Creating a website link file in macOS

Creating a website link file in macOS

September 2, 2026 | Comment

Sometimes, something you think should be simple turns out not to be. I’d assumed that it would be simple to create a file with a URL in it and then when it was double clicked would open the browser to the URL. This is partly true but not completely. For the gotchas read on.

The webloc format

You CAN simply create a file with a URL in it and opening it will open that URL in your default browser. This file is called a webloc file and the contents look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST
… Read the rest

Decoding the Evernote Auth Token

June 3, 2026 | Comment

If, like me, you are still persisting with Evernote’s aging API (I have two projects that use it) you will have come across the Auth Token that is used to validate requests. In today’s post we are going to try and unpack that.

What does it contain?

The raw Auth Token looks like this:

S=s3:U=13d80:E=1a4b63e2798:C=19d5e8cfb98:P=185:A=application-id:V=2:H=a3b92abc123567d7a6ec10b23cad2dfc

Which breaks down into eight parts as follows:

S=s3
U=13d80
E=1a4b63e2798
C=19d5e8cfb98
P=185
A=application-id
V=2
H=a3b92abc123567d7a6ec10b23cad2dfc

What each part means

S=s3

  • Shard ID – Tells Evernote which backend cluster your account lives on.

U=13d80

  • User ID (in hex) – Internal Evernote user identifier

E=1a4b63e2798

  • Expiry
… Read the rest

Go to a Specific Date in DayOne

May 20, 2026 | Comment

I’ve written about directly accessing the Day One database before along with a number of posts about getting data in from other services.

This week I came across a niggle with the Day One Mac app in that you cannot go directly to a specific dated post just by typing the date you want. You can scroll through the calendar and you can filter by year but that’s about it.

Rolling Your Own

As usual, I wasn’t willing to accept this deficiency, so I decided to build something to get around it.

The app consists of three files:

  • a
… Read the rest

Automatically Rotating Images with php2Bluesky

May 9, 2026 | Comment

I have a PHP application that I use to post to my X, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts. This works well but I noticed the last time I posted an image from my iPhone that while it was fine on X and Mastodon on Bluesky the image was upside down (see above and here)!

Interestingly this only happens when posting via the Bluesky API, if you upload the same from the web interface, for example, it works fine.

Enter EXIF

When you take a picture with a modern digital camera, such as an iPhone, it embeds into that … Read the rest

What’s Wrong with Vibe Coding?

April 29, 2026 | 1 comment

TL;DR Nothing*

You are the last of your kind

When I started work as a very junior developer in 1988, one of the first languages I used was ICL’s Application Master. This was what was known as a fourth-generation language (4GL). I was confidently told I would be one of the last developers before the next generation of language allowed anyone to create their own programs. Somewhat later than I think that commentator had envisioned, 40 years later in fact, I think we might be getting close to that democratisation of development.

For those interested, this is what Application … Read the rest

Restricting who can reply to a Bluesky post with php2Bluesky

April 23, 2026 | Comment

I had an email from a php2Bluesky user who wanted to know how you could set the restrictions on who could reply to a post. This was something that php2Bluesky didn’t support, but I thought it would be good to, so I have updated the code. Here’s how to use that feature.

Thread Gates

Looking at the Bluesky web app there were six different options you could select to set who could respond to a post:

  • Everyone (the default)
  • Nobody
  • Your followers
  • People you follow
  • People you mention
  • Anyone in a list you provide.

I did a bit of research … Read the rest

Posting to WordPress Microposts with php2Micropost

April 1, 2026 | Comment

I have accounts on plenty of microblogging sites (Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky and even Threads) but they are all owned and controlled by someone else. I decided that I wanted something that I could use and manage, and a quick search came up with Michael Gbadebo‘s WordPress plugin called Microposts.

I installed this and after playing around for a while, I decided that it was just what I was looking for. However, it was quite cumbersome to make a post from a mobile device when I was out and about. What I wanted was a simple … Read the rest

How to turn PHP code into a package that will work with Composer

March 25, 2026 | Comment

I’ve learned a lot while developing my php2Bluesky package spurred on by my own desire to make a decent product and by suggestions from users. One such itch I needed to scratch was to take my static code and turn it into something that I could use with Composer, the de facto way of handling dependancies in PHP.

I have to admit that not everyone was thrilled about my proposed move to Composer, as many seemed to prefer not to use it and to manage updates and load the code manually. This meant that I also needed to make … Read the rest

Exporting Last.fm Scrobbles to Day One

February 9, 2026 | 2 comments

Having already written routines to export WordPress posts and Foursquare check-ins to Day One, I hadn’t intended to do any more, but here I am, back with exporting Last.fm Scrobbles to Day One. That’s because I read a post on the Day One Subreddit where someone was asking how you could do it and I rashly said I’d give it a go!

I couldn’t contemplate writing a script to go back over all my 130,947 scrobbles recorded over 21 years so this script just processes scrobbles for the last seven days.

What Exactly is a Scrobble?

Last.fm is a service … Read the rest

Setting a Bluesky Post’s Language with php2Bluesky

January 19, 2026 | Comment

A while back I pushed an update to php2Bluesky that allows for multiple language posts and forgot to post the change so I am correcting that now!

Setting the language

By default the language of your posts is set to English but you can override this in one of two ways. Either specify the language when creating the instance of php2Bluesky or pass it when posting. It must be an array even if you are passing a single language.

Setting the Language Globally

If you want all your posts to be labelled in a language other then English then you … Read the rest