Year: 2017 Q2
May 2017
July 2017

Posted on

Collapse-O-Matic Grey Bar Style

Here is an example of how to pimp the collapse-o-matic expand to use a grey bar style using CSS.
Be sure you are using the div ad your default tag in the plugin settings.

The CSS:

.greybar {
   border: 1px dotted #aaaaaa;
   padding: 7px;
   background-position: 98% center;
   background-color: #cccccc;
}

The Code:

[expand trigclass="arrowright greybar" title="Monkeys Are Fast"]...[/expand]
Monkeys Are Fast
…

To give the target content a border, use the targclass attribute:

The CSS:

.blueborder {
   border: 1px dotted blue;
   border-top: none;
   margin-left: 0;
  padding: 5px;
}

The Code:

[expand trigclass="arrowright greybar" targclass="blueborder" title="Monkeys Are Fast"]...[/expand]
Monkeys Are Fast
…
To add a graphic to the background, simply create a new class and add the appropriate css:

.de_flag {
    background-image: url(https://lipis.github.io/flag-icon-css/flags/4x3/de.svg);
    background-size: 64px 16px;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: -10px center;
    padding: 7px 7px 7px 42px;
}

then add the new class to the trigclass attribute:

[expand trigclass="arrowright greybar de_flag" title="Deutschland"]...[/expand]
Deutschland
…
Posted on

Tidal Chart for Leith

How to caculate a countdown to the next high and low tide.

First, there is a nice plugin called Tides Today UK and Ireland tide times that allows tidal charts to be displayed using a Sidebar Widget or a shortcode. For example:

[[tide_times days=1 title="Tide times for Leith" location="leith"]These are today's tides for Leith[/tide_times]]

That outputs a tidy forecast like so:

[tide_times days=1 title=”Tide times for Leith” location=”leith”]These are today’s tides for Leith[/tide_times]

The shortcode references the authors own web-service api that returns a JSON encoded dataset. Here is the dataset for Leith. However, the plugin author clearly (if not threateningly) states:

You may not use the data provided by the API for anything other than displaying tide information on your website by the
means provided by this plugin.

…Failure to comply with any of the conditions outlined here or as outlined in the Tides Today Terms and conditions will result in legal action being taken.

In the words of Al Swearengen:

Not a tone to get a deal done.

Even though the datasource provide is from the UK Hydrographic Office:

All data is provided by the UK Hydrographic Office and is provided under license. Crown Copyright 2016.

https://tides.today/about/

So we might need to find our own, tax-funded, public, non-threatening api to get our tidal info from, for example:
https://data.gov.uk/publisher/united-kingdom-hydrographic-office
https://www.tidetimes.org.uk/leith-tide-times
even better:
RSS: https://www.tidetimes.org.uk/leith-tide-times.rss
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeithTideTimes
http://www.ntslf.org/
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/api/
https://www.worldtides.info/
https://www.wunderground.com/

The NOAA api looks quite promising… but it’s only for North America. So we move on to Worworldtides api which provides 1000 free calls per month. So far that is a winner. Now let’s take a look at The National Tidal and Sea Level Facility. It seems it only serves the UK and Ireland. Here is Leith.

Leith
http://www.ukho.gov.uk/easytide/EasyTide/ShowPrediction.aspx?PortID=0225&PredictionLength=1

Holy Island
http://www.ukho.gov.uk/easytide/EasyTide/ShowPrediction.aspx?PortID=0208&PredictionLength=1