important security issue that was reported by Ryan Dewhurst. Another key change in this release is the use of query variables and ajax to track the searches as well as some hardening across all PHP files. If you’re running v2.2.2, please upgrade to this release now. Changes in Better Search v2.2.4 and v2.2.3 Searches are now tracked using Query Variables Fixed security issue. Reported by Ryan Dewhurst WHERE clause is not replaced in seamless mode Download Better Search v2.2.4
Add to All v1.4.0
I’ve updated my handy plugin Add to All in the WordPress.org repository and existing users should be able to update this plugin from within the dashboards. Placeholders In the latest version of the plugin, I have included a few placeholders for more dynamic texts. %home_url% – This will add the link to your site or the current site for multisite. You can wrap this text in an anchor tag to create a link to your site as needed %year% – current year %month% – current month. Displayed as January to December %date% – today’s date %first_year% – year of first blog post. This is useful if you’d like to display…
AutoClose v2.0.0
I’ve released a major update to Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks a.k.a AutoClose v2.0.0. The last update to this plugin was in 2015 and this has continued to work with the newer versions of WordPress. Autoclose is an easy to use WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks on your posts. You also have some buttons that let you delete post revisions, delete pingbacks and trackbacks. I was cleaning up broken links on Techtites and realised most of these were pingbacks and trackbacks. I wanted an easy way to just delete them all! Hence, AutoClose v2.0.0. You’ll need to reactivate the plugin The plugin file…
Migrated to The SEO Framework
I’ve been running Yoast SEO on this site for a very long time. It is a feature rich and powerful plugin and has been one of the first I’ve installed on all my blogs. Besides allowing me to configure the SEO settings, one feature I enjoyed is the readability analysis. But, over the years, the plugin has it has also grown in size and included ads and notifications. I have generally not minded these and understand the need to monetize. However, when you delete a post or almost anything else, the plugin displays an annoying notification. It prompts you to install the premium version of Yoast SEO to redirect the…
From Mumbai to Pune
After a week in Mumbai, Ashwina and I set off to Pune to spend time at her place with her Mom and Dad. I like going to Pune because, unlike Mumbai, I get to spend a lot of time resting and relaxing. As expected, this holiday also delivered the same. I even had time to work on my WordPress plugins as well as catch up on office work. Purchasing a car Ashwina planned to buy a car in Pune for her parents to replace a very old Maruti Suzuki Alto. She had shortlisted the Maruti Suzuki Ignis and we had the vendor send us a test drive vehicle on Friday.…
Holiday in Mumbai
Ashwina and I embarked on our annual visit to Mumbai and Pune on Feb 1. In 2018, we visited India in March. However, this year we decided to stick to our Feb schedule. To Mumbai We booked ourselves on premium economy with British Airways as this was the best deal we could find. Unfortunately, as I did the bookings in October, we couldn’t take advantage of the reward flights and the Amex BA voucher. Speaking about reward flights, I feel that British Airways has gotten quite miserly about them! I’ve always loved Heathrow Terminal 5 and we took advantage of my status to use the First check-in and security which…
