Month: May 2019

Troubleshooting empty Laravel Redis queue (cause: APP_NAME change)

Be aware that if you’re using Redis to handle a queue, don’t rename your APP_NAME environment variable while there are jobs on the queue, as they will all mysteriously disappear.

This is because the APP_NAME is used as a prefix to the Redis key, so Laravel will fail to find any jobs that have already been added.

'redis' => [

'client' => env('REDIS_CLIENT', 'predis'),

'options' => [
'cluster' => env('REDIS_CLUSTER', 'predis'),
'prefix' => Str::slug(env('APP_NAME', 'laravel'), '_').'_database_',
],

Source: config/database.php:116

.eu domain names and Brexit – latest news

EU domains are handled by EURid (headquartered in Belgium), on behalf of the EU.  In 2018, the EU said they wanted anyone in the UK who’d registered a .eu domain to hand it back – The Register claimed there were about 300,000 such domains.

EURid have a dedicated Brexit page. You should keep checking this.

Scenario 1 is the ‘leaving without a deal’ scenario (with two months allowed to update your registration details to a postal address in the EU27 or EEA).

Scenario 2 is leaving at the end of the planned transitional period (e.g. Dec 2020)

As of May 2019:

  • all plans are suspended (i.e. UK citizens/companies can register .eu domains as normal), because Article 50 has been extended until 31 October.
  • There’s also a new regulation to allow all EU citizens to register .eu domains regardless of where they are living in the world.  EURid told me this would become effective later in the year, “possibly October”.
  • All this will also apply to Gibraltar (GI).

This means, provided your organisation has an EU citizen, it will be fine to register a domain in the UK.  But you’ll need that person to be the registrant for as long as you renew it.

Unclear yet what proof of citizenship will be required.   I wouldn’t expect it to prevent you from using WHOIS privacy services.

How much do .eu domains cost, anyway?

$15/year to register and renew on Hover.com (they will give you free WHOIS privacy, for individuals only)
£5.99 to register (50% sale price) and £11.99 to renew on 123-reg

(123-reg is slightly more expensive when you convert the currencies)

 

ISO country codes of The Commonwealth members

Greetings, fellow traveller in search of a list of ISO codes for countries in the Commonwealth. Tricky to find one, isn’t it? So to hopefully save you the time, here is one I made for a thing…

There are 53 countries (or were in May 2019) – for the official list see The Commonwealth website.

Below are the ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 codes (that is to say, the two letter codes that most people use, including for domain names).

  // Africa
 'BW','CM','GM','GH','KE','SZ','LS','MW','MU','MZ','NA',
 'NG','RW','SC','SL','ZA','UG','TZ','ZM',
  // Asia
 'BD','BN','IN','MY','PK','SG','LK',
  // Caribbean and Americas
 'AG','BS','BB','BZ','CA','DM','GD','GY','JM','LC','KN','VC','TT',
  // Europe
 'CY','MT','GB',
  // Pacific
 'AU','FJ','KI','NR','NZ','PG','WS','SB','TO','TV','VU'

And here are the countries that competed in the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.  There were 71, but only 68 are listed here, because England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland competed separately, but they all share the same GB code (technically they can identified separately with GB-SCT, GB-NI and GB-WLS):

  // Africa
  'CM','GH','GM','KE','LS','MU','MW','MZ','NA',
  'NG','RW','SC','SH','SL','SZ','TZ','ZA','ZM',
  // Asia
  BD','BN','BW','IN','LK','MY','PK','SG',
  // Caribbean and Americas
  'AG','AI','BB','CA','BM','BS','BV','BZ','DM','GD',
  'GY','FK','JM','KN','KY','LC','MS','TC','TT','VC',
  // Europe
  'CY','GB','GG','GI','IM','JE','MT',
  // Pacific
  'AU','CK','FJ','KI','NF','NR','NZ','NU',
  'PG','SB','TO','TV','UG','VU','WS'

 

Kindle Paperwhite 2018 detailed review

Updated 4 May 2019

This is only after a few day’s ownership – but I’ll keep it updated.  I’m comparing this (a Paperwhite 10th generation) to my previous (refurbished) Kindle basic 7th generation which I used for ~ 2 years.

– The 300dpi screen *is* worth it. Text is sharper at lower sizes.  Individual characters are less ‘damaged’ and faded after screen refreshes or actions like requesting and dismissing the dictionary window etc. Photos and illustrations (still black and white obviously) look great, compared to ‘ok’ on the lesser screen.
– The Paperwhite case is much more comfortable to hold than the harsher, more sharply edged plastic in the previous design.
– Page turns are definitely snappier than the Kindle 7. (In comparison, this has a next generation display, greater RAM and a newer processor).
– It doesn’t crash as often when reading The Times (which I don’t read everyday, but it has crashed once, so there’s clearly still some problem there, my theory being it’s the size of the paper: the .pobi file – the Kindle periodicals format – is ~ 25MB compared to roughly 5MB for the New York Times and much smaller sizes for books.)

Update Feb 2020: it hasn’t crashed in months (software version 5.12.3, Dec 2019)

– Battery life seems a little better (it takes longer to charge, which is always a good sign) – at best my old Kindle was lasting 4-5 days between charges (with heavy use).
– The white front light is better than I expected (very even, works well at night at levels ~7,8,9,10). It’s especially good indoors during daylight where you have an average or low amount of light coming through the window: in these situations it genuinely does boost the background to “paper white”, and helps reduce unwanted shadows from your hands cast on the screen, without you thinking you are looking at an illuminated display.
– The “Invert black and white” option (see Settings, Accessibility) is less good than I expected (the grey background is too prominent).
– The entirely flat screen takes a little getting used to – it’s quite easy to slide your thumb over the next article link at the bottom of newspapers / magazines by accident. However you don’t have the issue of false infra-red triggers by other objects.
– There’s a power save feature on these models.  I believe it’s activated after one hour in standby – the ‘Waking up’ period each time is 3-4 seconds.

When you get it:

– You need to login to Amazon manually
– You need to enter wifi credentials
– It’ll likely not be running the very latest software (mine seemed to update after I’d connected it to a charger)
– You receive a new @kindle.com email address, so you will need to change address books or 3rd-party services such as Instapaper, otherwise documents will continue to go to your old device.

Things you need to do on Amazon site (‘content and devices’ section):

– Change your default Kindle device
– ALSO you have to edit the ‘subscription settings’ for any newspaper or magazine (Change the ‘Deliver future editions to’ setting) – this doesn’t happen for you, even after changing the default device.

Other caveats:

– Vocabulary builder, My Clippings etc. starts from scratch on a new Kindle
– A short USB charging cable I’d been using for my old Kindle, which I chose to plugin through an Apple wired keyboard (the keyboard has 2 USB sockets of it’s own) didn’t work properly with the new Kindle – macOS complained the power drain was too high and kept shutting the ports down. However as soon as I connected the new supplied lead, it worked correctly.

The lesson is to not always trust cables or assume all micro-USB to USB are created equal.

If anyone would like my old (fully working) Kindle or can suggest a good place to recycle in the UK, send me an email.