JavaScript tips

 I get page 'layout shifts' when I use 'Google Fonts'. If I say 'font-display: optional' to get round this then I do not see the Google fonts at all, as they do not load in time. I tried to reduce the size of the font file by specifying a font weight and by specifyng the letters in the alphabet as the 'text' to match. But the font file still takes too long to load. I also tried putting Google's intermediate '@font-face' rules directly in my CSS. But the font file still loads too slowly. I also tried downloading the font file onto my website. But the web server is a bit slow and again I do not see the Google fonts. My hosting provider is 'Hostinger'. I did not try adjusting the size of the system fonts to match the Google Fonts to remove the 'layout shifts'. This seems a bit complicated and may not work on all browsers. I am going to try loading fonts into my game using the JavaScript API. My game takes a few seconds to load an...

 I managed to get 'blogarama.com' to index my blog. I get 50 posts free. I only put my best posts on 'blogarama'. 'blogarama' did not mind when I waited 4 months before adding the next post.  'blogarama' thought I had put a reciprocal link in my blog when I had not. However, I cannot find any of my posts on 'blogarama'. There are a lot of ads. Many directories of RSS feeds seem to have closed in recent years. However, it seems it is still worthwhile having an RSS feed.

 I always put a '#' before a 'rm -rf' before clearing out old backups. I think a bit and then remove the '#' and then run the command. I once ran '/bin/rm -rf' as the user 'root' and deleted lots of files I wanted.  I even deleted the '/etc/passwd' file and got the famous 'you do not exist' error. I work as the user 'root' because my 'X Windows' system needs this. This is because I upgraded my Linux system myself 'from scratch' and did it slightly wrong.   I get a smiley '(:0)' next to my 'root' user's 'pseudo-terminal' when I run 'who' to show who is logged on

 Warnings from Chrome's Lighthouse turned out to be bugs from using an old version of Chrome used for Windows7. Lighthouse said: 'heading elements are not in a sequentially-descending order'. I can get round this by using the 'Lighthouse' option at 'webpagetest.org'. Or I can go to a neighbouring libary that runs Windows10 and the latest Chrome

 I adapted a 'codepen' icon made with CSS made of rectangles made with 'clip-path', with the sides rotated to form a cube. Some of the sides are moved to the front with 'translateZ'. I colored the sides to see how it works:     'codepen.io/Bert-Beckwith/pen/jENyyaK' This is a different way of making a cube. Another way is to rotate 'div' elements. Maybe there is a bug with Chrome: sometimes the sides of the cube disappear if I change the background color of their container. The sides reappear if I click the icon. I tried reflowing the cube, adding 'z-index' and adding '!important' but these did not fix the bug. It is best to use SVG's for icons but I learn about CSS and my old browser does not show SVG's in HTML pages.

 I changed from using 'cp -a' to 'cp -pR' when making a backup of the directories I use most. The 'cp -a' command gave an error because a symbolic link could not be created on the FAT file system of the memory-stick that was the destination of the copy. So I removed the '-d' (no dereference) part of the '-a' option and now 'cp' copies all the files that the symbolic link references. On second thoughts, maybe 'cp -a' is better because it means I do not get duplicate files. There are more tips at: bbingo.xyz/techtips/    

 For about 2 months, images were sometimes not loaded into my pages when served by my hosting provider 'Hostinger'. Sometimes Chrome could not load a page at first but then found it. Sometimes I also got errors transferring files with 'FTP'. I could not do a backup with 'FTP' because of these errors. Maybe I should not complain as I chose a very good value 4-year deal when I moved my website from the free '000webhost' to Hostinger. Inflation since has made the deal seem even better. So I get 'Hostinger' to generate a backup every week and download it. It is one big 'gzipped' 'tar' file. I request the backup in the middle of the week as Hostinger says the backup takes a few hours to prepare.  I download the backup at the end of the week.  The download takes only a few minutes. I checked this download file. However, Hostinger says there were some problems with their backups. I tried using the web-based 'file manager' provide...