Google Play Music / Avast: fix uploads from a Mac

google-play-music

Google Play Music is my music player of choice: it’s available everywhere, fully compatible with my Android device, and allows for easy download and upload of tracks. Its lucky mixes are also always on point. I use the free version for now, but I plan on switching to the Paid version once YouTube Red is available in Hungary (one can dream, right?). I believe the paid version gives you access to a library that’s way bigger than Spotify.

google-play-music.png

Google Play Music can be used via the web, or via a Chrome Extension. You could even use this Electron app if you wanted to. You can also use those tools to upload music from your local computer. However, that upload feature won’t work if you also happen to use Avast Mac Security. When you try to upload, you’ll receive the following error:

Can’t establish a secure connection

It seems that its Web and File System Shields block all uploads. To solve the issue, open Avast Mac Security, go to Preferences, and disable both shields. Don’t forget to turn them back on once you’re done with the upload!

avast-shields.png

Manage your Custom Post Types on WordPress.com

Custom Post Types on WordPress.com

I’ve talked about the WordPress.com REST API on this blog before. I even created a plugin allowing you to make use of it on your own site. This API powers WordPress.com, the desktop WordPress.com apps, and is used in more and more areas of the Jetpack plugin.

Did you know that API also allows you to manage your Custom Post Types via the WordPress.com interface?

Discover how to manage Custom Post Types via WordPress.com

Waffles: my mother’s recipe

Lili-7869.jpg

Waffles were always a tradition back home. In the winter, we used to make them at least once a month, on Saturday nights. Everyone would get a first waffle with butter and Coulommiers cheese; then nutella / whipped cream, nutella / banana / whipped cream, jam / whipped cream, jam / Coulommiers, butter / powdered sugar, chestnut spread, … I know, I know: not exactly what you’d call a healthy dinner, but so damn good.

In a way, that family ritual was as important as the galettes (buckwheat pancakes) my grandmother makes for the whole family for lunch on Saturdays. But that’s a topic for another post.

Naturally when I moved to Hungary, I did my best to convince Adri we needed to buy a waffle iron. ☺️ Fast forward a few years, we now have our own waffle ritual: every other weekend, my little helper and I make waffles (or pancakes) for breakfast.

Here is our recipe.

Automating my local dev environment with Laravel Valet and WP-CLI

laravel-valet

When I set up my new machine, I decided to get rid of MAMP and Vagrant, my previous local development tools of choice. While they worked well for me, I needed something a bit different. I need to be able to spin up a fresh installation of WordPress, run a few tests, and burn it all down a few minutes later.

A few months ago, I discovered Laravel Valet. Valet is a tool relying on Caddy and Dnsmasq, allowing you to spin up PHP projects in a few seconds. You can learn more about it here. It seemed like the perfect tool for me, so I decided to combine it with WP-CLI to quickly launch WordPress sites on my laptop.

Let’s dive into the different steps I follow to get this to work.