Year: 2018

And now on to the Facebook Page

As I mentioned earlier, sharing of the posts from this blog to Facebook stopped working a while back, due to the changes in the Facebook API and polices.  Rather than completely giving up on it or continue with the annoying manual sharing, I’ve decided to try the Facebook Page approach (which I’d much rather not).

So, lo and behold, here comes the @MamchenkovBlog Facebook Page.  I’m sure it’ll take me a while to find the best way of using it, if there even is one.  Please bear with me until I figure this one out.  And, as always, if you have any tips or suggestions – do send them my way.

P.S.: This post is a test of the sharing to Facebook Page functionality.

Instagram Importer works again!

After some digging around and troubleshooting, I managed to fix the DsgnWrks Instagram Importer WordPress plugin on my site.  It turns out quite a few people had an issue with it, which started back in September/October of last year (2017).  The solution, they say, is just to remove the authenticated Instagram user from the plugin settings, and add it again.  I’m not quite sure if that’s the only thing that helped, as I’ve adjusted quite a few other things all around (HAProxy timeouts, Nginx timeouts, PHP maximum execution time, etc).  But it seems like the right thing to start with.

Keep in mind that you should backup the current user’s settings for the plugin (screenshot or save the page as HTML or just copy-paste them somewhere), because they will be reset to the defaults when the user is re-added.

I have just now imported about 40 Instagram pictures that weren’t synchronized since the last September.  Enjoy!

It’s been quiet around here

I have to admit, it’s been quiet around here for the last few weeks… even months.  There is no one specific reason – it’s more of a combination of a few.

The main one being … you guessed it: WORK!  I’ve been extremely busy at work lately and didn’t have a spare moment to even read the feeds, let alone blog on my own.

The rest – just contributed: this year being rich in friends and family visiting Cyprus, me moving to a new phone, Facebook changing their policy on publishing to profiles via third-party tools, and even Instagram Importer WordPress plugin suddenly not synchronizing any more.

This is not how I like my blog.  I like it to have fresh links, posts, and pictures on a daily basis.  Or at least weekly.  Going on for almost two month without posts (with one or two exceptions) is not acceptable.  So, I’ll be back.  Now.  I promise.

This blog will not contribute to the “blogging is dead” myth. :)

Why I’m done with Chrome

Mathew Green shares his reasons for leaving the Google Chrome development team.  I recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s a quote from the “What’s changed?” part:

A few weeks ago Google shipped an update to Chrome that fundamentally changes the sign-in experience. From now on, every time you log into a Google property (for example, Gmail), Chrome will automatically sign the browser into your Google account for you. It’ll do this without asking, or even explicitly notifying you. (However, and this is important: Google developers claim this will not actually start synchronizing your data to Google — yet. See further below.)

Your sole warning — in the event that you’re looking for it — is that your Google profile picture will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the browser window. I noticed mine the other day: