For several months now, I’ve noticed that the Categories and Tags widgets were missing in my WordPress’s post block editor. It was sort of fine because I could work around it by assigning categories and tags through the Quick Edit functionality from the post list, but it was an annoyance. I had done the usual debugging steps of disabling plugins, changing to the default theme, even reinstalling the core WordPress code, but nothing changed. I had tried searching online for phrases like “wordpress categories and tags missing” but didn’t come up with anything. Today, I found two clues that led Continue Reading
Dennis
I am currently a software developer at A Thinking Ape Entertainment Ltd. I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science with the Software Engineering Option. I primarily speak Python and C# these days, but in the past I've also done Objective-C, Java and PHP.
Outside of work, I'm a volunteer on the youth ministry team at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, and also on the Canadian Ski Patrol team at Mount Seymour. I'm also an avid transit enthusiast/photographer.
Side Project: Grouse Mountain Skyride Availability
I haven’t had time to work on many side projects lately. I think I generally am most effective at programming when I have a long stretch of uninterrupted time (on the order of a few hours or more at a time), and I have found the same at work. These long stretches of time are difficult to find these days. However this was one opportunity that came up this week. Many of my side projects are born from automating repetitive manual tasks, and this was one of those.
The virtue of hope
This was originally prepared as a reflection for a youth ministry session at St. Anthony of Padua parish. “Hope” is a word we use a lot on a daily basis. We say things like, “I hope you are doing well,” “I hope I get this job”, “I hope the restaurant has gluten-free food,” “I hope the pandemic will end soon.” We hope for something which is difficult to attain ourselves. We don’t say “I hope there will be air to breathe tomorrow,” because we expect there to be air. But what does “hope” mean in the Christian sense? What is Continue Reading
Desktop computer v2
I’ve been wanting to build a new PC for a while. My current PC was originally built back in 2012, and upgraded in 2018. There’s still a lot of life left in this PC, so it will definitely be repurposed. However, for desktop use, it has fallen short in being unable to run a few modern applications (ok, also games) that I’ve been interested in, namely: DaVinci Resolve, the 2020 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Call of Duty: Warzone. Spending a lot more time at home due to the pandemic also drove my decision to upgrade the PC. But Continue Reading
Virtualmin – Install PHP 8.0 and update all sites
The PHP 8 release is around the corner. This blog post outlines the steps of installing and configuring PHP 8 on an existing install of Virtualmin on a Ubuntu system. It assumes that Virtualmin has already been installed, and that the ondrej/php PPA has been configured on the system. Install PHP 8.0 (I currently use FPM on my servers): As of writing, Virtualmin needs to be patched so that it can pick up PHP 8. Apply this one-line change to your server. Then, run Virtualmin’s config check so that it picks up the new PHP version: The output should say Continue Reading