Category: Technology

Categories
Audio Technology

Fixing Bluetooth problem with TP-Link UB400

I recently bought myself some Sony Bluetooth earbuds for my phone, but I was keen to see if I could connect them to my PC too – so that I could use them in conference calls, for example.

But my computer didn’t have Bluetooth. So I bought TP-Link UB400 Bluetooth Adaptor online, because I’ve used and liked their stuff before. But when I plugged it in it didn’t work! Windows 10 kept telling me I didn’t have Bluetooth installed.

I went to the TP-Link FAQ for the UB400 – but nothing they suggested worked.

After a bit of Googling, I went to the Windows Device Manager, looked at the Universal Serial Bus controllers, and disappeared down a rabbit hole trying to fix the “Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)” problem.

And only then did I go to the “CSR Bluecore Bluetooth” driver that also appeared on the list of Universal Serial Bus controllers when I plugged in the dongle. As an experiment:

  1. I right-clicked “CSR Bluecore Bluetooth and selected “Update driver”
  2. Clicked on “Browse my computer for driver software”
  3. Clicked on “Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer”
  4. Picked “Generic Bluetooth Adaptor” in place of “CSR Bluecore Bluetooth”
  5. Clicked “next”

and suddenly everything worked!

So that’s my solution! I hope it works for you too.

Categories
Charity Gift Aid Shopify Technology

Making Shopify work with UK Gift Aid

At the Men’s Health Forum, we’ve been using Shopify for a while now and we really love it.

They have a great value non-profit rate (if you ask nicely). It’s great for handling trading. It’s great for handling digital downloads. All we needed was for it to handle donations and we were done!

The good news is that there’s a pretty straightforward way of doing it by using Shopify’s approach to collecting customisation information – as outlined here.

To make a Shopify product page work for donations we wanted to do three things:

  • Ask about Gift Aid
  • Remove the quantity selector
  • Put the description above the area where people select the donation

You can do all of this by working your way through the customisation page – with a few tweaks along the way.

  1. Create a new template for donations
    Take the same approach as Shopify outline for customisable products – although I called my page donation instead of customizable.
  2. Add customisable form fields that ask about Gift Aid.
    The code I used for this was:

    <div>
    <h3>Gift Aid</h3>
    <strong>Boost your donation by 25p of Gift Aid for every £1 you donate. </strong> Please treat as Gift Aid donations all qualifying gifts of money made:

    <input id="giftaid-today" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations today]" type="checkbox" value="Yes" /> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">Today</label>

    <input id="giftaid-p4y" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations in the past 4 years]" type="checkbox" value="Yes" /> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">In the past 4 years</label>

    <input id="giftaid-future" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations in the future]" type="checkbox" value="Yes" /> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">In the future</label>
    <p id="taxstatement"><small>I confirm I have paid or will pay an amount of Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax for each tax year (6 April to 5 April) that is at least equal to the amount of tax that all the charities or Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) that I donate to will reclaim on my gifts for that tax year. I understand that other taxes such as VAT and Council Tax do not qualify. I understand the charity will reclaim 28p of tax on every £1 that I gave up to 5 April 2008 and will reclaim 25p of tax on every £1 that I give on or after 6 April 2008.</small></p>

    </div>

    The relatively long name descriptors are needed to make the shopping cart and payment pages look sensible when your visitors check out.

  3. Remove the quantity selector
    Just replace the selector code with a hidden input field. Specifically, replace:

    <div class="product-single__quantity{% unless settings.product_quantity_enable %} is-hidden{% endunless %}"><label for="Quantity">{{ 'products.product.quantity' | t }}</label>
    <input id="Quantity" class="quantity-selector" min="1" name="quantity" type="number" value="1" /></div>

    with

    <input id="Quantity&quot;" class="quantity-selector" min="1" name="quantity" type="hidden" value="1" />
  4. Add a bit of JavaScript to hide the Gift Aid text until needed.
    I added the following inside the final script tag:

    var countChecked = function() {
    var n = $( "input:checked" ).length;
    if( n == 0 ) {
    jQuery("#taxstatement").hide();
    } else {
    jQuery("#taxstatement").show();
    }
    };
    countChecked();
    jQuery( "input[type=checkbox]" ).on( "click", countChecked );
  5. Reorder the page until you have it how you want it.
    I moved:

    <div class="product-description rte">{{ product.description }}</div>

    just below the form tag:

  6. Create a new product in Shopify as you would do normally, but select product.donation as the template suffix (in the bottom right of the page). The end result should look something like this.

Er. That’s it. Comments and suggested improvements welcome.

Categories
Twitter

Twitter fame! One of only 250k to be hacked

According to Twitter, I’m one of 250,000 users who have possibly had their account hacked.

According to TechCrunch, this makes me cool!

After reading around, in addition to changing my password (natch), I’ve followed the advice in this Slate article and switched off java in my browser as well.

Continue reading “Twitter fame! One of only 250k to be hacked”
Categories
City Council Twitter Winchester

Twitter feedback on Winchester City Council’s Information Management strategy

As an experiment, I posted a message about Winchester’s draft Information Management strategy on Twitter to get the input of local information professionals (and anyone else who was interested).

Given that we have an IBM Research Centre in the district – as well as many IT professionals living locally including those involved in groups like WinchesterWeb – it seemed sensible to tap into their expertise.

I had my own concerns about the paper:

  • While it referenced the council’s immediate ‘Transforming Winchester’ organisational development programme, I didn’t see it reflecting Winchester’s strategic priorities (as laid out primarily in the Community Strategy and associated change plans) – particularly the short-term ones of
    • supporting older people,
    • making our services more accessible
    • reducing the District’s carbon footprint;
  • There wasn’t any reference to best practice or benchmarking or, for example, a SWOT analysis
  • I wasn’t able to take a clear set of objectives or priorities from it
  • Important issues such as open data and security weren’t reflected

but before blogging or speaking about these, I wanted to see what other people who know more about these issues than I do had to say.

The response (below) has been critical, but also helpful.  The most helpful aspect is that a group of local residents with expertise in this area are planning to meet in the Hyde Tavern from 8 pm this evening to discuss a fuller response.

There will be a public participation session at tomorrow’s meeting where members of the public will be able to have their say.

Needless to say anyone who wants to contribute to this evening’s meeting (or tomorrow) will be very welcome.

Twitter response to the IM Strategy

Peter Jordan:

The paper doesn’t say very much at all!  – no mention of security. And it’s an IM strategy, *not* IT. it’s wrongly named on the Cabinet agenda.

No mention of cloud/G-Cloud, or open source.

Julian W:

8 pages saying absolutely nothing of use. Or have I missed something in there?

Are the IT Technical Strategy and IT Technical Specification & Plan available (see 1.7a & b)?

Alistair Rae:

Main comment would be that the document isn’t a strategy, it’s a vague statement of aspiration. No reflection of best practice?

Then jumps straight into technology and systems solutions, only passing mention of the business change programme.

IM should be mainly about business activity, rather than constraining the business to suit the technology.

Nothing about interoperability or service delivery integration with other local gov, national gov, third sector etc.

also slightly concerning that at same meeting is a request to release 100k for re-procurement of an IM solution pre strategy

would also disagree with conclusion that Sharepoint is an EDRM, doesn’t comply with National Archives principles for IM

demonstrates that council IT department is disconnected from both the council business and internally

I’d also question assertion that procurement is really below the public contracts threshold. 2k down suspiciously convenient.

would question why “lowest cost, technically compliant” is preferred procurement route, assumes well formed requirement…

in the absence of an IM strategy I’d question the maturity of the requirement. No discussion of business change.

for a business change project like EDRM modernisation Most Economically Advantageous Tender would be more appropriate

Tanya Jane Park

They should “Go Google”! Other UK local authorities have so won’t be trail blazers

Sarah Jones

There are a lot of words there but the doc doesn’t tell me much. Where are the business objectives? What do they want to achieve? I’d expect this doc to explain clearly and concisely how IM will be used to deliver the business strategy…

Fancy a pub meet-up tonight to put feedback together?

 

Categories
Technology Twitter Wordpress

New twitter plugin – to show tweets in rotation

As tweeted yesterday, I’ve just completed a new WordPress plug-in to show rotating tweets.

It’s easy to add using a widget or a shortcode in a post or on a page such as:

[rotatingtweets screen_name="mpntod"]

and, as a result, you get:

At a briefing on the Hampshire Local Transport Plan - an area where we need major change with a much stronger ambitions for decarbonisation and sustainable active travel hants.gov.uk/transport/loca…

About 2 months ago from Martin Tod's Twitter via Twitter Web App

For a bit more fun, you can add some extra options such as:

[rotatingtweets screen_name="mpntod" rotation_type='toss']

And the latest version goes for the official look:

[rotatingtweets screen_name="mpntod" official_format='1']

[rotatingtweets screen_name="mpntod" official_format='2']

You can also search:

[rotatingtweets search='#secretcourts']

Problem retrieving data from Twitter

You can see the widget in action on the top-right of this page.

You can download the plug-in from here.

All this was only possible due to the good people of WordPress, the Twitter API, jQuery and jQuery Cycle – and Syd who showed me jQuery Cycle in the first place  – so a big thank you to them too! 🙂