Rant and Rave – Presto Carol

Please Ban Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers …

… In Cupertino. My request to the City Council went nowhere.

City Countil’s reply simply listed Cupertino’s leaf blower regulations. Feel free to use my wording to write your own message to your own city.

Honorable Councilmembers:

I am writing to request that Cupertino ban gas–powered leaf blowers throughout the city.

I have lived in my own home in Cupertino since 1987. Almost every day, my concentration is interrupted by the whining roar of gas–powered leaf blowers used by landscapers in my neighborhood. The harm done to me and other residents is a cost imposed on us which is not compensated. Given that alternatives exist which do not cause this harm, it is reasonable to ban gas-powered blowers.

Why now?

As of January 1, 2024, the sale of new gas-powered blowers is banned throughout California (AB 1346). In addition, five other Bay Area cities have bans that went into effect on July 1: Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame, Hillsborough, and Lafayette. This page (www.lovelafayette.org/city-hall/commissions-committees/environmental-task-force/leaf-blowers) describing Lafayette’s ban includes features I want to see implemented in Cupertino’s ban.

- Citywide, including commercial zones
- Property owners are responsible for violations by their landscapers
- Easy to report violations online (similar to Cupertino’s 311 reporting system)

Fifteen cities in the Bay Area now have gas-powered leaf blower bans. Cupertino has a reputation for being one of the best places to live in California. Let’s join these cities in protecting the environment and the health of its residents by banning gas-powered leaf blowers now.

Carol Mattsson
Cupertino resident

When it comes to blowing leaves around uselessly and creating an insane amount of noise, this model can't be beat. — “Leaf blowers are too loud. This leaf blower machine is beyond a doubt the worst invention ever created.” —Baltimore Sun, Opinion (10/15/2017)

Coronavirus December Surge – My Thoughts

With the current post-Thanksgiving surge and subsequent lockdown, I am feeling ANGRY at people who deny the pandemic and won’t wear a mask or social distance, because they SPREAD the virus even if they themselves don’t get sick. Or they take up ICU beds if they do get sick. Even if I take the recommended precautions, they are not perfect and for success they rely on a low positivity rate.

I have added mail order shopping for dry goods, to reduce the frequency of my grocery store visits. I think I’ve got it down to once a month, but It takes me extra time to plan my purchases and recipes so carefully. And results in freezer and fridge gridlock right after a grocery trip. I’ve made these changes in spite of the difficulty, because something that gives me pleasure and keeps me healthy is eating tasty, fresh, homemade food. Plus I no longer do carryout since the pandemic started.

Will I be able to get into the grocery store on my next trip (Costco) now that shopper capacity is restricted to 20% of capacity? Or how long will I need to wait in line to get in, even during senior hours? I’ll likely be shopping indoors near the same amount of people as a month ago, but with a higher positivity rate, the chance of getting infected is higher. (As I mentioned above.) Even though I’m better off than most, I still don’t like this situation!

How to Add a Title Tag to your Image in WordPress

It seems both WordPress and Joomla make the website editor go the extra mile to add a title tag to an image in a post. This is the tag that allows you to describe the significance of the image. Browsers usually display the tag’s value as a “tooltip” when the visitor hovers over the image. Not to be confused with the “alt” tag which describes how the image looks to a visually impaired person and helps Google to rank the image.

Try hovering over this image to see how your browser displays the title tag.

Both CMS’s automatically build an alt tag value when the image is first used in an article or post. Joomla hides the setting for the title tag behind an “Advanced” tab in the JCE image editor. That’s not helpful for encouraging a novice author to provide text for the title tag.

Today in WordPress I wanted to add a title tag to the image in my new post. I dutifully filled in the caption, description and alt tag values in the image editor when I uploaded my image. A title tag was automatically filled in for me. But when viewing my post in a browser window, no tooltip on hover!

So, I went to text mode in my post and added the title tag “by hand.” This time on hover I got an entire paragraph of text with embedded HTML markup. So that didn’t work. On close examination of my markup I could not see what was wrong. So I found this helpful article by WPBeginner.

WordPress post editor, showing image selected — WordPress image editor, showing an image selected, pointing out the edit button

It explained the purpose of alt and title tags, and even explained that the “title” setting WordPress uses when the image is first uploaded, is NOT the title tag that shows as a tooltip. The article’s directions said that, in my WordPress visual post editor, click on the image then click the edit button that appears.

Look in the “advanced” section to find a field you can fill in with the value of the title tag.

I had to hunt a while to find the “advanced” section, as it was out of view within the popup box. But finally, “success!”

I have figured out how to add the title tag in two ways now: if nothing special is going on with captions or other shortcodes, you can simply add a title attribute to the image in question in the post editor’s text mode; or you can use the image editor, scroll down to “advanced” settings and fill in the tag there.

By the way, in adding those last two images, I was reminded of how easy it is in WordPress to display a CAPTION for the image: you just fill in the caption field within the image source. In Joomla how the caption is used depends entirely on the template, and it requires tricky CSS overrides on the web developer’s part, and perhaps CSS knowledge on the editor’s part, to make it look good.

Also, I accidentally selected two images and found BOTH were inserted into my article. Does anyone have a good use for such a feature?