Creative Productions, Arrangements and Operations • Art, Technology and Amusements. Software Engineer and certified FileMaker Pro developer and full-stack web developer by day, https//www.kupietz.com
Here's the SQL query to get all post revisions, which I do prior to cleaning them out of the database, which seems to make it much faster:
SELECT p.* FROM [posts table name] p WHERE (p.post_type = 'post' OR p.post_type = 'page') -- Include posts/pages AND (p.post_date BETWEEN '2020-01-01' AND '2029-07-01') -- Adjust date range OR (p.post_type = 'revision' AND p.post_parent IN ( SELECT ID FROM [posts table name] WHERE post_date BETWEEN '2024-01-01' AND '2024-07-01' ));
To get just a count of revisions, change SELECT p.* to SELECT count(*).
I removed a bunch of wildcard paths from rsnapshot.conf's exclude, and suddenly tonight my backup ran in a few minutes instead of taking over a day like it usually does.
Interesting, I've been looking off and on for at least the better part of a year for ways to lighten the load of rsnapshot's under-the-hood rsync backup commands, which reliably took up about half my CPU power almost continuously, and never found this tip before. You can see, plenty of wildcard paths removed, plus a few other things.
Here's a diff, rsnapshot.conf before changes (<) vs after (>): < verbose 1 --- > verbose 4 120c120 < loglevel 2 --- > loglevel 4 143a144,146 > rsync_short_args -Wa > #-W is transfer whole files without prescan, recommended for performance by https://serverfault.com/questions/639458/rsync-taking-100-of-cpu-and-hours-to-complete > #NOTE: if you set the above short…
I had an interesting problem where I set an image's CSS rules to display:fixed and it still scrolled with the page. Here's what I discovered:
In CSS, display:fixed means fixed with regard to the nearest ancestor stacking context, not necessarily to the page coordinates. You can reset the stacking context by adding a transform, will-change, or other attributes (list provided below) to an element. If an ancestor element resets the stacking context, any descendant of it with display:fixed will stay fixed with regard to it, but if it scrolls with the page, will scroll too.
Ditto for the CSS attribute z-index. A higher z-index is only in front of objects in its stacking context. A new stacking context, lower down on the page, can contain elements with a lower z-index but that nonetheless appear in front of it visually, because they're not in the same stacking context.
- added var_dump(opcache_get_status()) to php status page to be able to monitor opcache usage
- changed warning logs from E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_STRICT to ---- noticed contained a LOT of processes being stopped for tracing turned off request_slowlog_timeout by setting to 0s in had been 4s --- I had turned on lightspeed at 1:45 am est , aug 26. Seems like more problems since then.
None of the above seem to help, still getting freezes maybe every 30 minutes. Next…
I discovered rsnapshot hadn't run in a few days. Checking /etc/rsnapshot.log, I found every recent day had this:
rsync: --delete does not work without --recursive (-r) or --dirs (-d). rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1795) [client=3.2.7]
A few days ago I had added the line rsync_short_args -W to /etc/rsnapshot.conf in an effort to get rsync to run without putting such a load on my system. Removing this and running rsnapshot -v hourly from the command line shows that without it, the first line of the rsync command was /usr/bin/rsync -ax --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded \, but with it, the first line was /usr/bin/rsync -Wx --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded \.
Changing the line rsync_short_args -W to rsync_short_args -Wa, with an a flag explicitly included, solved the problem. Apparently specifying custom short flags overrides at least one of the default flags.
There are intentionally vague broad steps, here just as a reminder to myself; best to look specific instructions for each of these steps up at restore time for the particular system you're restoring to.
A.) Backups should include all user data. Depending on who you ask, that's either: 1.) The entire filesystem except /dev/*, /proc/*, /sys/*, /tmp/*, /run/*, /mnt/*, /media/*, /lost+found (which can be pulled from a complete filesystem backup with rsync -avhP --exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} /mnt/olddrive/ /mnt/netdrive/) 2.)/home, /etc (except /etc/passwd and /etc/groups, these have useful information to back up but may conflict if written to a new install), /usr/local, /opt, /root, /var (exluding /var/tmp, /var/run/, /var/lock, or /var/spool except you DO want /var/spool/cron/crontabs/)
B.) After copying all the above to the new or restored disk, you need to update /etc/fstab with the new disk UUIDs.
Per numerous references around the web, to delete /path/to/directory-to-delete/:
cd /path/to/ mkdir empty_dir rsync -a --delete empty_dir/ directory-to-delete/ rm -r empty_dir rm -r directory-to-delete
Disclaimer: this is for my own reference, not recommended for your use. Use it at your own risk. If I am wrong—and I may be—these commands can do tremendous damage to your system.
On the music front, for the last few months I've been practicing playing the lyre, as well as still regularly playing guitar, saxophone and clarinet. I have a 24-string lyre and expect to have a video or two posted in the reasonably near future.
Professionally, I'm working as an in-house FileMaker developer for an large educational nonprofit, as well as continuing with a…
Here’s a guide to all currently available CSS units, with explanations and common use notes. This includes all CSS units listed in MDN Web Docs as of 2025aug15.
I had an interesting thing happen a few months ago where a troll in a chat room decided for some reason to run my site through the W3C's Nu HTML Validator and apparently was grievously wounded by the validation errors it had—and furthermore, had a big concern with the overall bandwidth consumption of the site, with all its images and heavy pages.
Rather than simply solving the problem by not visiting my site, this person apparently felt some sort of imperative to berate me over these things and not. let. it. drop, making the chat room difficult to be in and necessitating action on my part.
So, rather than try to verbally wrangle with a troll, I whipped up a technological solution. And, of course, the monkey in my soul decided to have a little fun with it.
My VWWare VM lost internet connectivity after a reboot. Even the host machine could not access any service on it. Http/https got 523 errors.
I powered down the VM, changed the networking to NAT, powered it back up, shut it down again, changed the networking back to Autodetect, booted it again, and everything seemed fine.
I have always been a dedicated archiver and curator of interesting information: trivia, facts, tidbits, how-tos, items of possible future interest. In the internet age, some of this it makes sense to keep as a public archive: IT troubleshooting information, links and general interest info I want to share with other people, etc.
However, since this site is intended primarily as my creative showcase, this presented me with a conundrum. There are a lot of things I want to share online for various reasons, but which aren't my creative output. And it seemed silly to set up a whole separate website for that.
Hence this "General Reference Library": information I want to make easily available under my own domain, but as a reference, not as my creative output. Eventually this section will just be a colossal brain dump of anything I felt for some reason I wanted to…
"'Literally' is one of the most misused words in the English language. Literally means: exactly as stated. 'I literally rode a horse to get here.' means you saddled a horse and rode it to your destination in real life. 'I literally died laughing' is untrue, because you're still alive." —Siana W., via internet
That's not a question, but I'm going to do my best to answer it anyway.
You're a couple of years behind the times. Dictionaries reflect common language, not the other way around—that's how the meanings of words change over time.
Otherwise "nice" would still have its original English meaning of "foolish or ignorant" (from Latin "Nescire", to be ignorant, also the root of the current but uncommon English word nescience, "ignorance or unknowingness".)
You're in good company, though—Jane Austen mocked the widespread incorrect use of 'nice' to describe things as pleasant in "Northanger…
I've had sporadic problems with clearing the WP cache causing the server to return 520 errors for a few minutes. Usually other sites on the same server are fine, it's specific to this vhost. Logging in via SSH, checking with htop, rsync is usually hogging most of the cpu. Restarting the fpm and then restarting Apache restores the website.
According to https://www.claudiokuenzler.com/blog/361/rsnapshot-backup-reduce-high-load-with-ionice, the big bottleneck with rsync, which rsnaphot runs on, is i/o, not cpu, and rsync can actually tie up i/o such that a web server won't respond to http requests. This can be solved by making the rsnapshot command in crontab ionice -c 3 [rsnapshot command] instead of just the rsnapshot command, which tells rsync not to wait until the disk is idle before trying to access it. So I did. In fact, I made it nice -n 19 ionice -c 3 [rsnapshot command] although…
Use code you find here at your own risk! I am not responsible if you damage your data or system by following any instructions you find here.
Navigate to your plugin's root directory:
Bash
cd /home/kupietzc/public_html/kartscode/wp-content/plugins/ktwp-draggable-elements
Fetch the latest changes from GitHub: Bash
git fetch origin
Perform a hard reset to match GitHub's main branch (assuming main is your branch):
Bash git reset --hard origin/main
WARNING: This command is destructive. It will discard all local changes to tracked files and make your local repository exactly match your GitHub repository. Ensure you have a backup of any local modifications you wish to preserve that are NOT on GitHub before running this.
Clean up any untracked files or directories (remnants from manual copying): …
I don't know if this affects other versions of Photoshop, but on MacOS Photoshop CC 2017 frequently starts unexpectedly graying out all save buttons when you have made changes to your file and should be able to save.
The secret is to resize and move around the dialog. Drag the lower right corner to make it bigger and smaller a few times, and try dragging the whole dialog to the upper left corner of the screen and making it small.
I recognize the abuses of the companies currently producing the major AI tools, which I agree often crosses the line into plagiarism, and absolutely takes unfair advantage of existing manual content creators; but I also recognize the validity of an enormous number of art forms that rely on repurposing or mechanically reproducing existing content and/or stochastic generative processes: collage (in both the visual and aural forms), Musique Concrete, readymades in the visual arts, "plunderphonics", pastiche, to a certain extent turntablism, even arguably photography, as well as music compositional concepts used in the fields of algorithmic composition and aleatorical music, such from composers like John Cage, Pierre Boulez, and even the very foundation of modern electronic music with Pierre Schaeffer's…
After consideration, I decided not to post this gallery on LinkedIn.
The idea of a "monster"-themes art challenge on a professional site has always been a funny one, and while most people (including myself) usually create work-safe images, the fact is, as a kid raised on horror movies—I was babysat by channel 11's "Chiller Theatre" from the age of 6—occasionally I wind up, just by following my muse, doing something a little more unflinching.
Sometimes some of the images are... well, they're never terribly offensive, but sometimes I feel like they're just a little strong or perhaps a hair darker than I want to post in front of unsuspecting professional networkers or prospective employers.
That happened in this case.
They're not that objectionable, but some of the images were…
I got into a conversation today with some web developers, talking about recent articles about a major password breach.
This got me to thinking—with some prompting from shadowy web standards advocate and staunch info-sharing supporter Tantek Çelik—that this would be useful to document.
Unique email addresses and passwords for every website
The basic idea is this: every single website signup gets a unique email address and unique password. This way, if a website is breached and the passwords are leaked, no other accounts are compromised, just that website's.
The trick is to do it in a way that I can remember, or easily derive the usernames and passwords per site, so I don't have to rely on a pain-in-the-posterior password manager, and can log in from anywhere easily.
Obviously I'm not going to give away details of how I specifically do things, but I can…
This week's LinkedIn Saturday Monster Challenge generative art theme was "Deleted Scene Monsters": show the monsters that ended up on the cutting room floor.
And so, I am pleased to present these rare stills from the original cut of "Casablanca" (1942)—starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as star-crossed former lovers in a classic tale of wartime romance set against a background of mind-bending supernatural horrors, when a mysterious event causes the gates of Hell to yawn wide and the inhabitants to amble forth across the living earth. (Original tagline: "From Hell... to Casablanca... to YOUR Town!")
Unfortunately, test audiences didn't respond well, and studio executives said the macabre elements were "distracting" and ordered it recut to emphasize more of the drama and romance, and less of the shrieking souls of the long dead.
The bowdlerized re-cut became the familiar excellent but sadly not-at-all-terrifying non-monster film…
GuitaristInProgress on YouTube - my old YouTube channel, mostly me playing sloppy covers on guitar. Once upon a time, some people liked this! I actually got fan mail a couple of times. Read More
If you have any questions or concerns, I'm absolutely here to help. To get in touch, come to San Francisco and walk down each street shouting my name. Here's a map.
Kidding.
Your best bet to reach me about my creative work or issues about this site is email.
For confused first-time visitors and other people still acclimating, here is a description of these little tabs to the left, as well as some other features of the site.
Open "Expert Mode" CLI Navigation - this give you the option to switch your browser's display to an old-fashioned terminal mode where you may browse this site, view pages and images by typing text commands. Just like how we used to browse the web back in 1978!
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Open My Eyes - Have you ever been engrossed in your work, when you suddenly realize someone is staring at your screen, watching everything you do over your shoulder? If not, this simulates the experience.
Open Help - This help popup, silly! You just clicked it! Do you not remember?
New - Draggable elements! Several elements on this website, including these tabs, this popup message, and the "Hire Mike" badge in the lower right, can be dragged around with your mouse, to avoid them blocking content. Positions are remembered per tab, so as you navigate around the site, they will stay in the same place for your whole visit.
Enjoy!
CLI Website Navigation
Are you sure you want to switch to viewing this website in the "expert mode" command-line interface?
This will switch to a terminal emulator, load this page, and allow you to browse this website and view its contents by typing text commands.
Plus there might be, y'know, some fun stuff hidden in there. Just for geeks.
