October 2022 – Something Odd!

“Queen: Face It Alone” Leaked

Queen will release a new song tomorrow, Face it Alone, with vocals by the late Freddie Mercury. First play was supposed to be on BBC Radio 2 in the UK, but a French DJ played it last night, and somebody recorded it. I first heard there would be a new song back in July, and I was so excited to hear what it would be.

The song comes from a demo recorded in 1988 or 1989. There are copies of the demo floating around out there, but it looks like they’ve been scrubbed from YouTube. There used to be a version of it here last July. The demo wasn’t great. It was probably recorded on a tape recorder with a microphone held up in the air as other people talked nearby. I presumed that Queen have a better recording of it.

Is it any good? I listened to it once. I’m not jumping up and down with joy that there’s a new Freddie Mercury song. They didn’t have much to work with, and it unfortunately shows. Freddie’s vocals sound very auto-tuned. His singing at the start of the song sounds like an AI effect you’d hear on a Zoom call to remove background sound. It ruins his voice. Other vocals are better, the guitar is great, but it’s not a song I’ll listen to on a regular basis.

Listen to it here and judge for yourself.

Edit on October 13th: the official video is out now. Sound quality is much better, of course, but that first verse sounds very forced. The last line, “is set on fire”, does not sound natural. I would love to know how much processing went into making this track.

Damn, it’s growing on me.

How to “remember me” on the WordPress login page

If you’re like me:

You’re the only one who logs into your WordPress website.
You only do it on your computer at home.
You lock your computer every time you step away, even when there’s nobody at home.
You have a 2FA plugin which adds a new field, and means checking your phone on each login.

You might have become annoyed from time to time when you forget to check the “Remember me” checkbox on the login page. You know that you will have to log in again tomorrow or whenever the login session expires, rather than in 2 weeks time. Just because of an empty checkbox.

There’s very valid reasons for not checking this box. If you use a public computer, or one in an office and don’t lock your computer, then you want to be logged out. For the rest of us, it’s a bonus if you don’t need to login again so soon.

Here’s a tiny little script that will check the “remember me” checkbox. Create a php script called remember-me.php in wp-content/mu-plugin/ with the following:

<?php
function remember_me_on_login() {
    $_POST['rememberme'] = 1;
}
add_action( 'login_init', 'remember_me_on_login' );

Then logout and visit wp-login.php and “remember me” will be checked for you!

If you want more control, there’s the Remember Me plugin, but it does the basic job in a similar way.

HOW-TO: get rid of the screenshot preview in macOS

A good few years ago, Apple changed how their screenshot function (CMD+SHIFT+4) worked by adding a small preview before it was saved. This allows you to edit the screenshot before it’s saved and used.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I used that to edit the screenshot. More often than not, I (metaphorically) drummed my fingers waiting the couple of seconds it took for the preview to disappear, so I could upload or do something with the screenshot.

How do I get rid of it? I looked around for a solution ages ago, but my Google-fu failed me. Last year I looked again, and I found this post that describes how it’s done.

Because this is probably something you want to do but never realised it, I’ll repeat what they said there. This is how you stop the floating thumbnail preview when you take a screenshot in macOS. It’s so easy!

Press CMD+SHIFT+5 to launch the screen capture app.
Click on Options.
In that menu deselect “Show Floating Thumbnail”.

So simple, but it will save many precious seconds throughout my day!

Many years ago I set the location of screenshots to a screenshots folder, so I have been into that options menu. Maybe the floating thumbnail setting wasn’t there at the time.