Blog, Cyclone's World, Page 2

Flushing Facebook and Twitter preview cache

June 29, 2022June 29, 2022CycloneLeave a comment

I found some cool features that Facebook and Twitter both have which is great for indecisive people such as myself. Both social media platforms offer dev tools for flushing their preview cache. Links are at the bottom!

This has been useful for me since I’ve been posting Youtube videos on both lately, and sometimes find that the thumbnail doesn’t quite fit properly.

The way they work is pretty simple – pop in the URL to your video (or website or whatever else) and click a button.

With Facebook, you enter your URL then click on Debug.

On the next screen, click Scrape Again and it will force Facebook to refresh it’s cache. From there, click Edit on your FB post and then pop in the URL again and it should have the updated preview.

Twitter is much of the same process but a little trickier. Start with clicking ‘Preview Card’, which will show you the latest Card preview.

That should be it, but there is an extra step. Likely Twitter.com will still show the old preview. However, if you add something like ?123 at the end of the url (https://www.cyclonesworld.net?123 for example) it will refresh with the latest preview. This doesn’t actually affect the URL you’re sharing and works a treat with Youtube videos.

I wanted to share this since info since I had to dig around to find it. I imagine some other social media platforms offer similar tools, but these are the only two I really use for the moment.

For Facebook – here is the link!
For Twitter – here is the link!

Did a little karting spin at Atlanta Motorsports Park

May 16, 2022May 16, 2022CycloneLeave a comment

Turn AA batteries into C sized batteries!

April 13, 2022April 13, 2022CycloneLeave a comment

My wife is sick this week and lost her voice. Something I remembered buying awhile back was a cheap megaphone for about $3. It uses C sized batteries which have been sitting in it for years, so naturally they’re dead. On top of that, the batteries cost more than this little cheap megaphone did. Being a genius, I naturally came up with a solution.

AA batteries are the same length and capacity as a C cell battery. Maybe less capacity, but something such as a megaphone, that doesn’t matter a whole lot. If I can make them fit, they will work.

Inserting the batteries on their own didn’t work. They would fall over when trying to close the mouth piece, and even if I did manage to keep a connection, they’d fall out of place as soon as the thing was picked up. The solution was simple: Electrical tape.

Get a rough measurement of the battery, and just wrap that bad boy up in tape. It worked like a champ, and now I can hear my wife again.

Another Smashed Dell

March 3, 2022March 3, 2022CycloneLeave a comment

Not to be outdone by FedEx, UPS delivered a brand new Dell laptop and did their best to smash it as well. The real issue here is Dell’s packaging is terrible. A $2k laptop being shielded with 1 layer of the cheapest cardboard known to man isn’t a good start. At least they’re quick about sending replacements.

Also, because it looked kind of cool, I took a pic of the busted screen and created a nice wallpaper out of it. Available for download in 1080p.

Visited the Space Shuttle Atlantis

February 21, 2022February 21, 2022CycloneLeave a comment

Recently we were in Cape Canaveral before driving down to the port to hop on the cruise ship Carnival Elation. On my bucket list has been visiting all of the space shuttles across the country. This trip to the Kennedy Space Center was my first time, and seeing the Atlantis checked off shuttle #2 from my list. Though technically with them having pieces of Columbia and Challenger on display, I have seen 4 at this point. Which leaves me with Endeavor and Enterprise.

Snapped a few shots of Atlantis that I wanted to share, and felt that KSC did a really good job of displaying the space bird. With it set up the way it is, you can actually get closer to it than you can Discovery at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

FedEx strikes again!

February 2, 2022February 21, 2022CycloneLeave a comment

FedEx delivered us a new laptop to the office that had clearly had someone jump up and down on the package before arrival! After being delayed several times, having a $1700 laptop show up in this condition is quite frustrating. The service and support from FedEx over the past few years has gone downhill quite a bit.

Trying Fermented Shark in Iceland

December 3, 2021December 3, 2021CycloneLeave a comment

In Iceland, we had to try out Fermented Shark. This was on our last night in Iceland, staying in Reykjavik. The place we were at was called Cafe Loki, which was the first place we stopped for food when we arrived. So it was a good send off for an excellent trip.

Marc Rebillet at The Eastern 11-20-2021

November 22, 2021November 22, 2021CycloneLeave a comment

Loop Daddy absolutely killed it at the Saturday show in Atlanta. This ended his The Third Dose tour, and it was an excellent way to wrap things up.

Iceland trip

October 12, 2021October 20, 2021CycloneLeave a comment

We just returned from our trip to Iceland. We landed in Reykjavik on October 3rd earlier in the morning, and returned back to Atlanta on the 10th. I backdated a few blog posts that you’ll find below this one. We traveled to a lot of traveling to cities that I can’t spell, or pronounce the names of. But I did get around to editing/uploading photos in a timely manner which can be viewed clicking the image below.

Back to where we began

October 9, 2021October 20, 2021CycloneLeave a comment

We headed out early back to Reykjavik, retracing our steps back across the south. After checking into Fosshotel Baron, we headed to explore the city in the rain. Kat and I got hotdogs for lunch from the famous stand, Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur. They were good, but tasted pretty much the same as the ones we had a gas station earlier in the week. The best way to describe them is having a bit of a crunch, as the casing is made from lamb instead of pork. We then went to the Kolaportið flea market, where I found a PSP and Kat found some lava jewelry.

We visited the harbor, then went to the Phallological Museum, which has many different species on display & was far more educational than we expected! We returned to the hotel via Laugavegur Street, picking up a few more souvenirs, before getting everything repacked for our flights home in the morning.

We returned to Café Loki for dinner, where Casey & myself tried fermented shark and Brennevin, traditional Icelandic food and drink. We were not a fan! We’re told our faces were great as we choked it down. We stopped for a few more drinks at Lebowski bar & Reykjavik Bar before heading back to the room to sleep.