I was visiting IKEA in Bristol and according to the Tesla app the Tesla chargers at the Eastgate Retail Park work with non-Tesla cars.
Alas, despite success with other Tesla chargers across the UK. I was unable to get a successful charge with these with my non-Tesla EV. I tried two different chargers without success.
Plugged in and the charger was unable to “find” my car. I had to manually release my car from the charger.
I got home with 8% left, so popped to the local MFG for an emergency top up charge.
I have used the Revive chargers at Sand Bay before, and had a few issues. I was back at the car park, it wasn’t critical that I charged, but I thought I am going to be a couple of hours, let’s put it on charge. I have a Revive account now, and use it on a regular basis at Worle Railway Station.
I plugged it in and it all seemed to be going okay, but due to poor 4G, I was having issues with the Revive website.
I left thinking I had it sorted. The Ora app, said it wasn’t charging, but that happened last time.
Came back after a lovely walk, to struggle once more to access the website, but managed to stop the “charge”. I said the “charge” as it failed completely to work.
I wrote about an issue I was having with One Click SSL version 1.5, it had been updated to version 1.5 on the 26th August and my sites had automatically updated the plugin. I couldn’t log into my sites and even when I could (via the IONOS login) I couldn’t upload images or post blog posts.
The solution was to deactivate the plugin, this did not deactivate SSL, but it took a while to work out what was happening.
It looks like I wasn’t the only one having issues, as the very next day, version 1.6 was out and this resolved the issue I (and others) were having.
I was posting a review post to my food blog, when it both failed to post and I couldn’t upload the photograph I was going to use in the post. I thought this was strange.
When I uploaded the photograph I got an error message. When I tried to post the blog post without the image I was redirected to the One Click SSL plugin page and the post wasn’t posted.
I did wonder if I had an SSL issue. My annual subscription goes through this month, but that was all fine, it had gone through three weeks ago.
As is demanded and expected these days, my various WordPress blogs are protected by SSL. I have a SSL subscription with my hosting company, and use the One Click SSL to enable the SSL on the blogs.
I tried to use one of my other blogs, and found I couldn’t log in using the WordPress credentials, as this is a IONOS supported WordPress site, I was able to log in using my IONIS credentials.
I had the same issue as I did with my food blog.
So, it was looking like all my blogs were impacted by this issue.
I did try and update the One Click SSL configuration, but that didn’t work. I deactivated and reactivated the plugin and that didn’t work.
I still had SSL, just that posting and uploading wasn’t working.
I wondered if it was a hosting issue, but why was the error then redirecting me to the One Click SSL configuration page on the WordPress dashboard.
I checked the plugin page, and saw that it had been updated to version 1.5 on the 26th August (yesterday) and my site had automatically updated the plugin.
I realised I probably would need to sort this out. I did wonder if I could downgrade the plugin version, but couldn’t find a simple way to do that.
In the end I deactivated the plugin.
I checked the site, it was working fine, and I still had SSL. The plugin One Click SSL configures the SSL for the site, but isn’t necessarily needed for SSL, as that is a hosting thing, not a WordPress thing.
I then checked, I could now post to the site. I left it for a while to confirm that deactivating the plugin did not deactivate SSL. I still had SSL and my site was working. I did the same fix for all my other blogs and I was finally able to post that food blog post.
I am pretty sure that Apple News doesn’t understand the meaning of blocked.
I blocked a channel in Apple News, now as I understand the reason I blocked the channel was because I didn’t want to see articles from that channel in my news stream.
However despite blocking the channel, the stories still appear in the stream.
I can still see the headline, the only difference is that the story picture has been replaced with the words You blocked this channel. The story is still a live link, yes you get a warning, but I am not sure that this would count as blocking.
The way I would like it to work, is that when I block a channel I don’t ever see it again. There could be a list of blocked channels, in settings, but otherwise I wouldn’t want to see it.
If I hide photos in Photos then I don’t see the hidden photographs, but I can access them if I need to. I don’t believe I can hide channels in Apple News.
So, though I have blocked stuff, I still see it, what is that about.
Saw my seventh Funky Cat in the wild. This was a white model with a black roof. It was in Weston-super-Mare, and I saw it after a couple of minutes after leaving my house.
After getting my Funky Cat back from the dealer (after three months), without the CarPlay update I should say; a few days later it needed a charge. I had planned to use the Revive chargers at Worle Station, but changed plans and didn’t go to work in Bristol. So needing a charge, rather than use the MFG chargers close by, I headed down to Tim Hortons to use the Instavolt chargers there.
It was in the evening, and for most of the charge I was the only EV charging. Though a Tesla arrived later. I went for a walk, and then stopped at Tim Hortons for a coffee and a doughnut, well why not.
I only did a 85% charge, but this was from a starting point of 15%.
The process was nice and simple, though at 85p per kWh is not the cheapest place to charge. I did read that in September that they are introducing off-peak pricing. It will be 54p per kWh, between the hours of 10pm and 6am. Might be able to take advantage of that, I think for a top up charge, considering the location of the chargers in Weston.
Unfortunately the update failed for an unknown reason and essentially bricked the head unit in the car. The head unit needed to be replaced, and it had to be sent from China.
Eventually the part arrived and was installed.
After all that they still didn’t do the CarPlay update.
Now spending time re-learning how to drive the Funky Cat, remembering there is no clutch nor a gearstick.
This summer I travelled to Germany, taking the ferry to France, travelling to just outside Paris for a few days before then setting off through Belgium and Luxembourg to Germany.
Following issues with using data in Portugal last summer with excessive data usage on my iPhone, I followed the same process I had used last October when I went to Amsterdam.
So before we boarded the ferry at Newhaven, I went into Settings -> Mobile Data and turned off virtually all the apps which could use mobile data. Took me a while as there were a fair few. I turned off mobile data for virtually all my apps and also specifically iCloud Drive and iCloud Backup. I am pretty sure they were the culprits for my excessive data usage whilst in Portugal.
As and when I needed to use apps, I either used the campsite wifi, or switched on mobile data for specific apps.
Arriving in France I was able to roam without any issues, of course as I travelled across Europe I switched networks, first in Belgium, then in Luxembourg and finally in Germany. In the end I used four different country networks. Each time I switched over without issue as I crossed the border.
In Portugal I reached 80% of my 12GB limit within the first twenty four hours. I did wonder if I would reach the fair usage limit on this holiday. As it happens I did six days into the trip, with two days left. It was relatively easy to purchase a 1-day Data Passport for £6 for the two remaining days of our holiday rather than pay silly prices for data on a pay as you go basis.
Though difficult to tell, I think the main data culprits were Waze and Amazon Music, which were used extensively as we drove across the continent.
