Turning off that light!

Posted on by Ian C.

For the third time in the last couple of weeks, since it got cool, GBMINI#6’s flat tire warning light is on …

Apparently my right rear tire has a slow leak – each time, it’s down to 20psi or lower, while the other tires are holding pressure at 32+ … so it’s off to MINI Peabody tomorrow to get it sorted.

Meanwhile, it’s infuriating trying to clear the light after putting air back in the tire …
Start engine, press button, drive off – no, that doesn’t work.
Press button while driving – no …
Drive, stop, press button, drive more – no …
Press and hold button, no …
WTF!?

Finally, desparately, consult the owners manual:
“… start the engine but do not start driving [yup, did that] … press the button long enough for the indicator lamp to light up for a few seconds [but it’s on already!] … drive off …”

So, how long is “long enough” when you can’t see the light come on because it’s on already [clever design – not!] … answer, who knows!
With this information, I started the engine and pressed the button for a VERY LONG TIME – maybe 10s – then drove off; and the light turned off after a few seconds! Finally.

UPDATE:
So GBMINI#6 spent a few hours at MINI of Peabody today, and I spent $260 – it was a nail in the tire, as expected:

WordPress 2.7

Posted on by Ian C.

As you may know, this website is powered by WordPress; I used to use MovableType but WordPress is much more flexible, and less complicated. I know many other MINI bloggers also use WordPress – so it must be a good choice 🙂

A while back, WordPress released v2.5 (then v2.6), basically insisting that people upgrade – so I did move over to it … and HATED IT! The new layouts, etc, were simply not very user-friendly; here for example is a screenshot of the front admin page (“dashboard”):

You can see that there’s a big area at the top (“Right Now”) given to stats (how many posts / comments / etc), and below that some details on recent comments and incoming links; the most important thing – “Write A New Post” – is tucked on the end of a title bar, right next to “Write A New Page” which I hardly ever use – it’s easy to hit the wrong one if you’re not paying attention! There’s also a lot of blank space on the screen …

These sort of changes carry throughout the admin pages, and I found this new layout significantly worse to use than the v2.3 layout – so much so, that I kept my websites running on the earlier version:

The v2.3 version is just a little simpler to work with – for example the first thing you see on the “dashboard” is “Write A Post”, which is what you want, and there’s an “Edit” link next to each comment (on v2.6 there’s no way to edit a comment from the “dashboard” and even in the comments page, you have to realize that to edit a comment, you should click the author’s name!)

 

Apparently, many other WordPress users were similarly unimpressed, and a usability study was commissioned (which makes fascinating reading!)
The result, was a massive redesign, which is now available as a Beta test – so I tried it on a new (free hosting!) account (don’t put a Beta on your main site, in case it breaks!)
I am blown away by how good the v2.7 redesign is / will be!

The v2.7 “dashboard” is fully customisable, so you can omit the stuff you don’t care about – and all the useful stuff has been improved to make it work properly (for example, you can now see comment text right there, and edit or delete it immediately); there’s even a new “QuickPress” feature to get something short and sweet published right away with no page navigation needed …

I’m looking forwarded to updating all my sites to this new WordPress version, just as soon as it gets officially released 🙂