Blog In Isolation

conquering the Emacs daemon

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:47:31 +0100

Jack encountered some problems configuring the Emacs daemon. Configuring Emacs to run as a background process at boot time is the standard recommendation to significantly improve Emacs startup time.

As I have also previously struggled (and given up) with this issue, here's how I finally resolved the issue on my environment (Arch Linux, 7.0.10 kernel, GNOME v50, Wayland).

Test the Emacs client server

Initially, I manually ran the Emacs daemon (as documented in the manual) and tested invoking emacs using the emacsclient command.

$ emacs --fg-daemon               # Run the daemon in the foreground to see any messages
$ emacsclient --create-frame      # Invoke emacs client

This worked OK although I noted a couple of minor issues:

Dashboard package

The dashboard package needed a (documented) minor configuration change.

(setq initial-buffer-choice 'dashboard-open)

I also added another configuration entry to ensure the dashboard was correctly refreshed (recent files) when opening a new frame

(add-hook 'server-after-make-frame-hook 'dashboard-open))

Configure systemd

The Emacs distribution includes a sample systemd unit configuration file (under etc/emacs.service).

[Unit]
Description=Emacs text editor
Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1) https://gnu.org/software/emacs/

[Service]
Type=notify
ExecStart=emacs --fg-daemon

# Emacs will exit with status 15 after having received SIGTERM, which
# is the default "KillSignal" value systemd uses to stop services.
SuccessExitStatus=15

# The location of the SSH auth socket varies by distribution, and some
# set it from PAM, so don't override by default.
# Environment=SSH_AUTH_SOCK=%t/keyring/ssh
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

A couple of minor changes were required here:

Configure the Emacs service as a user (not system) service.
Ensure the Emacs daemon waits for the Wayland/X server to fully initialise.
To avoid the Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified error, run the Emacs daemon in the background (use --daemon instead of --fg-daemon).

$ diff /usr/local/lib/systemd/user/emacs.service etc/emacs.service
4d7
< After=graphical-session.target
8,9c11
< ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/emacs --daemon
---
> ExecStart=emacs --fg-daemon

It was very tricky to get Emacs to honour the initial frame properties (height, width) correctly. Eventually I gave up and configured this in the Emacs configuration (which worked fine).

(use-package frame
  :ensure nil
  :config
  ;; Set initial frame properties (dimensions and font)
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(height . 50))
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(width . 100))
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Inconsolata-11")))

APEX 26.1 upgrade from 24.2

Fri, 15 May 2026 14:13:33 +0100

Oracle finally released the long anticipated 26.1 release of APEX yesterday. Here are the steps I followed to upgrade from APEX 24.2 on Oracle Linux 9.

Oracle 26ai database

Oracle database version 26ai (23.26) was already installed and configured. This is the recommended database version for APEX 26.1 although Oracle database 19c (19.18 or higher) is also supported.

$ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 23.26.1.0.0 - Production on Fri May 15 12:06:39 2026
Version 23.26.1.0.0

Connected to an idle instance.
SQL> startup
ORACLE instance started.
Total System Global Area 6439552584 bytes
Fixed Size          5023304 bytes
Variable Size        3372220416 bytes
Database Buffers     3053453312 bytes
Redo Buffers            8855552 bytes
Database mounted.
Database opened.

Oracle listener

$ lsnrctl start
LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 23.26.1.0.0 - Production on 15-MAY-2026 12:08:40

Starting /opt/oracle/product/26ai/dbhome_1/bin/tnslsnr: please wait...
TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 23.26.1.0.0 - Production
Log messages written to /opt/oracle/diag/tnslsnr/ol9-26/listener/alert/log.xml
Listening on: (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=ol9-26.localdomain)(PORT=1521)))

Connecting to (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=)(PORT=1521))
STATUS of the LISTENER
------------------------
Alias                     LISTENER
Version                   TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 23.26.1.0.0 - Production
Start Date                15-MAY-2026 12:08:41
Uptime                    0 days 0 hr. 0 min. 0 sec
Trace Level               off
Security                  ON: Local OS Authentication
SNMP                      OFF
Listener Log File         /opt/oracle/diag/tnslsnr/ol9-26/listener/alert/log.xml
Listening Endpoints Summary...
  (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=ol9-26.localdomain)(PORT=1521)))
The listener supports no services
The command completed successfully

ORDS

ORDS 26.1.1 was released on 14 May 2026 in conjunction with the release of APEX 26.1. Upgrading ORDS to 26.1.1 from 26.1 is required to support the APEXlang functionality but a trivial upgrade (from 26.1).

$ /u01/ords/bin/ords install
ORDS: Release 26.1 Production on Fri May 15 11:13:03 2026

Configuration:
  /u01/config/ords
Oracle REST Data Services - Interactive Install
  Enter a number to select the database pool to upgrade ORDS or create an additional database pool
    [1] default      jdbc:oracle:thin:@//ol9-26.localdomain:1521/pdb1
    [C] Create an additional database pool
  Choose [1]:
  Provide database user name with administrator privileges.
    Enter the administrator username: ORDSADMIN: ******
  Enter the database password for ORDSADMIN: ******

Retrieving information.
Connecting to database user: ORDS_PUBLIC_USER url: jdbc:oracle:thin:@//ol9-26.localdomain:1521/pdb1
2026-05-15T11:13:28.912Z INFO        The log file is defaulted to the current working directory located at /u01/ords/logs/
2026-05-15T11:13:28.988Z INFO        Upgrading Oracle REST Data Services schema 26.1.0.r0900845 to version 26.1.1.r1321130 in PDB1
2026-05-15T11:13:47.340Z INFO        Completed upgrade for Oracle REST Data Services version 26.1.1.r1321130. Elapsed time: 00:00:18.168
2026-05-15T11:13:47.342Z INFO        Log file written to /u01/ords/logs/ords_upgrade_2026-05-15_111328_91638.log

Check the ORDS version is correct.

$ ords --version
ORDS: Release 26.1 Production on Fri May 15 11:14:25 2026

Configuration:
  /u01/config/ords
Oracle REST Data Services 26.1.1.r1321130

APEX

Download APEX 26.1 software

$ wget https://download.oracle.com/otn_software/apex/apex-latest.zip
$ mkdir ~/software/APEX/apex-26.1
$ cd ~/software/APEX/apex-26.1
$ unzip ~/apex-latest.zip

Upgrade to APEX 26.1

$ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL> alter session set container=PDB1;

SQL> @apexins APEX APEX TEMP /i/
  ...set_appun.sql
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
...set_ufrom_and_upgrade.sql
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

. ORACLE
.
. Oracle APEX Installation.
..........................................
.
...set_appun.sql
... Checking prerequisites (MANUAL)
.
. SYSDBA Privilege
.   pass - Connection with SYSDBA privilege.
. Database rolling upgrade
.   pass - No rolling upgrade.
. DB components
.   pass - Database version: 23.26.1.0.0
.   pass - APEX: version=24.2.0, status=INVALID
.   pass - XDB: version=23.0.0.0.0
. XDB
.   pass - is valid
. DB parameters
.   pass - workarea_size_policy is AUTO
. PL/SQL Web Toolkit
.   pass - version 20.0.0.0.1
. Tablespaces
.   pass - found APEX
.   pass - found APEX
.   pass - found TEMP
. PHASES (1,2,3)...

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

.
... Prerequisite checks passed.
.
...gen_adm_pwd.sql
Phase 1 (Installation)
#
# Bootstrapping
#
...apxsqler_exit.sql
...setting session environment
...Configuring SHARING clause
...Creating users
...create user APEX_260100
...core_grants.sql
...grant APEX owner core privileges
...done grant APEX owner core privileges
...Creating APEX_260100 Install Objects
...wwv_flows_release
...wwv_flows_apexlang_version
...wwv_install_api.sql
No errors.
...wwv_install_tabs.sql
...wwv_install_seq
...wwv_install$
...wwv_install_action$
...wwv_install_error$
...wwv_flow_install_errors
No errors.
...wwv_install_api.plb
No errors.
...wwv_install_error$_bi
No errors.
#
# Proceeding with upgrade installation.
#
timing for: Bootstrapping
Elapsed:    0.13
#
# Creating APEX_GRANTS_FOR_NEW_USERS_ROLE
#
APEX_ADMINISTRATOR_READ_ROLE exists.
APEX_ADMINISTRATOR_ROLE exists.
APEX_GRANTS_FOR_NEW_USERS_ROLE exists.

timing for: Creating APEX_GRANTS_FOR_NEW_USERS_ROLE
Elapsed:    0.02
#
# Creating SYS Objects
#
No errors.
...wwv_util_APEX_260100
No errors.
...wwv_util_APEX_260100
No errors.
... Re-using existing key.
...sys.wwv_flow_val
No errors.
...wwv_flow_val
No errors.
...CONNECT as the Oracle user who will own the Oracle APEX engine

timing for: Creating SYS Objects
Elapsed:    0.00
#
# Creating APEX Tables
#
...flows_files_upgrade
...create or upgrade wwv_flow_file_objects
...create flow objects
GENERIC OBJECTS
WORKSPACE
SESSION STATE MANAGEMENT
PROPERTY EDITOR
APPLICATION > SHARED COMPONENTS > CREDENTIALS
APPLICATION > SHARED COMPONENTS > REMOTE SERVERS
APPLICATION
...wwv_flow_application_groups
...wwv_flows_reserved
...wwv_flow_pages_reserved
WORKSPACE USERS AND GROUPS
...wwv_flow_fnd_user
...wwv_flow_developers
...wwv_flow_password_history
...wwv_flow_fnd_user_groups
...wwv_flow_fnd_group_users
...wwv_flow_fnd_group_groups
...wwv_flow_acl_group_users
...wwv_flow_preferences$
...wwv_flow_persistent_auth$
APPLICATION > SHARED COMPONENTS > DATA PROFILES
APPLICATION > SHARED COMPONENTS > WEB SOURCES
<snip>
#
# Installing 4155
#
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

--application/set_environment
API Last Extended:20260330
Your Current Version:20260330
This import is compatible with version: 20260330
COMPATIBLE (You should be able to run this import without issues.)
ID offset during import: 0
New ID offset for application: 0
APPLICATION 4155 - Scheme Authentication Login
--application/delete_application
--application/create_application
--application/shared_components/plugins/authentication_type/com_oracle_authentication_4155
--application/plugin_settings
--application/shared_components/navigation/listentry
--application/shared_components/files/icons_app_icon_192_png
--application/shared_components/security/authorizations/sso_authentication
--application/shared_components/navigation/navigation_bar
--application/shared_components/logic/application_items/ai_service
--application/shared_components/logic/application_items/fsp_after_login_url
--application/shared_components/logic/application_computations/ai_service
--application/shared_components/logic/application_settings
--application/shared_components/navigation/tabs/standard
--application/shared_components/navigation/tabs/parent
--application/pages/page_groups
--application/shared_components/navigation/breadcrumbentry
--application/shared_components/user_interface/themes
--application/shared_components/user_interface/theme_style
--application/shared_components/security/authentications/authentication
--application/user_interfaces/combined_files
--application/pages/page_00001
--application/pages/page_00050
--application/pages/page_00099
--application/pages/page_00200
--application/pages/page_01000
--application/shared_components/logic/component_groups/builder_shared_components
--application/deployment/definition
--application/deployment/checks
--application/deployment/buildoptions
--application/end_environment
... elapsed: .95 sec
...done

timing for: Installing 4155
Elapsed:    0.02
#
# Installing Central Themes
#
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Oracle APEX Central Themes

...Installing Universal Theme

--application/set_environment
API Last Extended:20260330
Your Current Version:20260330
This import is compatible with version: 20260330
COMPATIBLE (You should be able to run this import without issues.)
ID offset during import: 0
New ID offset for application: 0
APPLICATION 8842 - Universal Theme Legacy
--application/delete_application
--application/create_application
--application/shared_components/plugins/template_component/theme_42_avatar
--application/shared_components/plugins/template_component/theme_42_badge
--application/shared_components/plugins/template_component/theme_42_button
--application/shared_components/plugins/template_component/theme_42_comments
--application/shared_components/plugins/template_component/theme_42_content_row
--application/shared_components/plugins/template_component/theme_42_media_list
--application/shared_components/plugins/template_component/theme_42_timeline
--application/plugin_settings#
<snip>
#
# Recompiling APEX_260100
#
...reset_state_and_show_invalid.sql

timing for: Recompiling APEX_260100
Elapsed:    0.43
#
# Installing APEX REST Config
#
...gen_adm_pwd.sql
...set_appun.sql
...setting session environment
...create APEX_LISTENER and APEX_REST_PUBLIC_USER users
...grants for APEX_LISTENER and ORDS_METADATA user
INFO: 12:29:28 Setup the APEX REST migration privileges using APEX_260100 schema version 26.1.0
INFO: 12:29:28 grant execute on "ORDS_METADATA"."ORDS_MIGRATE" to "APEX_260100"
INFO: 12:29:28 Configuring APEX and ORDS schemas for url mapping
INFO: 12:29:28 Made APEX_PUBLIC_USER proxiable from ORDS_PUBLIC_USER
INFO: 12:29:28 Made APEX_REST_PUBLIC_USER proxiable from ORDS_PUBLIC_USER
INFO: 12:29:28 APEX_POOL_CONFIG Synonym exists
INFO: 12:29:28 grant select on "APEX_260100"."WWV_FLOW_POOL_CONFIG" to "ORDS_RUNTIME_ROLE"
INFO: 12:29:28 Created ORDS_METADATA.APEX_WWV_FLOW_POOL_CONFIG as view over APEX_260100.WWV_FLOW_POOL_CONFIG
INFO: 12:29:28 grant select on "ORDS_METADATA"."APEX_WWV_FLOW_POOL_CONFIG" to "ORDS_RUNTIME_ROLE"
INFO: 12:29:28 Created ORDS_METADATA.UNIFIED_POOL_CONFIG view.
INFO: 12:29:28 grant select on "ORDS_METADATA"."UNIFIED_POOL_CONFIG" to "ORDS_RUNTIME_ROLE"
Found APEX 26.1.0. Migrating APEX entry points to ORDS PL/SQL Procedure Gateway Allow List
Invoking APEX API...
Found APEX 26.1.0. Granting execute on ORDS_APEX_SSO package to "APEX_260100"
INFO: 12:29:28 APEX schema: APEX_260100
Updated ORDS views and synonyms successfully.
INFO: 12:29:28 Setup the APEX REST migration privileges using APEX_260100 schema version 26.1.0
INFO: 12:29:28 grant execute on "ORDS_METADATA"."ORDS_MIGRATE" to "APEX_260100"
INFO: 12:29:28 Configuring APEX and ORDS schemas for url mapping
INFO: 12:29:28 Made APEX_PUBLIC_USER proxiable from ORDS_PUBLIC_USER
INFO: 12:29:28 Made APEX_REST_PUBLIC_USER proxiable from ORDS_PUBLIC_USER
INFO: 12:29:28 APEX_POOL_CONFIG Synonym exists
INFO: 12:29:28 grant select on "APEX_260100"."WWV_FLOW_POOL_CONFIG" to "ORDS_RUNTIME_ROLE"
INFO: 12:29:28 Created ORDS_METADATA.APEX_WWV_FLOW_POOL_CONFIG as view over APEX_260100.WWV_FLOW_POOL_CONFIG
INFO: 12:29:28 grant select on "ORDS_METADATA"."APEX_WWV_FLOW_POOL_CONFIG" to "ORDS_RUNTIME_ROLE"
INFO: 12:29:28 Created ORDS_METADATA.UNIFIED_POOL_CONFIG view.
INFO: 12:29:28 grant select on "ORDS_METADATA"."UNIFIED_POOL_CONFIG" to "ORDS_RUNTIME_ROLE"
Found APEX 26.1.0. Migrating APEX entry points to ORDS PL/SQL Procedure Gateway Allow List
Invoking APEX API...
Found APEX 26.1.0. Granting execute on ORDS_APEX_SSO package to "APEX_260100"
INFO: 12:29:29 APEX schema: APEX_260100
Updated ORDS views and synonyms successfully.

timing for: Installing APEX REST Config
Elapsed:    0.03
#
# Set Loaded/Upgraded in Registry
#
timing for: Set Loaded/Upgraded in Registry
Elapsed:    0.00
#
# Removing Unused SYS Objects and Public Privs
#
...drop view sys.flow_sessions
...drop view sys.flow_parameters
...drop view sys.flow_sqlarea
...drop view sys.flow_sga
...drop view sys.wwv_flow_gv$session

timing for: Removing Unused SYS Objects and Public Privs
Elapsed:    0.00
#
# Validating Installation
#
...(12:29:29) Starting validate_apex for APEX_260100
...(12:29:29) Checking missing privileges for APEX_260100
...(12:29:31) Checking missing privileges for APEX_GRANTS_FOR_NEW_USERS_ROLE
...(12:29:31) Re-generating APEX_260100.wwv_flow_db_version
... wwv_flow_db_version is up to date
...(12:29:31) Checking for sys.wwv_flow_cu_constraints
...(12:29:31) Checking for the existence of APEX public synonyms
...(12:29:31) Checking invalid public synonyms
...(12:29:31) Key object existence check
...(12:29:34) Post-ORDS updates
...(12:29:34) calling wwv_util_apex_260100.post_ords_upgrade
...enabled_schema
...define_module
...define_template
...define_handler
...set_module_origins_allowed
...(12:29:35) Setting DBMS Registry for APEX to valid
...(12:29:35) Exiting validate_apex
JOB_QUEUE_PROCESSES: 40

timing for: Validating Installation
Elapsed:    0.10
#
# Actions in Phase 3:
#
    ok 1 - BEGIN                            |   0.00
    ok 2 - Updating DBA_REGISTRY                    |   0.00
    ok 3 - Computing Pub Syn Dependents                 |   0.02
    ok 4 - Invalidating Pub Syn Dependents              |   0.02
    # 4 objects
    ok 5 - Upgrade Hot Metadata and Switch Schemas          |   0.00
    ok 6 - Removing Jobs                        |   0.00
    ok 7 - Init Phase HOT                       |   0.02
    ok 8 - Determining whether APEX is in use               |   0.00
    ok 9 - Setting Patch Status: APPLYING               |   0.02
    ok 10 - Removing FLOWS_FILES grants and synonyms            |   0.03
    ok 11 - Purging Expired Sessions                    |   0.00
    ok 12 - Purging Builder Sessions                    |   0.00
    ok 13 - Dropping Upgrade Triggers in APEX_240200            |   0.03
    ok 14 - Creating Upgrade Triggers                   |   0.00
    ok 15 - Increment Sequences                     |   0.00
    ok 16 - Disabling Constraints and Triggers              |   0.02
    ok 17 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_RPTS - 1/37          |   0.00
    # UPGRADE_PARALLEL_DEGREE: 1
    ok 18 - create mapping table for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_RPTS        |   0.00
    ok 19 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_RPTS      |   0.00
    # copied 201 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_RPTS
    ok 20 - Rebuilding WWV_FLOW_WS_RPTS_IDX4,WWV_FLOW_WS_BASE_RPT_IDX,WW|   0.00
    ok 21 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_CONDITIONS - 2/37        |   0.00
    ok 22 - create mapping table for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_CONDITIONS  |   0.00
    ok 23 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_CONDITIONS    |   0.00
    # copied 4 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_CONDITIONS
    ok 24 - Rebuilding WWV_FLOW_WS_CONDITIONS_IDX           |   0.00
    ok 25 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_COMPUTATION - 3/37       |   0.00
    ok 26 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_COMPUTATION   |   0.02
    # copied 2 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_COMPUTATION
    ok 27 - Rebuilding WWV_FLOW_WS_COMP_COLS_IDX,WWV_FLOW_WS_COMP_COLS_I|   0.00
    ok 28 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_NOTIFY - 4/37            |   0.00
    ok 29 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_NOTIFY        |   0.00
    # copied 0 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_NOTIFY
    ok 30 - Rebuilding WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_NTFY_IDX3,WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_N|   0.00
    ok 31 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_GROUP_BY - 5/37          |   0.00
    ok 32 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_GROUP_BY      |   0.00
    # copied 1 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_GROUP_BY
    ok 33 - Rebuilding WWV_FLOW_WS_GROUPBY_IDX4,WWV_FLOW_WS_GROUPBY_IDX,|   0.00
    ok 34 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_PIVOT - 6/37         |   0.00
    ok 35 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_PIVOT     |   0.00
    # copied 0 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_PIVOT
    ok 36 - Rebuilding WWV_FLOW_WS_PIVOT_IDX2,WWV_FLOW_WS_PIVOT_IDX4    |   0.00
    ok 37 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_PIVOT_AGG - 7/37         |   0.00
    ok 38 - create mapping table for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_PIVOT_AGG   |   0.00
    ok 39 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKSHEET_PIVOT_AGG     |   0.00
<snip>
    # copied 0 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKFLOW_VARIABLES$
    ok 121 - Rebuilding WWV_WORKFLOW_VAR$_FLOWID_FX,WWV_WORKFLOW_VAR$_VA|   0.00
    ok 122 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKFLOW_PARTICIPANT$ - 36/37     |   0.00
    ok 123 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKFLOW_PARTICIPANT$  |   0.00
    # copied 0 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKFLOW_PARTICIPANT$
    ok 124 - Rebuilding WWV_WORKFLOW_PART$_SGID_FX,WWV_WORKFLOW_PART$_WF|   0.00
    ok 125 - Copying WWV_FLOW_WORKFLOW_AUDIT_LOG$ - 37/37       |   0.00
    ok 126 - Run copy statement for WWV_FLOW_WORKFLOW_AUDIT_LOG$    |   0.00
    # copied 0 rows into WWV_FLOW_WORKFLOW_AUDIT_LOG$
    ok 127 - Rebuilding WWV_WORKFLOW_AUDIT$_TENID_FX,WWV_WORKFLOW_AUDIT$|   0.00
    ok 128 - Upgrading Hot Metadata                 |   0.00
    ok 129 - Enabling Constraints and Triggers              |   0.05
    ok 130 - Purging Expired Sessions                   |   0.00
    ok 131 - Purging Builder Sessions                   |   0.00
    ok 132 - Creating Public Synonyms                   |   0.05
    ok 133 - Granting Public Synonyms                   |   0.12
    ok 134 - Granting to FLOWS_FILES                    |   0.00
    ok 135 - Creating FLOWS_FILES grants and synonyms           |   0.00
    ok 136 - Syncing ORDS Gateway Allow List                |   0.00
    ok 137 - Meta-Cleanup                       |   0.00
    ok 138 - Upgrading Team Development                 |   0.00
    ok 139 - Installing FLOWS_FILES Objects             |   0.02
    ok 140 - Installing APEX$SESSION Context                |   0.00
    ok 141 - Recompiling APEX_260100                    |   0.43
    ok 142 - Installing APEX REST Config                |   0.03
    ok 143 - Set Loaded/Upgraded in Registry                |   0.00
    ok 144 - Setting Patch Status: APPLIED              |   0.00
    ok 145 - Removing Unused SYS Objects and Public Privs       |   0.00
    ok 146 - Dropping Upgrade Triggers in APEX_240200           |   0.00
    ok 147 - Validating Installation                    |   0.10
ok 3 - 147 actions passed, 0 actions failed             |   1.03

Thank you for installing Oracle APEX 26.1.0

Oracle APEX is installed in the APEX_260100 schema.

The structure of the link to the Oracle APEX Administration Services is as follows:
http://host:port/ords/apex_admin

The structure of the link to the Oracle APEX development environment is as follows:
http://host:port/ords/apex

timing for: Phase 3 (Switch)
Elapsed:    1.03

timing for: Complete Installation
Elapsed:   11.98

Upgrade APEX images from CDN

begin
  apex_instance_admin.set_parameter(
      p_parameter => 'IMAGE_PREFIX',
      p_value     => ' https://static.oracle.com/cdn/apex/26.1.0/');
  commit;
end;

Validate APEX version

SQL> select status from dba_registry where comp_id = 'APEX';

STATUS
------
VALID

SQL> select * from apex_release;

VERSION_NO   API_COMPATIBILITY   APEXLANG_VERSION    PATCH_APPLIED
----------   -----------------   ----------------    -------------
26.1.0       2026.03.30          26.1.0+3102         APPLIED

Access APEX 26.1

Home page

Upgrade Universal Theme

Navigate to the APEX application. Click 'Shared Components'

Informational message displayed.

'There is a new version of Universal Theme available! You can refresh your theme to take advantage of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes'.

Click 'Refresh Theme'.

The success message should be displayed.

'Successfully refreshed Universal Theme'.

Upgrade APEX applications

Upgrade each application using 'Utilities - Upgrade Application'.

Things I Wish I'd Said

Fri, 08 May 2026 19:40:08 +0100

[ Originally published in 1999 and lovingly salvaged from the WayBack archive ]

The Chameleons were a band formed in 1981 Middleton, north Manchester, England who released three albums before they split up in 1987.

The Chameleons consisted of Mark Burgess (bass, vocals), Dave Fielding (guitar), Reg Smithies (guitar) and John Lever (drums).

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that when I first saw the Chameleons live, I barely noticed them. They were supporting U2 at the prestigious venue known as the University of Warwick Arts Centre in late 1981. At the time, U2 were relatively unknown too outside indy circles. I remember Bono slagging off the Radio 1 PlayList when introducing 'Fire'.

Anyway, my first memory of the Chameleons was Mark walking on to the stage in front of probably 200 people in the Arts Centre (probably held 1500) muttering what later transpired to be the immortal words -

'Hi - we're the Chameleons and we're from Manchester'

Of course, everyone was drinking elsewhere or talking and waiting for U2. It wasn't until the summer of 1982 that I heard a session by The Chameleons on Piccadilly radio (local Manchester radio station). I still have the tape of that session - the songs included 'Monkeyland' and 'Fan The Bellows'

After that I saw the Chameleons play quite a few times mainly in Manchester (Ritzy's, Hacienda, Salford College). The Manchester gigs were great and notable for the large devoted Middleton contingent. I'd only been to the Hacienda once before and it struck me as an overpriced, overrated venue. It had big screens with flashing images and clips from obscure, cult movies like 'Attack of the Killer Tomatoes'. It was brilliant to hear the 'Chameleons Barmy Army' blasting out and people invading the stage, leaping around and generally antagonising the FAC51 bouncers.

At that time, I used to watch Manchester United quite a lot as well. I used to go to most home games and some away games. It struck me that the atmosphere at Chameleons gigs was quite similar to a United away game. Both events were preceded by pre-match drinking and a great sense of expectation. There was probably more tension and (threat of) violence at the football. In fact, the atmosphere at Chameleons gigs was brilliant and although the gigs were very physical - a lot of leaping around and stage diving - I don't actually remember any fighting. At other concerts (mainly The Smiths and The Fall) I went to around the same time, there was such a mixture of people (Punks, Skins, students, bouncers etc) there, the undercurrent of violent tension was always there and sometimes erupted.

I also have hazy memories of trying and failing to see The Chameleons (summer '82) at the Marquee in London (sold out) and again with a few mates at the Camden Palace. This was a bizarre gig. Mark's voice was knackered - they must have been in the middle of a lengthy tour. After a couple of songs, Mark invited the audience to come up and share the singing. Unsurprisingly it wasn't quite as good as the real thing and the lads had to end the set. All the expectation, waiting and drinking was for nothing - what an anti-climax.

Things he did say

I had an exchange of emails with Mark Burgess in late 1998. I've published it here in case it's of interest.

Things I wish I'd said

I have some bootleg tapes of varying quality of Chameleons concerts. Here's a complete list of the gigs with the set-lists including any notable quotes by Mark in between songs.

Derby Hall, Bury (3 July 1981)
Derby Hall, Bury (1982 date unknown)
666 Club, Manchester (1 May 1982)
Fulham Greyhound, London (4 August 1983)
Futurama, Leeds (18 September 1983)
Bremen, Germany (20 December 1983)
Hacienda, Manchester (6 April 1984)
Camden Palace, London (11 September 1984)
Luxor Theatre, Koln, Germany (20 June 1985)
Frankfurt, Germany (23 November 1986)
Manchester International (12 September 1986)

Derby Hall, Bury (3 July 1981)

First ever live concert as the Chameleons.

Don't Fall

In Shreds

On The Beach

Up The Down Escalator

We don't use set lists, you know what I mean. We play what we feel like playing on the spur of the moment so things get a bit quiet inbetween so you'll have to make your own entertainment. Bit like Joy Division when they played here. Anyone heard of them ? Breaking Glass [JD song title]

...like my white socks, know what I mean, new song, new faces. This is about the old faces.

Endless Space

This is a song about wanting to live forever. This is called Films.

Films

Thank you very much indeed. Ta. This is the last one I'm afraid. Well we know you've all got buses to catch and things so we won't keep you. It's called Monkeyland. (Dave) - This set, right, we going to dedicate it to Adrian 'cos we've known him for quite a bit but we haven't seen him for ages and he's played with us a few times. We've made a cassette - it's as good as the set list so if you want to buy it. This is Reg's favourite, Monkeyland. Some people think it's the best one. Monkeyland Raucous cheering, applause, shouts of 'Stay On'.

Monkeyland

Yeah, sound. Unfortunately...oh alright 'In Shreds', it is.

In Shreds

Derby Hall, Bury (1982 date unknown)

Quite early from the set and lack of audience fervour. If anyone know the exact date of this gig, please let me know.

Intro (tuning up)

Good evening. We're the Boomtown Rats, ha ha, my little joke. In actual fact we are The Chameleons.

Fan The Bellows

(inaudible) ...This is a song which reflects that... (inaudible) Standing on the corner (?) A song about the senseless waste of good people. It's called 'Here Today'.

Here Today

I'm falling from grace with myself again - happens all the time.

Falling from Grace

Reverb please. We're going to do a song called 'Nostalgia'. Like most of them, Reg wrote the song.

Nostalgia

(almost inaudible) If anyone sees a set list, let us know. (loud feedback). Ow. Yeah. Got it...This is a song called 'Looking Inwardly'.

Looking Inwardly

This has got a rather strange title. This song is so new we haven't even learned it properly so if it falls apart, you'll forgive us, won't you ? No. Oh alright then. It's called 'Singing Rule Britannia (as the walls close in)'

Rule Britannia

Goodnight. Thank you. God bless.

666 Club, Manchester (1 May 1982)

Excellent sound quality.

Intro

Hi. We're The Chameleons. We are as organised as ever. This song's called 'Don't Fall'.

Don't Fall

Thank you. Back, fresh from our extensive tour of outer Mesopotamia. Welcome home boys. Up the down escalator.

Up The Down Escalator

We don't have set lists you see. we just play what we feel like playing so you'll have to be patient. This one's called 'Endless Space'.

Endless Space

The story of making a record.

In Shreds

This is called 'Films' uh, uh, uh.

Films

It must be very nice to be trendy, I would not sit in the bar and on the balcony.

Bleak and industrial we're not, and never will be - not for you, or you, up there, 'cos we don't f**kin' care.

This song is for these people who at least listened, you know and made some sort of enthusiastic motions.

This is called 'Things I wish I'd said'. We've got to go after this one - we can't have you all...

Things I Wish I'd Said

Beggars in the sky

Fulham Greyhound, London (4 August 1983)

This is a small venue on Fulham Palace Road. Little more than a long, narrow pub.

A Person isn't Safe

Thank you very much. Thursday's child has far to go.

Thursday's Child

Jane, I've forgotten to bring my drink up. Could you bring us one ? Who is ? (to requests for 'In Shreds') (audience replies 'You') Yeah - right.

Perfume Garden

Monkeyland

This song's not about sex but it could be, you know. It's called 'Pleasure and Pain'.

Pleasure and Pain

Don't Fall

Well you reach the point where you know it's only your second skin.

Films

A song about being...(inaudible)

Here Today

Thank you.

Rule Britannia

Paper Tigers

In Shreds

View from a hill

Thank you very much. Good night.

Nostalgia

Thank you.

As High as You Can Go

Futurama, Leeds (18 September 1983)

All day festival featuring several bands. These gigs often ran to a tight schedule so note the lack of the usual encores.

Good afternoon. Yes, we found it, yes. I don't want you to think I'm a pop merchant or anything but I've had the shits about this gig since tea time yesterday so if I make a few mistakes - well you know ?

Just a second while Dave gets to grips with the technology.

Don't Fall

Thank you.

Here Today

Well you reach the point when you know it's only your second skin...

Films

Thank you. (faint chants of 'Chameleons Barmy Army' and 'Manchester La, la, la' - MUFC football chant)

A Person Isn't Safe

Thursday's Child

Up The Down Escalator

Perfume Garden

Thank you.

In Shreds

Thank you. Well, it really has been fun. This is the last one.

Less Than Human

Thank you. Goodnight.

Bremen, Germany (20 December 1983)

Don't Fall

Thank you. We're going to do a song for you now called 'Here Today'.

Here Today

Danke Schon. Oh yeah - it's a nice coat, very nice coat. That's not it, is it ?

Thursday's Child

You can rip the seats up, if you want, you know. You can rip 'em out, if you want, and throw them away with our permission. This is the first seated gig we've ever done - you know what I mean - it's a bit weird.

A Person Isn't Safe

Less Than Human

Danke Schon. You might have noticed a slight technical hitch during that number but it doesn't matter, does it ? No - it doesn't matter. Good. This is called 'Pleasure and Pain'.

Pleasure and Pain

Ta. When your mate comes back, can you tell him if he walks on the stage again, I'm going to kick him in the teeth. This is called - what is it called ? Oh, we haven't got a title - it's a new one, is it ? Oh all right.

Films

Danke Schon. This is called 'Paper Tigers'.

Paper Tigers

MonkeyLand

Danke Schon.

One Flesh

Thank you very much. Ta.

Rule Britannia

Up The Down Escalator

View From A Hill

Hacienda, Manchester (6 April 1984)

Typical, packed, frenetic Manchester gig. Actually went to this one which is the main reason I bought the tape. Poor sound quality and precious few quotes between the songs. I think this was probably because Mark had to contend with sporadic fighting between over enthusiastic fans trying to get onto the stage and Hacienda 'doormen'. Also the Hacienda stage is quite small and I remember the band seemed to be quite cramped.

Intro

Thanks for coming down (audience 'You what '). I said - Thanks for coming down (loud cheers) (inaudible)..in case the backdrop comes down.

Don't Fall

Chants of 'Chameleons' Barmy Army'.

Return of the Roughnecks

A Person Isn't Safe

Thursday's Child

Wish I could tell you about a new record but I can't.

Here Today

Pleasure and Pain

Stop fighting - the light's are coming down.

Perfumed Garden

More chants of 'Chameleons' Barmy Army' and 'On the Stage'.

Monkeyland

Films

Intrigue in Tangiers

Paper Tigers

In Shreds

Rule Britannia

Splitting in Two

Ta. I'd just like say again Thanks for coming 'cos I know it's good here.

Up The Down Escalator

Don't Fall

Camden Palace, London (11 September 1984)

Don't Fall

Not having set lists has caused problems for these camera men. This is called 'Intrigue'.

Intrigue In Tangiers

Thanks. It's very nice. You skimped a bit on the dressing rooms though. It smells like bad eggs down there, in the bowels of the place. This is called 'Monkeyland'.

Monkeyland

Now then, now then what shall we play next ? (audience shouts requests) What ? Yeah, yeah. This is 'Second Skin'.

Films

Every time we do a gig, Reg drinks my drink and there's never any left for me. Do you want some Ribena ? 'Shreds' (audience). No. Rule Britannia.

Rule Britannia

(requests) Pleasure and pain ? Yeah - we'll do 'Pleasure and Pain' - we like that.

Pleasure and Pain

Don't forget keeping in time is very welcome, know what I mean ? What ? Yeah. Shall we play that ? Yeah - we'll do 'Roughnecks'. This is called 'Return of the Roughnecks'.

Return of the Roughnecks

Do you know when we'll have another record out ? (pause) Know what that means ? F**k knows. (laughter). Well let's play 'A Person Isn't Safe' 'cos we like that. Well we like 'em all but, you know, you have your favourites, don't you ?

A Person Isn't Safe

In Shreds

Luxor Theatre, Koln, Germany (20 June 1985)

Intro

Good evening everybody (whispered).

A Person isn't Safe

Thank you, Danke schon.

(aside) Andy - there's some problems with the keyboard, can you not hear it ?

Just a few problems. Ees OK.

Rule Britannia.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

A Person Isn't Safe

Return of the Roughnecks

Monkeyland

Oi - are you ready ?

Less Than Human

In Shreds

Intrigue In Tangiers

Danke Schon.

Paper Tigers

I am thanking you very much.

Pleasure and pain

Films

You're a long way from home (to request for 'Don't Fall'). This is called 'Home is where the heart is'

Home is where the heart is

Danke Schon. Auf wiedersehen.

Tomorrow Never Comes

Don't Fall

Thank you very much. Goodbye.

Frankfurt, Germany (23 November 1986)

Intro (unknown, jolly little instrumental ditty)

Swamp Thing

Mad Jack

Don't look back. If you want to dance, Jack.

A Person Isn't Safe.

Thank you very much. How are you ? Excuse the manners but I have a cold. That was about the rape of a woman. This is about the rape of a country and he starts it. 'Come on Mark' (audience). I am coming on.

Rule Britannia

Right. Another little happy song for you.

Less Than Human

Paradiso

Home Is Where The Heart Is

(Pause, audience shouts, tuning up). Sorry about that. All the lonely people, where do they all come from ?

Soul In Isolation

Intersperses bits of 'Mad Jack'

Splitting In Two

Is it a question of a University degree in Sociology ? Mark improvises snippets of a Fall song 'Rowche Rumble' - My baby's on Valium, my baby's on Valium - Rowche Rumble, ROWCHE RUMBLE is Valium'.

Manchester International (12 September 1986)

Great atmosphere. Great songs. Great concert. Great quotes. Only wish I'd been there.

Swamp Thing

Blimey, we are in demand aren't we ? This song's called 'Mad Jack'

Mad Jack

Ta. I'd like to make conversation you know, but my voice is going. You work me too hard - you know what I mean. All for 10 quid a week.

A Person Isn't Safe

Rule Britannia

Less Than Human

Tell 'em to move back ? Who do you think I am ? Moses ? Can you move back, he says. Move back. King Canute.

Paradiso

Home Is Where The Heart Is.

The management (laughs) has asked me to ask you : 'Would you please not stand on each other's shoulders ?' (audience roars). I suggest the next time he puts a crowd like this on, he loads them in in stacker trucks.

Soul In Isolation

Films

Pleasure and Pain

Caution

Be seeing you. Goodbye. You're showing your age there, aren't you (to requests for 'In Shreds') ?

Tomorrow Never Comes

Mark improvises 'I won't get fooled again' at the end.

You must have come here five years ago. Do you want me to tell you what 'In Shreds' was like or what ? (Mimics intro to 'In Shreds') No we're not doing 'In Shreds' but we're not, we're the bunch who wrote this.

Splitting in Two.

Mark improvises a few lines including 'Pass the paracetamol', 'Cha Cha Cha' (Marquis Cha Cha by The Fall ?) and then does a Chameleons on 45 compendium, including 'Strange Times' and 'Mad Jack'.

Is it a question of a University degree in Sociology ?

This tape then runs into a Bunnymen gig with 'Do It Clean' during which Ian McCulloch is also paying tribute to The Fall by interspersing verses from 'Totally Wired'.

BlogMore performance

Fri, 08 May 2026 18:41:12 +0100

BlogMore generates my site (1,000 posts) in less than 10 seconds but I was idly wondering what the incremental cost of the additional functionality davep has been busy adding recently.

The baseline run was with all optional features disabled. The tests were executed on Linux and the elapsed time was obtained from the time command. Each test was executed three times and the average elapsed time used.

with_search: false
with_sitemap: false
with_stats: false
with_read_time: false
with_graph: false
with_backlinks: false
invite_comments: false

Run	Elapsed (secs)
Baseline	8.546
Search enabled	8.749
Sitemap enabled	8.869
Stats enabled	9.140
Read time enabled	9.843
Graph enabled	11.406
Backlinks enabled	12.785
Comments enabled	12.827

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the generation of backlinks and computing the graph are the most expensive elements but still perfectly acceptable.

REST API clients

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:00:21 +0100

REST API clients

REST API's are increasingly important for Web developers.

There are a wide variety of tools that assist developers with accessing, creating, testing and documenting testing REST API's.

The following examples will use Transport For London (TFL)'s report on the current air quality in London. This REST API does not require authentication and returns a manageable amount of data.

The endpoint for this REST API is: https://api.tfl.gov.uk/AirQuality/

Web browsers

As a REST API is simply a URL, the most obvious ¹ candidate to access a (simple) REST API is simply, err, a Web browser.

If you just want to quickly check the endpoint is correct, currently accessible and examine the data returned, this may be adequate as a sanity check.

Firefox

Mozilla Firefox can display and format the JSON data returned by a REST API call.

There are options to display the raw data and the headers.

Add-Ons

If you need more flexibility or just curious, there are a couple of Firefox add-ons available.

RESTer

RESTer is a Firefox add-on providing a REST API client.

Specify the following parameter values:

Method: GET
URL: https://api.tfl.gov.uk/AirQuality/

RESTED

RESTED is another Firefox add-on with similar functionality.

Chrome

Out of the box, the JSON displayed by Chrome isn't as readable and user friendly as Firefox as it's just a wall of text with no formatting. That's OK for a computer program but not so good for a human.

However, you can use the 'Pretty Print' option.

Alternatively, install the Chrome JSONVue extension which displays the JSON data in a more useful format.

There are also a number of Web sites that display a JSON stream into a readable format with a variety of formatting options.

For example, you can copy/paste the raw Chrome text output into JSON formatter to display the data in a more readable format.

Extensions

REST Client

REST Client is a Chrome extension to test REST API's.

Talend

Talend offers a commercial product together with a free Chrome extension that may suffice for simple requirements.

Applications

Postman

Postman is a very popular desktop REST API application and includes team working, workspaces, Git support, AI integration, data driven testing and many other features. There is a free plan available for individuals.

Postman is available on the Web and there are native applications for Windows, Linux and macOS.

Postman is useful as many sites offering REST API's also include a pre-built Postman collection that you can import and experiment with.

Personally, I find the Postman Web site very busy and cluttered which is overkill for my simple requirements. Postman also requires that you sign up for an account.

Postman offers a native Linux application which is 375MB (on Arch Linux).

Curl

curl is a open source command line utility for testing REST API's which is universally available (Linux, Windows, MacOS).

You can find out whether curl is installed and, if so, which version using the following command. It's worth checking you are using a recent version of the software.

$ curl --version
curl 8.19.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/8.19.0 OpenSSL/3.6.2
  zlib/1.3.2 brotli/1.2.0 zstd/1.5.7 libidn2/2.3.8 libpsl/0.21.5
  libssh2/1.11.1 nghttp2/1.69.0 ngtcp2/1.22.1 nghttp3/1.15.0 mit-krb5/1.21.3
Release-Date: 2026-03-11
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher gophers http https imap imaps
  ipfs ipns mqtt mqtts pop3 pop3s rtsp scp sftp smb smbs smtp smtps
  telnet tftp ws wss
Features: alt-svc AsynchDNS brotli GSS-API HSTS HTTP2 HTTP3
  HTTPS-proxy IDN IPv6 Kerberos Largefile libz NTLM PSL SPNEGO SSL
  threadsafe TLS-SRP UnixSockets zstd

You can use curl to exercise the TFL Air Quality REST API using the following command.

The --silent parameter suppresses download and timing information and the raw output is piped to jq to format the JSON in a prettier format.

$ curl --request GET \
       --url https://api.tfl.gov.uk/AirQuality/ | jq
{
  "$id": "1",
  "$type": "Tfl.Api.Presentation.Entities.LondonAirForecast, Tfl.Api.Presentation.Entities",
  "updatePeriod": "hourly",
  "updateFrequency": "1",
  "forecastURL": "http://londonair.org.uk/forecast",
  "disclaimerText": "This forecast is intended to provide information on expected pollution levels in areas of significant public exposure. It may not apply in very specific locations close to unusually strong or short-lived local sources of pollution.",
  "currentForecast": [
    {
      "$id": "2",
      "$type": "Tfl.Api.Presentation.Entities.CurrentForecast, Tfl.Api.Presentation.Entities",
      "forecastType": "Current",
      "forecastID": "53210",
      "forecastBand": "Low",
      "forecastSummary": "Low air pollution forecast valid from Friday 24 April to end of Friday 24 April GMT",
      "nO2Band": "Low",
      "o3Band": "Low",
      "pM10Band": "Low",
      "pM25Band": "Low",
      "sO2Band": "Low",
      "forecastText": "A sunny warm day on Friday.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Back trajectories indicate air arriving from the North Sea. This should be a relatively &#39;clean&#39; air feed. A light and cooler breeze should ensure dispersion of any local emissions.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Air pollution is expected to remain &#39;Low&#39; for the following pollutants:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Nitrogen dioxide&lt;br/&gt;Ozone&lt;br/&gt;Sulphur dioxide&lt;br/&gt;PM10 Particulates&lt;br/&gt;PM2.5 Particulates&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;"
    },
    {
       <snip>
    }
  ]
}

Insomnia

Insomnia is another option although the free version doesn't support synchronisation to the cloud.

Insomnia is an Electron based application which is great for platform portability but does increase the size of the program (which is a hefty 725MB on Arch Linux).

Insomnia also requires an account (although there is a 'scratchpad' available with limited functionality).

Bruno

Bruno is another Electron based REST API client (although the size of the AppImage is 158MB). Bruno expressly does not offer a cloud synchronisation option or require an account. Your work is stored locally and sharing is via Git repositories. Nor will Bruno use your data to train AI models.

Bruno supports collections and each API request is stored as a text file.

Hoppscotch

Hoppscotch is yet another option that offers a cloud service (requires login) as well as native clients for Linux, macOS and Windows.

Hoppscotch Community Edition is open source (MIT licence) and can be used on personal and commercial projects. Hoppscotch can also be self-hosted.

HTTPie

HTTPie is another REST client (similar to Hoppscotch) which supports importing API's from 'curl', 'Postman' and 'Insomnia'.

Some prospective users may be discouraged by the imminent promise of 'HTTPie AI'.

Editors/IDEs

Emacs

Emacs includes a package restclient (available in MELPA) which is a REST client that presents the output in a separate buffer. The package still works fine but appears to be without an owner as the repository was archived in April 2024.

Visual Studio

Thunder Client

Thunder Client is a VS Code extension for the widely used VS Code editor/IDE.

Golden Retriever

If you want an alternative to ThunderClient and like dogs, try the Golden Retriever extension.

'Think of it as Postman’s loyal cousin who stays local, syncs with Git, and doesn’t demand a cloud subscription'.

Seems obvious, but it took two years for this simple, obvious fact to dawn on me. ↩

converting JPEG and PNG images to WebP format

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:46:24 +0100

People tell me the 'WebP' format is the recommended format for images displayed on a Web site as WebP files are smaller than PNG and JPEG formats. My site uses JPEG and PNG image formats. The advent of WebP is hardly news but I'm always late to the party.

There is a WebP converter available in the Arch Linux AUR repository.

This looks promising so I immediately go to install it.

$ yay -S webp-converter-git
Sync Make Dependency (7): gendesk-1.0.10-1, gn-0.2324.304bbef6-2,
    rust-bindgen-0.72.1-2, gperf-3.3-2, python-httplib2-0.31.2-1,
    python-pyparsing-3.3.2-1, patchutils-0.4.5-1
Sync Dependency (1): libvips-8.18.2-1
AUR Explicit (1): webp-converter-git-1.0.0.r2.gce5d96c-1
AUR Dependency (1): electron33-33.4.11-2
:: PKGBUILD up to date, skipping download: webp-converter-git
:: PKGBUILD up to date, skipping download: electron33
  2 webp-converter-git                       (Build Files Exist)
  1 electron33                               (Build Files Exist)
==> Packages to cleanBuild?
==> [N]one [A]ll [Ab]ort [I]nstalled [No]tInstalled or (1 2 3, 1-3, ^4)

Oh no, hang on, wait. it's a bloated Electron application with a lot of dependent Rust and Python packages. Forget that.

However, I recall that Emacs uses the 'imagemagick' package which is already installed and includes a utility (mogrify) that can perform the same conversion (from JPEG/PNG to WebP).

$ mogrify -format webp -quality 80 2026-04-14-BlogMore-DraftPost.png
$ ls -lh 2026*
100k     2026-04-14-BlogMore-DraftPost.png
44k      2026-04-14-BlogMore-DraftPost.webp

Half the size. Compare the PNG versus the WebP image. Copy the WebP file to the images directory. Update the image link in the blog post. Job done (apart from the existing 135 images).

blogging more with BlogMore

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:35:56 +0100

This is my experience of migrating this blog from Hugo to BlogMore (prompted by various reasons that initiated yet another blog migration).

The aim of the exercise was to streamline the process of publishing a blog post to encourage me to post more frequently than once a year.

My small, personal blog is hosted on Codeberg pages and I use Arch Linux (BTW).

This post is not a substitute for the the excellent, comprehensive documentation which fully describes the installation, configuration and usage of BlogMore.

Installation
Site structure
Front Matter
Creating a post
- Code blocks
Building
Previewing
Deployment
Publishing
BlogMore configuration

Installation

Install uv

uv is a modern, powerful Python development tool which includes the virtualenv, pyenv and pip functionality (and much more besides).

The 'uv' package is available in the Arch Linux repository.

$ yay -S uv
Sync Explicit (1): uv-0.11.3-1
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) uv-0.11.3-1

Total Download Size:   15.41 MiB
Total Installed Size:  57.14 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]
:: Retrieving packages...
 uv-0.11.3-1-x86_64     15.4 MiB  14.0 MiB/s 00:01 [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                     [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                   [######################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                        [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                  [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space                [######################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) installing uv                                [######################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/1) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...

Check the version of the newly installed 'uv' package.

$ uv --version
uv 0.11.3 (45da18ac3 2026-04-01 x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)

Install BlogMore

Once 'uv' is available, installation of BlogMore is trivial as 'uv' automatically takes care of installing all the dependencies and required Python packages.

$ uv tool install blogmore
Resolved 16 packages in 145ms
Installed 16 packages in 101ms
 + blogmore==2.9.0
 + feedgen==1.0.0
 + jinja2==3.1.6
 + lxml==6.0.2
 + markdown==3.10.2
 + markupsafe==3.0.3
 + minify-html==0.18.1
 + pillow==12.2.0
 + pygments==2.20.0
 + python-dateutil==2.9.0.post0
 + python-frontmatter==1.1.0
 + pyyaml==6.0.3
 + rcssmin==1.2.2
 + rjsmin==1.2.5
 + six==1.17.0
 + watchdog==6.0.0

Add the ~/.local directory to $PATH to make the blogmore command available.

$ export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Updating BlogMore

BlogMore releases can be frequent (new functionality, bug fixes) and the 'uv' package is also used to update BlogMore. Any updates to dependent packages are automatically handled.

$ uv tool update blogmore
Updated blogmore v2.11.1 -> v2.13.0
 - blogmore==2.11.1
 + blogmore==2.13.0
 - lxml==6.0.2
 + lxml==6.0.3

Site structure

As part of the migration, I reviewed the existing structure of my Hugo site.

./archetypes
./content
./content/about                           # 'About' page
./content/archive.md                      # 'Archive' tab on Home page
./content/search.md                       # 'Search' tab on Home page
./content/posts                           # 1,000 posts in single directory
./content/posts/aboriginal-culture.md
./content/posts/a-brief-history-of-inane-drivel.md
./content/posts/absolute-disgrace.md
./content/posts/a-cause-for-concern.md
./content/posts/a-day-in-the-life.md
# <snip>
./content/posts/writing-style.md
./content/posts/yak-shaving.md
./content/posts/your-papers-please.md
./content/posts/you-were-kindness.md
./content/posts/zohowriter.md
./orgposts                                # Orgmode posts
./orgposts/fun-with-static-site-generators.org
./orgposts/improving_fwp_apex_app.org
./orgposts/oracle-sql-config.org
./static
./static/images                           # Images
./themes
./themes/PaperMod                         # Papermod theme
./public                                  # Generated site

There were a couple of things that irritated me about this setup:

Orgmode posts are stored separately from Markdown content.
Markdown files derived from Orgmode posts are essentially (but understandably) duplicated.
All 1,000 posts are stored in a single directory.

The decision to store every single post in the 'content/posts' directory was purely historical. I started that way and never changed. This flat structure had its advantages. Looking for patterns (posts without any tags defined) in the front matter was easy using 'grep'.

However, grep (and ripgrep) can search recursively and so I decided to move 1,000 blog posts spanning 20 years to sub directories for each year so this year's posts now reside under 'content/posts/2026'.

Bizarrely, I found this simple change was very helpful. Previously, it was hard to identify draft posts and find recent content. Having less than 10 posts in the 2026 directory was more manageable.

Front Matter

Any blog migration will necessitate conversion of the front matter.

Hugo front matter (TOML)

+++
title = "fun with static site generators"
date = 2025-10-16T09:46:10
lastmod = 2025-10-22T12:52:18+01:00
categories = ["software"]
tags = ["Hugo", "11ty", "BSSG", "Zola", "Nikola", "Pelican", "Jekyll"]
draft = false
+++

BlogMore front matter (YAML)

---
title: fun with static site generators
date: 2025-10-16 09:46:10
modified: 2025-10-22 12:52:09
category: software
tags: Hugo, 11ty, BSSG, Zola, Nikola, Pelican, Jekyll
---

The conversion of the front matter was relatively straightforward as I already had a bunch of sed scripts as a result of previous migrations.

I like BlogMore's use of a single 'Category' with multiple 'Tags' as that's how my brain works and it helps me categorise content better.

BlogMore is flexible and supports three formats to specify the 'Tags' meta-data

YAML list ('tags: [football, united]')
Comma separated list ('tags: football, united')
Multi-line list

tags:
  - football
  - united

I prefer the CSV option as the square brackets in the YAML list is just noise and visual clutter. The single line format is also easier for any subsequent conversions to the next shiny blog platform.

Similarly, the fact that ox-hugo enclosed tags in double quotes was undoubtedly sensible from a purist, developer standpoint but was just more irritating, visual clutter when reviewing the generated Markdown files.

BlogMore is more forgiving on the precise date and timestamp format which has always been another source of irritation. I don't want to know or need to learn the 'ISO 8601 with timezone' standard simply to quickly create a blog post.

Creating a post

You can easily create a new post in BlogMore using your preferred text editor. You can either create the post manually, copy the previous post or use a shell script or templates. For Emacs, YASnippet and tempo are useful.

Here is my sample template for a new post.

---
title:
date: 2026-04-13 12:20:46+0100
category:
tags:
draft: true
---

Dave Pearson has created a marvellous Emacs package (blogmore.el) that is invaluable in managing content, timestamps and meta-data (categories and tags). However, this package merits a separate post in due course.

Code blocks

BlogMore is Python based and uses Pygments for syntax highlighting. Pygments supports many different languages and styles.

BlogMore allows you to select your preferred style (for light and dark themes) using the light/dark_mode_code_style configuration file parameters.

To use the popular 'monokai' theme for all code blocks, add the following lines to the BlogMore configuration file config.yaml.

light_mode_code_style: monokai
dark_mode_code_style: monokai

Building

When I work on a blog post, I tend to take my time. Write, edit, review, write, edit, preview and iterate. Rinse and repeat.

I normally build the BlogMore site to check for any errors in the front matter.

By default, the BlogMore build command only considers published posts so use the --include-drafts parameter to see work currently in progress.

$ blogmore build --include-drafts
Parsing posts from content...
Found 1033 posts
Found 1 pages
Optimizing FontAwesome CSS...
Generating post pages...
Generating static pages...
Generating custom 404 page...
Generating index page...
Generating archive page...
Generating date-based archive pages...
Generating tag pages...
Generating tags overview page...
Generating category pages...
Generating categories overview page...
Generating RSS and Atom feeds...
Generating search index and search page...
Generating blog statistics page...
Copied bundled static assets
Generated minified CSS as styles.min.css
Generated minified CSS as search.min.css
Generated minified CSS as stats.min.css
Generated minified CSS as archive.min.css
Generated minified CSS as tag-cloud.min.css
Generated minified CSS as calendar.min.css
Generated minified code CSS as code.min.css
Generated minified JS as theme.min.js
Generated minified JS as codeblocks.min.js
Generated minified JS as search.min.js
Generated minified FontAwesome CSS as fontawesome.min.css
Copied 134 extra file(s) from content/extras
Generating XML sitemap...
Site generation complete! Output: <site>/blogmore/site

The build command identifies any problems, typically in the front matter. For example

Warning: Skipping content/posts/2026/blogging-more-with-blogmore.md:
Post missing required 'title' in frontmatter:
    content/posts/2026/blogging-more-with-blogmore.md

Previewing

Once the site has been generated without errors, you can then preview the site using blogmore serve which makes your local site available at http://localhost:8000/.

$ blogmore serve --include-drafts
Generating site from /home/andy/software/codeberg-repos/blogmore/content...
Removing output directory: /home/andy/software/codeberg-repos/blogmore/site
Parsing posts from /home/andy/software/codeberg-repos/blogmore/content...
Found 1033 posts
Found 1 pages
Optimizing FontAwesome CSS...
Generating post pages...
Generating static pages...
Generating custom 404 page...
Generating index page...
Generating archive page...
Generating date-based archive pages...
Generating tag pages...
Generating tags overview page...
Generating category pages...
Generating categories overview page...
Generating RSS and Atom feeds...
Generating search index and search page...
Generating blog statistics page...
Copied bundled static assets
Generated minified CSS as styles.min.css
Generated minified CSS as search.min.css
Generated minified CSS as stats.min.css
Generated minified CSS as archive.min.css
Generated minified CSS as tag-cloud.min.css
Generated minified CSS as calendar.min.css
Generated minified code CSS as code.min.css
Generated minified JS as theme.min.js
Generated minified JS as codeblocks.min.js
Generated minified JS as search.min.js
Generated minified FontAwesome CSS as fontawesome.min.css
Copied 134 extra file(s) from /home/andy/software/codeberg-repos/blogmore/content/extras
Generating XML sitemap...
Site generation complete! Output: /home/andy/software/codeberg-repos/blogmore/site
Watching for changes in /home/andy/software/codeberg-repos/blogmore/content...
Watching for changes in config file: blogmore.yaml
Serving site at http://localhost:8000/
Press Ctrl+C to stop the server
127.0.0.1 - - [14/Apr/2026 11:19:24] "GET /posts/blogging-more-with-blogmore/ HTTP/1.1" 200 -
127.0.0.1 - - [14/Apr/2026 11:19:24] "GET /static/fontawesome.min.css?v=1776161935 HTTP/1.1" 200 -
127.0.0.1 - - [14/Apr/2026 11:19:24] "GET /static/styles.min.css?v=1776161935 HTTP/1.1" 200 -
127.0.0.1 - - [14/Apr/2026 11:19:24] "GET /static/code.min.css?v=1776161935 HTTP/1.1" 200 -
127.0.0.1 - - [14/Apr/2026 11:19:24] "GET /static/theme.min.js HTTP/1.1" 200 -
127.0.0.1 - - [14/Apr/2026 11:19:24] "GET /static/codeblocks.min.js HTTP/1.1" 200 -

The 'blogmore serve' command will also generate the site (implies a 'blogmore build') so include the --include-drafts parameter to see all content.

BlogMore provides a helpful, visual indicator to distinguish drafts from published posts.

The 'blogmore serve' command is a live preview that automatically detects any changes to content and dynamically regenerates the site which accelerates the iterative 'write-preview-fix' process.

Detected change in <site>/content/posts/2026/blogging-more-with-blogmore.md, regenerating site...
Removing output directory: <site>/blogmore/site
Parsing posts from <site>/blogmore/content...
Found 1027 posts
Found 1 pages
Optimizing FontAwesome CSS...
Generating post pages...
<snip>
Generating XML sitemap...
Site generation complete! Output: <site>//blogmore/site
Regeneration complete!

Deployment

Codeberg pages is currently in a state of flux but you can deploy the BlogMore site to a Codeberg 'pages' repository. Previously, I used a branch and CI actions but I actually prefer this method as it's simpler, less risky and more portable.

$ cat ~/bin/deploy_codeberg.sh
#!/bin/bash

# Deploy the Blogmore site to Codeberg
CODEBERG=$HOME/software/codeberg-repos
BLOGMORE=$CODEBERG/blogmore
PAGES=$CODEBERG/pages

cd $BLOGMORE

blogmore build

# Copy the contents of the Blogmore 'site' folder to the Codeberg
# 'pages' repository
rsync --archive $BLOGMORE/site/ $PAGES/

cd $PAGES

git add --all

NOW=`date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S'`
git commit -m "Published Blogmore site on $NOW"

git push

I tried to tune this script by only sync'ing files with different sizes (not timestamps) as there is no point in pushing 950 static, unchanged blog posts to the Codeberg repository.

rsync --archive --size-only $BLOGMORE/site/ $PAGES/

This seemed like a good idea but doesn't always update the Blogmore version which is included in the footer on every single post.

I normally check the the newly published blog post has appeared on the site. Occasionally Codeberg pages seems to cache data but this normally resolves after a few minutes.

Publishing

BlogMore also includes a 'publish' command that supports publishing the generated site to a GitHub branch for GitHub pages. This command also works fine on Codeberg.

Add the following entries to the 'blogmore.yaml' configuration file.

# Publish options
branch: cb-pages
remote: origin

Publishing the site on Codeberg

$ blogmore publish
Building site before publishing...
Removing output directory: <site>/blogmore/site
Parsing posts from content...
Found 1026 posts
Found 1 pages
Optimizing FontAwesome CSS...
Generating post pages...
Generating static pages...
Generating custom 404 page...
Generating index page...
Generating archive page...
Generating date-based archive pages...
Generating tag pages...
Generating tags overview page...
Generating category pages...
Generating categories overview page...
Generating RSS and Atom feeds...
Generating search index and search page...
Generating blog statistics page...
Copied bundled static assets
<snip>
Generated minified FontAwesome CSS as fontawesome.min.css
Copied 134 extra file(s) from content/extras
Generating XML sitemap...
Site generation complete! Output: <site>/blogmore/site
Site built successfully
Publishing site to branch 'cb-pages' on remote 'origin'...
Created worktree with new orphan branch 'cb-pages'
Created .nojekyll file
Changes committed
Successfully pushed to origin/cb-pages

BlogMore configuration

For reference, here is my BlogMore configuration file.

$ cat blogmore.yaml
# BlogMore configuration
#
# Heavily based on
# https://github.com/davep/davep.github.com/blob/main/blogmore.yaml

# Locations.
content_dir: content
output: site

# Main site details.
site_title: "Blog In Isolation"
site_subtitle: "There's a radiant darkness upon us"
site_url: "https://www.yakshaving.co.uk/"
site_description: "Personal blog of Roman Totale XVII"
site_keywords:
  - Emacs
  - Oracle
  - APEX
  - UK
default_author: andyc
include_drafts: false

# Building
clean_first: true
# icon_source: davep.jpeg
minify_css: true
minify_js: true
minify_html: true
clean_urls: true
post_path: "posts/{slug}/index.html"
page_path: "pages/{slug}/index.html"
archive_path: /archive/index.html
categories_path: /categories/index.html
search_path: /search/index.html
stats_path: /stats/index.html
tags_path: /tags/index.html

# Content and styling.
with_search: true
with_sitemap: true
with_stats: true
with_read_time: false
light_mode_code_style: default

# The links section in the sidebar.
links:
  - title: BlogMore
    url: https://blogmore.davep.dev/

# The "socials" in the sidebar.
socials:
  - site: mastodon
    url: https://mastodon.me.uk/@andyc

# Publish options
branch: cb-pages
remote: origin

Emacs 31.x Orgmode version mismatch

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 10:49:23 +0100

The latest development version of GNU Emacs contains features coming in the next major release so I build Emacs from source. This development release is generally stable and very reliable.

The source code for GNU Emacs is available on Savannah and there is also a GitHub mirror available. I tend to use the GitHub mirror as it seems more reliable and faster.

Clone the latest, bleeding edge Emacs code.

$ git clone https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs.git    # GitHub mirror

Configure and build Emacs

$ cd emacs
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --with-mailutils   # silence warning
$ make -j 4                      # 4 parallel threads
$ sudo make install

Occasionally, after upgrading to the latest version, Emacs produces a warning caused by a version mismatch for the Orgmode package. This helpful error message gives four possible causes.

Warning (emacs): Org version mismatch.
This warning usually appears when a built-in Org version is loaded
prior to the more recent Org version.

Version mismatch is commonly encountered in the following situations:

1. Emacs is loaded using literate Org config and more recent Org
   version is loaded inside the file loaded by ‘org-babel-load-file’.
   ‘org-babel-load-file’ triggers the built-in Org version clashing
   the newer Org version attempt to be loaded later.

   It is recommended to move the Org loading code before the
   ‘org-babel-load-file’ call.

2. New Org version is loaded manually by setting ‘load-path’, but some
   other package depending on Org is loaded before the ‘load-path’ is
   configured.
   This "other package" is triggering built-in Org version, again
   causing the version mismatch.

   It is recommended to set ‘load-path’ as early in the config as
   possible.

3. New Org version is loaded using straight.el package manager and
   other package depending on Org is loaded before straight triggers
   loading of the newer Org version.

   It is recommended to put

    (straight-use-package 'org)

   early in the config.  Ideally, right after the straight.el
   bootstrap.  Moving ‘use-package’ :straight declaration may not be
   sufficient if the corresponding ‘use-package’ statement is
   deferring the loading.

4. A new Org version is synchronized with Emacs git repository and
   stale .elc files are still left from the previous build.

   It is recommended to remove .elc files from lisp/org directory and
   re-compile.

In my case, none of these fixes resolved my issue but I discovered that there is a package cache stored in the ~/.emacs.d/elncache directory.

This 'elncache' directory stores natively compiled .eln files for Emacs packages with sub-directories for each Emacs version.

$ ls ~/.emacs.d/eln-cache/
30.2-6a8b22b2
31.0.50-be59b212
$ ls -1 ~/.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-be59b212/
autorevert-841d6890-e5e85ba9.eln
benchmark-0e5ff0c6-b45151e2.eln
blogmore-bd298bd5-140db3f8.eln
bookmark-8667481e-0391040a.eln
browse-url-87f72988-d18440ad.eln
<snip>
org-capture-31aeb3cb-5a0ab108.eln
org-compat-8f643782-38135399.eln
org-d208de9c-51cfc11b.eln
org-faces-fdfdb79f-6e1f5bdc.eln
org-footnote-a50a8027-86895802.eln
org-id-b4e96473-012fc1e0.eln
org-indent-91cb060a-1219f44c.eln
org-keys-d9945960-5b58cda5.eln
org-roam-56f7ff31-fcc8f708.eln
<snip>

You can either remove all files or remove individual packages.

$ rm -fr $HOME/.emacs.d/eln-cache

The eln cache is rebuilt on the next Emacs startup and this fix silences the irritating message on startup.

from GitHub to Codeberg

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:23:09 +0100

I migrated this blog to GitHub and Netlify back in September 2022. Three years later, I decided to move my (small) number of GitHub repositories to Codeberg as I was impressed by their approach to open source software, transparent communications and I always like to support the underdog.

I'm not a developer and my GitHub repositories were mainly historical versions of my blog over the years placed under version control and as a backup.

My GitHub repos were all basic; single user and didn't include any issues, pull requests and hardly any branches. Consequently, I simply followed the Codeberg documentation and the transition was quick and seamless, preserving all the commit history.

As the test migration went smoothly, I then considered simplifying my blog workflow by removing the dependency on GitHub pages and Netlify. Six months ago, Codeberg provided Codeberg pages which looked to be very similar to GitHub pages.

The blog publishing process previously performed by Netlify's integration with GitHub pages would now be implemented using Codeberg's Woodpecker Continuous Integration (CI) and Codeberg pages.

You had to apply for privileges to use Woodpecker but my request was approved very promptly.

Codeberg helpfully provided examples of Woodpecker files for popular tasks which included a YAML template to publish a Hugo blog from a Codeberg repository to Codeberg pages.

Once I had configured my Codeberg secrets for the Codeberg token and email address and a few iterations, it was working !

I liked the Codeberg CI dashboard summary with traffic light icons indicating the success (failure) of each stage together with timing information and the ability to get detailed log information for each stage of the process.

The Codeberg publish process has three stages:

git

The initial 'git' stage fetches the latest changes from the Codeberg repository.

+ git init --object-format sha1 -b main
Initialized empty Git repository in /woodpecker/src/codeberg.org/andyc/yakshaving/.git/
+ git config --global --replace-all safe.directory /woodpecker/src/codeberg.org/andyc/yakshaving
+ git remote add origin https://codeberg.org/andyc/yakshaving.git
+ git fetch --no-tags --depth=1 --filter=tree:0 origin +ed01403b33c60e32ae05f6c81e07fe432ed6100a:
From https://codeberg.org/andyc/yakshaving
 * branch            ed01403b33c60e32ae05f6c81e07fe432ed6100a -> FETCH_HEAD
+ git reset --hard -q ed01403b33c60e32ae05f6c81e07fe432ed6100a
+ git submodule update --init --recursive --depth=1 --recommend-shallow
+ git lfs fetch
Fetching reference refs/heads/main
+ git lfs checkout

build

The 'build' stage builds the site using Hugo and includes the version of Hugo used by Codeberg (useful for debugging issues) and timing information.

+ hugo --minify
Start building sites …
hugo v0.154.5-a6f99+extended linux/amd64 BuildDate=2026-01-11T20:53:23Z
                  |  EN
------------------|-------
 Pages            | 1156
 Paginator pages  |  297
 Non-page files   |    0
 Static files     |  132
 Processed images |    0
 Aliases          |   61
 Cleaned          |    0
 Total in 2612 ms

publish

The 'publish' phase deploys the generated site to Codeberg pages into the 'pages' branch.

+ git config --global user.email $MAIL
+ git config --global user.name "Woodpecker CI"
+ git clone -b pages https://$CODEBERG_TOKEN@codeberg.org/$CI_REPO.git $CI_REPO_NAME
Cloning into 'yakshaving'...
+ cp -ar $HUGO_OUTPUT/. $CI_REPO_NAME/
+ cp .domains $CI_REPO_NAME || true
+ cd $CI_REPO_NAME
+ git add .
+ git commit -m "Woodpecker CI ed01403b33c60e32ae05f6c81e07fe432ed6100a"
[pages 292c34d1] Woodpecker CI ed01403b33c60e32ae05f6c81e07fe432ed6100a
 1388 files changed, 6483 insertions(+), 6483 deletions(-)
+ git push
remote:
remote: Create a new pull request for 'pages':
remote:   https://codeberg.org/andyc/yakshaving/compare/main...pages
remote:
To https://codeberg.org/andyc/yakshaving.git
   7c95fab3..292c34d1  pages -> pages

The final stage was to redirect my domain name from Namecheap to the Codeberg URL. Although, I was aware that the answer is always 'DNS', this configuration change was explained clearly in the Codeberg documentation and worked fine.

in praise of BlogMore

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:57:47 +0000

When Dave Pearson quietly announced a Python static site generator, I felt obliged to check it out.

I was immediately impressed by the default theme of BlogMore which was minimalist and not dissimilar from the Hugo PaperMod theme and the simplicity of write.as.

Blogmore also had many features built-in which are requirements (or wishlist items) on my blog migration checklist. For example, support for categories and tags with archives and search functionality (which works perfectly and is very quick).

My obsession with static site build time wasn't an issue either. Blogmore generated my site with over 1,000 posts in less than 4 seconds. That is for a full generation of the site (not incremental).

The documentation was also excellent, well written, clear and concise with sample code snippets and aimed at the end user (not experienced Python developers).

The source code to Blogmore and Dave's own site were published on GitHub which was helpful.

Now, as Dave himself freely admitted, Blogmore was an experiment to try to develop an SSG using Copilot. He was clearly aiming to satisfy his own requirements and had no plans to create a general purpose SSG to rival Pelican.

Dave did invite feedback though so I submitted a few issues (mainly enhancement requests). This was partly selfish as the issues mainly addressed gaps in my potential migration from Hugo but hopefully I tried to consider proposing enhancements that would be generally useful to make Blogmore a more attractive proposition for other potential users.

Dave was incredibly responsive and normally actioned requests within 24 hours. Plus the documentation and test suite was always updated to reflect the latest release.

It's probably common in software development but BlogMore's Release Notes even contained a 'BREAKING CHANGES' alert for changes that were not backwards compatible. A useful lesson for Hugo perhaps.

Things I like about Blogmore:

Single category, multiple tags.
Theme tightly integrated with the site generator.
Word cloud for tags and categories.
Archive pages broken down by date with counts.
Support for clean URL's.
Responsive UI- renders beautifully and fast on desktop, tablet and phone.
Timestamp formats are just intuitive and easy to understand.
Support for 'last modified' field in front-matter.
Support for Drafts.
Support for footnotes.
Support for Table of Contents.
Configurable side bar.
RSS and Atom feeds available out of the box.
Live preview of new and modified posts.
Markdown based
Flexible code highlighting styles (Pygments).
Fast build speed.
Python based.
Excellent, well written end user documentation (including release notes).
Packaged with uv. Easy to upgrade.
Handy statistics page.
Sitemap support out of the box.
Optional minification of HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
The quality of the software and pace of development. Dave only created BlogMore in February 2026 and has made 40 releases since then.
Number of breakages in the period - zero.
Dave's useful Emacs snippets to create posts.
Potential for additional CSS customisation and user defined themes.
Blogmore publish command. I use Codeberg (not GitHub) but once the overhaul to Codeberg pages is complete this command should work.

If you're contemplating migrating your site to a static site generator, I'd certainly recommend considering BlogMore and trying it out.

reflections on Hugo, GitHub and Netlify

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:29:24 +0000

Three years ago I moved my Hugo blog to GitHub Pages and Netlify.

When this end to end process worked successfully, this was brilliant. However, at times, the automated deployment did feel like the game of Mousetrap where a silver ball was released and then proceeded to traverse helter skelters, ride up and down on see-saws, descend zig-zag staircases, cross bridges, trigger catapults, release levers and conquer various hazards before finally launching a bucket to capture a little plastic mouse.

By using GitHub pages and Netlify, I had introduced yet more complexity into the blog publishing process.

Then I decided to add yet another layer of complexity by composing posts in Emacs using Org Mode and using ox-hugo to convert posts to Markdown format.

For the most part, this worked fine which was satisfying and I congratulated myself on my technical wizardry.

However, Hugo occasionally broke after yet another update. Locating and resolving the root cause of these errors was problematic (for me) as the Hugo release notes are very technical and IMHO primarily aimed at Go and/or theme developers. There is hardly ever any section describing breaking (i.e. non backwards compatible) changes or user visible changes.

A random example from the most recent Hugo release (v0.159.0)

This release greatly improves and simplifies management of Node.js/npm dependencies in a multi-module setup.
Replace deprecated site.Data with hugo.Data in tests.
Replace deprecated excludeFiles and includeFiles with files in tests.
Replace deprecated :filename with :contentbasename in the permalinks test.

Failure could be caused by a variety of multiple potential issues.

Was there an error generating the Markdown from the Org Mode source ?
Did Hugo work locally and generate the HTML for the site successfully ? This was normally the most frequent reason for the failure. An Arch update would often update the Hugo package and Hugo updates were quite frequent.
Did the PaperMod theme need updating to reflect the most recent changes in Hugo ?
Do other popular Hugo themes (Ananke) function without any issues ?
Assuming the local Hugo site works, did the push to GitHub work ? Check the recent updates to the GitHub repository.
Did Netlify then get triggered correctly by the GitHub updates?
Did the Hugo build process complete successfully on Netlify ? What version of Hugo is Netlify using ? Is this identical (or compatible) with the locally installed version of Hugo ?

After yet another issue following a Hugo upgrade, I got increasingly frustrated with this frictionless blogging process that was anything but. I was now spending more time fixing my static (sic), unchanged blog instead of writing any new posts.

Once again, I started to consider using an alternative static site generator. After all, I already had migrated my content to each of the popular SSG's I evaluated last year.

My mind was made up. I was going to do it. Just a question of selecting an SSG and actually doing it.

And then Dave Pearson came along and spoiled everything by creating BlogMore...

Dovecot 2.4.2 upgrade

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 12:45:07 +0000

Dovecot recently released version 2.4.2 which required some changes to the configuration file (from version 2.3.x).

I use Dovecot as a personal, local IMAP server which pulls from the corporate Outlook server so I can maintain a local archive not subject to any quota constraints.

As I use Arch Linux and mindlessly update weekly, I was puzzled when Thunderbird suddenly stopped working.

My Dovecot server is local for me only, insecure and hence my configuration file is relatively simple.

Here is my modified Dovecot configuration for 2.4.2.

dovecot_config_version = 2.4.2
dovecot_storage_version = 2.4.2

mail_driver = maildir
mail_path = ~/Maildir
mailbox_list_layout = fs
protocols = imap
listen = 127.0.0.1
auth_allow_cleartext = yes
auth_mechanisms = plain login
userdb passwd {
   driver = passwd
}
passdb pam {
    driver = pam
}

fun with static site generators

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 09:46:10 +0100

Introduction
Test Environment
- Hardware
- Test Data
Hugo
Eleventy
BSSG
Zola
Nikola
Pelican
Jekyll
Useful SSG performance resources

Introduction

Static site generators (SSG's) are often used for blogs. SSG's typically process Markdown files into static HTML files. The use of static HTML files (rather than dynamically generating the site using a database) offers benefits for performance and security.

I use Hugo for my blog and have used (or experimented with) the following static site generators (SSG's).

Hugo (Go)
Eleventy (Javascript)
BSSG (Bash)
Zola (Rust)
Nikola (Python)
Pelican (Python)
Jekyll (Ruby)

A throwaway post from Neil Brown on Mastodon prompted me to investigate the build performance of different static site generators with a significant volume of posts (1,000).

Neil reduced the build time for his Hugo blog simply by adding more hardware resources. A decent strategy involving minimal effort producing an immediate improvement.

'I have upped the RAM in the VM running my Web server to a heady 1GB, and added a second CPU core'.

'That has halved the Hugo build time for my blog [from 4 minutes to 2 minutes]'.

This comment surprised me as I also use Hugo which builds my entire blog, containing 1,000 pages, in less than two seconds on a 10 year old desktop computer.

Neil's blog is self-hosted and uses Hugo. A 'View Source' reveals the version of Hugo in use. Neil is using v0.131.0 (released in August 2024).

<meta name="generator" content="Hugo 0.131.0">

The latest version of Hugo is 0.151.1 (released in October 2025). However, Neil is using the Hugo version included in the Debian (Trixie) repositories.

Reviewing the 'Archives' page, Neil's blog contains 457 posts.

Neil moved his blog from HTMLy to Hugo in 2023 and was using Hugo v.0.111.3 (from the Debian repos) back then and used the Etch theme.

Looking at the Etch theme, it is clear Neil has stuck with this attractive, minimal Hugo theme since then.

Given the disparity between Neil's build time and mine, I thought it would be fun to compare the performance of Hugo with different themes as well as other popular static site generators.

Test Environment

Hardware

Lenovo M900 Tower Desktop (SFF)
CPU: Intel i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz (4 cores, 8 threads)
Memory: 48GB
Disk: 1TB
O/S: Linux 6.17.2

Test Data

I used my personal blog as the data set for the performance tests.

1028 articles (Markdown)
Content spanning twenty years (2005 to 2025)
116 code blocks
74 static images
29 categories
46 tags

Hugo

Hugo: https://gohugo.io/

Hugo is a popular static site generator written in Go with a reputation for speed and performance.

$ hugo version
hugo v0.151.1+extended+withdeploy linux/amd64 BuildDate=unknown
$ go version
go version go1.25.3 X:nodwarf5 linux/amd64

The tests ran the standard hugo build command three times and took the average elapsed time.

Theme	Time (secs)
Ananke	0.615
PaperMod (Base)	1.067
PaperMod (Custom)	1.633
Etch (Base)	1.911
Etch (Related)	1.958
BearBlog	0.425
Simple	0.377
Beautiful Hugo	1.541

Most Hugo themes used the default, out of the box settings with no customisation.

The 'PaperMod (Custom)' test used my personal blog which includes additional 'Archive', 'Categories', 'Posts' pages and search functionality.

The timings for 'Etch' surprised me as it is a relatively simple theme that displays a list of all posts.

I added support for up to 15 'Related Posts' using Neil's code but saw no noticeable increase in build time (which is less than two seconds).

Hugo supports 'Related Posts' functionality and the list of articles is built during the build (regardless of whether it is used or not).

Ananke: https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke

PaperMod: https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod

Etch: https://github.com/LukasJoswiak/etch

BearBlog: https://github.com/janraasch/hugo-bearblog

Simple: https://github.com/maolonglong/hugo-simple/

Beautiful Hugo: https://github.com/halogenica/beautifulhugo

Hugo provides useful diagnostics about potential performance bottlenecks.

Here is the template metrics report for the Etch theme (with related posts). There are three candidate templates that could be cached (header, footer and posts).

$ hugo --templateMetrics --templateMetricsHints
Template Metrics:
     cumulative       average       maximum      cache  percent  cached  total
       duration      duration      duration  potential   cached   count  count  template
     ----------      --------      --------  ---------  -------  ------  -----  --------
   2.691672237s   53.833444ms   83.570806ms          0        0       0     50  rss.xml
   1.409607939s    1.345045ms   11.568865ms          0        0       0   1048  single.html
   322.542988ms      307.77µs    2.927895ms         28        0       0   1048  _partials/related.html
   126.863653ms      115.54µs    1.183336ms         44        0       0   1098  _partials/head.html
    81.827628ms   40.913814ms   41.042982ms        100        0       0      2  _partials/posts.html
    79.788949ms      25.193µs     363.218µs          0        0       0   3167  li.html
    55.705094ms    1.160522ms    7.457174ms          0        0       0     48  _default/taxonomy.html
    44.028022ms   44.028022ms   44.028022ms          0        0       0      1  index.html
    43.649693ms   43.649693ms   43.649693ms          0        0       0      1  list.html
    32.992786ms   32.992786ms   32.992786ms          0        0       0      1  sitemap.xml
     24.19536ms      22.035µs     948.957µs        100        0       0   1098  _partials/header.html
     7.410874ms       6.749µs     143.528µs        100        0       0   1098  _partials/footer.html
      961.219µs     106.802µs     278.188µs          0        0       0      9  _shortcodes/figure.html
      708.877µs     141.775µs     299.575µs          0        0       0      5  _markup/render-table.html.html
      551.337µs     110.267µs     208.377µs          0        0       0      5  _markup/render-table.rss.xml
      105.423µs      52.711µs      88.545µs          0        0       0      2  alias.html
       15.147µs      15.147µs      15.147µs          0        0       0      1  /css/dark.css
         1.76µs        1.76µs        1.76µs          0        0       0      1  404.html

Total in 2002 ms

Eleventy

Eleventy: https://www.11ty.dev/

Eleventy is a popular SSG written in Javascript.

Eleventy Base Blog (v9): https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-base-blog

The Eleventy Base Blog theme is minimal and not dissimilar in appearance from the Hugo PaperMod theme.

$ node --version
v20.19.5
$ npx @11ty/eleventy --version
3.1.2

Building the Eleventy blog. Eleventy doesn't have separate 'build' and 'serve' commands.

The Eleventy build summary for my blog.

$ npx @11ty/eleventy --serve
[11ty/eleventy-img] 143 images optimized (143 deferred)
[11ty] Benchmark   1664ms  11%  1052× (Configuration) "@11ty/eleventy/html-transformer" Transform
[11ty] Copied 5 Wrote 1043 files in 14.53 seconds (13.9ms each, v3.1.2)
[11ty] Server at http://localhost:8080/

Eleventy supports incremental builds using the --incremental parameter which only processes content modified since the last build.

Initially, I saw no difference using --incremental but the Eleventy documentation suggested adding the --ignore-initial option. This reduced the build time significantly from 14 seconds to sub-second.

$ npx @11ty/eleventy --serve --incremental --ignore-initial
[11ty] Copied 5 Wrote 0 files in 0.77 seconds (v3.1.2)
[11ty] Watching…
# Add a new post with tags
[11ty/eleventy-img] 3 images optimized (3 deferred)
[11ty] Wrote 32 files (skipped 1012) in 0.51 seconds (v3.1.2)
# Add more text to existing post
[11ty/eleventy-img] 3 images optimized (3 deferred)
[11ty] Wrote 32 files (skipped 1012) in 0.46 seconds (v3.1.2)

Summary of timings for Eleventy

Theme	Time (secs)
Eleventy (Full)	14.42
Eleventy (Incremental)	0.46

BSSG

BSSG - https://bssg.dragas.net/

Bash Static Site Generator (BSSG) is an SSG created by Stefano Marinelli. BSSG is written in the Bash shell.

BSSG is a relatively new SSG. The first public release of BSSG was in March 2025 but there have been 14 subsequent releases.

BSSG includes a broad range of themes, support for incremental builds, parallel processing and a post article editor to manage content.

BSSG doesn't currently support 'Categories' so all existing 'Categories' were migrated to 'Tags'.

It is possible this skewed the data set slightly and adversely affected performance as it resulted in four tags having a lot of associated posts. BSSG can list all tags with article counts using the 'bssg.sh tags' command.

Tag	Count
blogging	236
football	112
software	122
UK	260

$ bssg.sh
BSSG - Bash Static Site Generator (v0.32)
$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 5.3.3(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

Initial BSSG build from scratch.

$ bssg.sh build

BBSG uses incremental builds and only rebuilds what has changed.

Theme	Time (secs)	Notes
Default	2,389	Full (2,389 secs = 39 mins)
Default	23	Unchanged.
Default	61	Add new post (no tags).
Default	100	Add new post (existing tag).
Default	62	Modify existing post.
Default	107	Add existing tag to existing post.
Default	83	Add new tag to existing post.

By default, BSSG generates related posts based on the 'Tags' in each post. The default number of related posts displayed is 3. If this feature is disabled, then the build time is reduced significantly.

Theme	Time (secs)	Notes
Default	169	Full
Default	12	Unchanged.
Default	63	Add new post (no tags).
Default	62	Add new post (existing tag).
Default	64	Modify existing post.
Default	62	Add existing tag to existing post.
Default	70	Add new tag to existing post.

BSSG also supports parallel processing using the GNU parallel shell tool. The GNU parallel package is very lightweight (< 1MB).

BSSG detects the presence of GNU parallel automatically and spawns N processes in parallel where N is the number of threads available.

Checked dependencies. Parallel available: true
GNU parallel found! Using parallel processing.

On my computer, this resulted in BSSG spawning 8 Bash processes which may have been too many as the load average climbed to between 10 and 15.

However, the elapsed time for the initial build of a blog with 1,000 posts reduces from 39 minutes to under 10 minutes.

Before you exclaim '10 minutes when Hugo and Eleventy are sub-second', think about how often you completely rebuild every single post on your blog. Not very often.

The typical use case is writing a new blog post. There may be occasions when you change theme or spend two weeks consolidating all your tags and categories but, hopefully, those should be relatively rare.

Theme	Time (secs)	Notes
Default	559	Full. Parallel.
Default	32	Unchanged.
Default	60	Add new post (no tags).
Default	75	Add new post (existing tag).
Default	67	Modify existing post.
Default	73	Add existing tag to existing post.
Default	67	Add new tag to existing post.

Removing 'Related Posts' and running in parallel reduces the time for a full build to 1 minute and an incremental build to 45 seconds.

Theme	Time (secs)	Notes
Default	59	Full. Parallel.
Default	30	Unchanged.
Default	44	Add new post (no tags).
Default	44	Add new post (existing tag).

One big advantage of BSSG is the ability to quickly and easily change themes. You simply select a theme, modify the THEME entry in the configuration file and it just works. This is because BSSG themes use a single CSS style sheet. This may limit the functionality available but it just works.

Zola

Zola - https://www.getzola.org/

Zola is a SSG written in Rust. Like Hugo, Zola is a single executable. Like Hugo, Zola is fast. Like Hugo, changing themes in Zola is not simply a case of modifying the THEME entry in 'config.toml'. Each theme seems to have additional, custom configuration options that need to be set.

$ zola --version
zola 0.21.0
$ rustc --version
rustc 1.90.0 (1159e78c4 2025-09-14) (Arch Linux rust 1:1.90.0-3)

Serene Theme - https://github.com/isunjn/serene

Building the blog

$ zola build

The Zola build time for 1,000 posts was so lightning fast, I had to check it actually worked !

$ zola build
Building site...
Checking all internal links with anchors.
> Successfully checked 0 internal link(s) with anchors.
-> Creating 1030 pages (0 orphan) and 1 sections
Done in 351ms.

Like Hugo, Zola also has a live development server that watches for changes to the site in real-time. This is also fast.

Building site...
Checking all internal links with anchors.
> Successfully checked 0 internal link(s) with anchors.
-> Creating 1031 pages (0 orphan) and 1 sections
Done in 309ms.

Listening for changes in zola-blog/{config.toml,content,sass,static,templates,themes}

Web server is available at http://127.0.0.1:1111 (bound to 127.0.0.1:1111)

Change detected @ 2025-10-14 13:17:09
-> Content changed zola-blog/content/posts/zola-new-post.md
Checking all internal links with anchors.
> Successfully checked 0 internal link(s) with anchors.
-> Creating 1031 pages (0 orphan) and 1 sections
Done in 283ms.

Finally I experimented with a couple more themes.

Linkita - https://www.getzola.org/themes/linkita/

BearBlog - https://www.getzola.org/themes/bearblog/

PaperMod - https://www.getzola.org/themes/papermod/

Theme	Time (secs)	Notes
Serene	0.35	Full
Serene	0.28	Incremental
Linkita	1.77	Full
Linkita	1.70	Incremental
Bearblog	0.26	Full
Bearblog	0.25	Incremental
PaperMod	20.70	Full
PaperMod	20.51	Incremental

Nikola

Nikola is a long established SSG (first released in 2012) written in Python.

Nikola - https://getnikola.com/blog/

$ python -V
Python 3.13.7
$ nikola version
Nikola v8.3.3

Useful Nikola commands.

nikola build
nikola serve --browser
nikola auto

To force a full rebuild in Nikola, you need to remove the 'output' directory.

You also need to use the Linux time command to get the elapsed timings for the nikola build command.

Nikola includes the wonderful blog.txt theme (originally written for Wordpress by Scott Wallick) so kudos to Nikola's author Roberto Alsina for that.

Theme	Time (secs)	Notes
Default	44.86	Full
Default	4.72	Unchanged
Default	5.86	Add new post (no tags).
Default	5.75	Add new post (existing tag).
Default	5.98	Modify existing post.
Default	5.87	Add existing tag to existing post.
Default	5.70	Add new tag to existing post.
blogtxt	47.34	Full
blogtxt	4.93	Unchanged
blogtxt	4.78	Add new post (no tags).
blogtxt	4.82	Add new post (existing tag).

Pelican

Pelican - https://getpelican.com/

Create a dedicated virtual environment for Pelican.

$ workon Pelican
(Pelican) $ python -V
Python 3.13.7
(Pelican) $ pelican --version
4.11.0

Pelican doesn't have separate build and server commands. You simply run the development server which builds the site and watches for any changes.

(Pelican) $ pelican --autoreload --listen
Serving site at: http://127.0.0.1:8000 - Tap CTRL-C to stop
Done: Processed 1034 articles, 0 drafts, 0 hidden articles, 0 pages,
0 hidden pages and 0 draft pages in 3.65 seconds.

Add a new post (incremental build).

-> Modified: pelican-blog/content/my-pelican-post.md.
re-generating...
Done: Processed 1035 articles, 0 drafts, 0 hidden articles, 0 pages,
0 hidden pages and 0 draft pages in 2.96 seconds.

Summary

Theme	Time (secs)	Notes
Default	3.65	Full
Default	2.96	Incremental

Jekyll

Ruby based blog.

$ ruby -v
ruby 3.4.6 (2025-09-16 revision dbd83256b1) +PRISM [x86_64-linux]
$ bundle exec jekyll -v
jekyll 4.4.1

Jekyll base theme (minima) - https://github.com/jekyll/minima

Build the blog

$ bundle exec jekyll serve
<snip>
Run in verbose mode to see all warnings.
                    done in 2.788 seconds.
Auto-regeneration: enabled for '/home/andy/devel/my-jekyll-blog'
Server address: http://127.0.0.1:4000/

Live reload uses a different command and port

Run in verbose mode to see all warnings.
                    done in 4.7 seconds.
 Auto-regeneration: enabled for 'devel/my-jekyll-blog'
LiveReload address: http://127.0.0.1:35729
    Server address: http://127.0.0.1:4000/
  Server running... press ctrl-c to stop.

Jekyll also produces a lot of warnings (deprecation) that clutter up the display. This is surprising (and irritating) for the latest version of Jekyll and the standard, bundled theme.

There is a '--quiet' option for 'jekyll build' but this doesn't appear to silence the warnings.

Attempting to access the live development server on port 35729 fails. However, the live reload is actually available on port 4000.

This port only serves livereload.js over HTTP.

Given Jekyll was first released back in 2008, Jekyll feels rather neglected and outdated to me. Tags didn't work properly. All tags were processed and listed but the click through from an individual article as '404 - Not Found' error.

Also Jekyll insists on blog posts following a naming convention ('yyyy-mm-dd-title.md').

Theme	Time (secs)	Notes
Default	5.091	Full
Default	1.029	Incremental
Default	8.561	Live reload

Useful SSG performance resources

Zach Leatherman (Eleventy lead developer) performed some performance benchmarks (in 2022) which are a useful benchmark comparing SSG's for pure Markdown conversion throughput for large sites.

However, Zach's tests don't include meta-data (tags, categories, dates) so aren't necessarily representative of a real-life blog or site.

https://www.zachleat.com/web/build-benchmark/

Generating representative test data is difficult but this Bash script scrapes a random Wikipedia page and generates Markdown (including tags and categories).

https://gist.github.com/jgreely/2338c72c825d2a93713e4f0fc0025985

Each SSG has its own format for front-matter. There are even two different formats for front matter; TOML and YAML.

Hugo has a very useful built-in conversion function to convert the Hugo front matter an all posts between the formats (including JSON).

$ hugo convert --help
Usage:
  hugo convert [command]

Available Commands:
  toJSON      Convert front matter to JSON
  toTOML      Convert front matter to TOML
  toYAML      Convert front matter to YAML

CommonMark test

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 15:16:24 +0100

This is the famous ‘Hello world’ program written in Python in colour using Markdown.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys

def hello(name='world'):
    greeting = "hello " + name
    print(greeting)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    hello(*sys.argv[1:])

This took me a long time to get working.

The music video for Rihanna’s song American Oxygen depicts various moments from American history, including the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Everyone must attend the meeting at 5 o’clock today.

I am totally awesome.*

* for certain very small values of awesome

I have eaten\ the plums\ that were in\ the icebox

Chapter 1

Something about the room made him uneasy.

Chapter 2

It's behind you! Hurry before it

After the Big Bang

A brief summary of time

Life on earth

10 billion years

You reading this

13.7 billion years

The quote

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known

has been ascribed to Carl Sagan.

My favourite Miss Manners quotes:

Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.

Ideological differences are no excuse for rudeness.

Flour
Cheese
Tomatoes

Four steps to better sleep: 1. Stick to a sleep schedule 2. Create a bedtime ritual 3. Get comfortable 4. Manage stress

1986. What a great season. Arguably the finest season in the history of the franchise.

You can do anything at https://html5zombo.com

The University of Rwanda was formed in 2013 through the merger of Rwanda’s seven public institutions of higher education.

Hurricane Erika was the strongest and longest-lasting tropical cyclone in the 1997 Atlantic hurricane season.

When x = 3, that means x + 2 = 5

Who ate the most donuts this week?

Jeff  15
Sam   11
Robin  6

Fruit
Apple
Orange
Banana
Dairy
Milk
Cheese
World Cup 2014
Germany
Argentina
Netherlands
Rugby World Cup 2015
New Zealand
Australia
South Africa
Ingredients
- spaghetti
- marinara sauce
- salt
Cooking

Bring water to boil, add a pinch of salt and spaghetti. Cook until pasta is tender.

Serve

Drain the pasta on a plate. Add heated sauce.

No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.

Bon appetit!

	Column Left	Column Right	Column Centre
row1	1	1	1
row2	2	2	2
row3	3	3	3

Oracle SQLcl configuration

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 14:47:00 +0000

I use SQLcl a lot and install it on every environment I work on. Its fully compatible with SQL*Plus and has useful extensions to interact with OCI, Autonomous Databases and Data Pump.

My SQLcl configuration file is named 'login.sql' and located in the '~/work' directory. I also keep my 'tnsnames.ora' file here.

The location of these two Oracle configuration files is configured in '~/.bashrc'.

# Oracle TNS location
export TNS_ADMIN=$HOME/work

# SQLCL login file
export SQLPATH=$HOME/work

This is my SQLcl configuration file.

set editor emacs
set statusbar on
set statusbar add timing
set sqlformat ansiconsole
set highlighting on
set highlighting keyword foreground green
set highlighting identifier foreground magenta
set highlighting string foreground yellow
set highlighting number foreground cyan
set highlighting comment background white
set highlighting comment foreground black

Sample output

select count(*) from dba_objects;

COUNT(*)
________
358710

emacs # 1:0 | BILLY | EDA_DEMO | 00:00:00.953

what I use

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 13:43:00 +0000

I like reading about the hardware and software various people use so here's my version.

Introduction

I work for Oracle as a technical consultant based in the UK (fully remote). I'm old and evolved from a Unix/C developer to PL/SQL, Oracle DBA and now work on database migrations and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Hardware

Lenovo ThinkCentre M900

Intel i7-6700
Memory 48GB (upgraded from 16GB)
Disk 1TB

Samsung Galaxy S24

Expensive phone kindly provided by my employer. I don't use many apps (Gmail, WhatsApp, BBC Sport, Tusky).

MacBook Pro

Expensive laptop kindly provided by my employer. I use it on the rare occasions I need to attend an office or customer site.

Huawei Android tablet

I don't have a personal laptop so I use this for idly wasting time.

Synology

Years ago, I acquired a FreeNAS unit after almost losing an essay (and my marriage) my wife had written for a Masters course. I subsequently replaced the FreeNAS with a Synology DS420+ which works fine (file backups, Jellyfin music server). The NAS has saved my bacon on more than one occasion and now I can't imagine being without it.

Software

Arch Linux

Former serial distro hopper. Now happy with Arch and Gnome desktop. Arch just works, has great documentation and provides a brilliant development environment (comprehensive range of latest packages).

GNU Emacs

I have used GNU Emacs for many years but am still learning about its power daily. I try to use core packages and keep my configuration minimal although I build the latest bleeding edge version (30.x).

Theme - Used 'monokai' for ages and now adopted Prot's excellent 'modus-vivendi-tinted'.
Orgmode
Org Roam
Vertico, Consult, Maginalia, Orderless
Magit
Jinx (spell checker)
Dashboard
Undo Tree
Pass

Thunderbird

My employer uses Outlook but we can run any email client so I run a local Dovecot IMAP server and Thunderbird.

I use Thunderbird to automatically fetch messages from Outlook and filters in a vain attempt to try to reduce the size of INBOX.

VirtualBox

I use VirtualBox a lot for demo environments, testing new Oracle features and experimenting.

I've also used Docker/Podman but struggle to fully embrace it as I prefer full control (and don't really understand Docker compose files).

Corporate

Standard list of tedious corporate applications I have to use. Most of these work on Arch.

Zoom
Teams
Slack
Confluence
Jira
VS-Code/SQL Developer (Oracle database client).

remapping multiple tablespaces in Data Pump

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 14:42:00 +0000

Occasionally I find myself migrating Oracle databases between environments using Data Pump.

Enterprise applications tend to use multiple tablespaces for logical separation (and historical reasons). However, this isn't possible when the target database is Autonomous Database (ADB) hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

ADB is a managed service so DBA's can't create tablespaces and are limited to 'DATA'.

However, Oracle 19c Data Pump supports wildcards for the REMAP_TABLESPACE parameter which allows multiple tablespaces from the existing application to be mapped to the ADB DATA tablespace.

#!/bin/bash

for SCHEMA in MYSCHEMA
do
  PARFILE=/tmp/dpexp_$$.par

  cat > ${PARFILE} <<EOF
schemas=${SCHEMA}
logfile=imp_schema_${SCHEMA}.log
directory=TEST_DIR
dumpfile=exp_schema_${SCHEMA}.dmp
transform=disable_archive_logging:Y
table_exists_action=REPLACE
remap_tablespace=%:DATA
metrics=Y
logtime=ALL
EOF

  cat ${PARFILE}
  impdp user/pass@DB parfile=${PARFILE}
done

More info - Oracle 19C Data Pump documentation

blog questions challenge

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 15:35:23 +0000

I was interested by Kev Quirk's Blog Questions Challenge, so here's my answers.

To recap, the questions are:

Why did you start blogging in the first place ?
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it ?
Have you blogged on other platforms before ?
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that's part of your blog ?
When do you feel most inspired to write ?
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft ?
What's your favourite post on your blog ?
Any future plans for your blog ? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature ?

Why did you start blogging in the first place ?

I had a web site from 1999 but this was essentially a set of static HTML pages.

I'm an Oracle DBA/developer and there was an active Oracle blogging community who first piqued my interest in back in 2005. I am a serial experimenter and curious about new technologies so initially I chose Blogger and subsequently switched to Wordpress.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it ?

This blog currently uses Emacs, Hugo, GitHub and Netlify as I wanted to use as many moving parts as possible. This stack is also essentially a 'free' solution.

Have you blogged on other platforms before ?

Err, yes. I've used many blogging platforms (Blogger, Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Tumblr, Posterous, Serendipity, Jekyll, Pelican, Octopress, Habari, Nikola, Eleventy, write.as, Hugo).

How do you write your posts ?

Now I write in Emacs and orgmode. This was a recent, conscious decision as I wanted to standardise on orgmode markup. Trying to remember the subtle differences between Markdown and orgmode formats was irritating.

When do you feel most inspired to write ?

Unfortunately not very often.

Years ago, I tended to be prompted to post by other bloggers but, with the advent of the immediacy of social media, sadly the blogging community and the number of feeds in my RSS client has shrunk considerably.

Plus I'm lazy. Incredibly lazy.

Do you publish immediately or have Draft posts ?

Normally, I publish immediately. I really don't like content sitting in 'Drafts' which is akin to a dripping water tap, taunting me, nagging me.

However, I am slightly pedantic about presentation and typos, in particular, so will always preview the post locally in Hugo before publishing.

What's your favourite post on your blog ?

Easy. Two. Both involve hamsters.

Any future plans for your blog ?

Possibly. I'm quite happy with my existing setup but sometimes I think self hosting using WriteFreely would be easier and offer better integration with the Fediverse.

improving the FWP APEX application

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 10:03:57 +0000

Stung by the criticism of our Football Web Pages APEX application, we decide to try to address the various issues raised by end users and peer code review.

When clicking ‘Fixtures’, I get ‘ORA-20999: REST Data Source returned an HTTP error: HTTP 400: Bad request’
If you enter a Competition only, it works fine. If you enter a Team only, it works fine. If you enter both a ‘Competition’ and ‘Team’, the results look weird. Should ‘Team’ be a cascading LOV based on the ‘Competition’ ?
The column names and labels need tidying up. There are a lot of meaningless ID fields displayed.
It would be nice to have the option to review past results separately from fixtures in the future.
Performance - the Popup LOV’s for Competition and Team are sluggish. Why are they so S L O W ?
The navigation menu looks chaotic and ugly.

HTTP 400 error entering Fixtures report

This error is because the REST parameter for 'Competition' or 'Teams' is required. When we first run this page, there no values defined for the 'Competition' or 'Teams' parameters which results in the error.

A quick and easy solution is to simply default the competition to 'Premier League'.

Edit the 'Fixtures' page. This is Page 8 in my example. The page number may be different in your APEX environment.

FWP Fixtures

Edit the 'P8_COMPETITION' parameter.

Competition parameter

Filter on 'Default' and configure a default value with 'Type' set to 'Static' with the value set to '1' (Premier League).

Competition parameter default

Save and test the changes. Now if you enter the 'Fixtures' page for the first time, you should see data displayed for the Premier League (instead of the HTTP 400 error).

Competition defaulted

This may not necessarily be the best solution to this problem. For example, I would like the 'Competition' to default to 'Isthmian League - South Central' or the team to default to 'Kingstonian FC'. This requirement could be implemented using a user profile page.

Parameter validation

Defaulting the 'Competition' to Premier League may appear to have resolved the issue when neither of the 'Competition' and 'Team' parameters are supplied. However, you can easily reproduce the original issue by selecting the 'Select' value for each parameter and clicking 'Go'.

APEX provides a declarative solution for parameter validation which we can use to resolve this issue.

Navigate to the 'Fixtures' page in App Builder.

Fixtures validation

Click the 'Processing' tab.

Create a Validation called 'ValidateParams'.

Click on 'Validating', then right-click and select 'Create Validation'. Scroll down to the 'Validation' section with Type = 'Expression' and Language = 'PL/SQL'.

Fixtures validation create

I always forget the semantics of the validation expression so I normally click the 'Help' tab in the middle pane for a quick reminder.

To pass the validation, and not raise an error message, when the employee is in department 30 or is a manager:

( :P2_DEPTNO = 30 or :P2_JOB = 'MANAGER' )

In our case, the two parameters are an exclusive OR. The user must either select a Competition or a Team but not both.

Therefore, our validation expression (which specifies when the parameters are valid) is:

(:P4_TEAM is null and :P4_COMPETITION is not null)
or
(:P4_TEAM is not null and :P4_COMPETITION is null)

APEX insists you enter a meaningful error message to the displayed to the end user if the validation fails.

You must select a competition or team.

Test the changes and check the user now gets an error message displayed.

Fixtures validation message

A lot of the FWP API's require this identical combination of parameters. Instead of copying and pasting this PL/SQL block, put it into a stored procedure, so you can reuse this logic. Then, if this logic subsequently changes in the future, you only have to change the code in one place.

Summary

We have (finally) addressed a couple of issues originally raised in October 2022.

This is the antithesis of the Agile development methodology but we will endeavour to address the remaining feedback during the course of 2025.

Your Amazing OrgMode Post

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 17:12:09 +0100

Your Main Content

This is where the magic happens. Write your awesome content here!

Here is the wonderful second paragraph.

Standard text markup

bold

italic

underline

Verbatim

code

~~StrikeThrough~~

Lists

Unordered list

Apples
Oranges
Pears

Ordered list

First
Second
Third

Blocks

Sample quote

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler --Albert Einstein

Example code block

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
 printf("Hello world"):;
}

Tables

Sample table

Name	Value
Language	Python
Server	Dell
O/S	Linux

Hyperlinks

External

BBC

Images

Example image

Non League football

Misc rarely used niche markup

Subscripts and Superscripts example. Superscripts need some additional orgmode configuration but I don't care.

orgmode sub and superscripts

The radius of the sun is R_sun = 6.96 x 10^8 m. On the other hand, the radius of Alpha Centauri is R_{Alpha Centauri} = 1.28 x R_sun.

Footnotes

The Org website¹ now looks a lot better than it used to.

The link is: https://orgmode.org ↩