Author Archives: Steven

Electric clock bibliography

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Karaosman, M. N. (1942). Modern electric clocks. Students’ Quarterly Journal, 12(48), 92-96.

Langman, H. R., & Ball, A. (1935). Electrical horology (3rd ed.). The Technical Press.
Mallett, D. (2019). Smiths Sectric Clock. Octane (187), 160.

Miles, R. H. A. (2011). Synchronome: Masters of Electrical Timekeeping. Antiquarian Horological Society.

Montgomerie, G. A. (1942). Discussion on “Modern electric clocks”. Students’ Quarterly Journal, 13(49), 17.

Nye, J. (2014). A long time in making : the history of Smiths. Oxford Univ. Press.
Philpott, S. F. (1933). Modern Electric Clocks: Principles, Construction, Installation, and Maintenance. Pitman.

Philpott, S. F. (1934). Synchronous clocks – troubles and remedies. Horological Journal, 77(911), 88-90.

Philpott, S. F. (1934). Synchronous clocks – troubles and remedies. Horological Journal, 77(914), 55-56.

Philpott, S. F. (1935). Modern Electric Clocks: Principles, Construction, Installation, and Maintenance (2nd ed.). Pitman.

Philpott, S. F. (1949). Modern Electric Clocks: Principles, Construction, Installation, and Maintenance (4th ed.). Pitman.

Pook, L. P. (2015). British Domestic Synchronous Clocks 1930-1980 : The Rise and Fall of a Technology. Springer International Publishing.

Robinson, T. R. (1940). Servicing the synchronous clock. Horological Journal, 82(984), 13-36.

Robinson, T. R. (1942). Modern clocks : their repair and maintenance (2nd ed.). N.A.G. Press.

Robinson, T. R. (1955). Modern clocks : their repair and maintenance (3rd ed.). N.A.G. Press.

Smith, B. (2008). Smith’s Domestic Clocks: A Guide to Their History and Identification. Pierhead Publications.

Smiths English Clocks Ltd. Repair manual for “sectric” timepieces. S. Smith & Sons.

Smiths English Clocks Ltd. Servicing and oiling Smiths ‘Sectric’ clocks. S. Smith & Sons.

Wise, S. J. (1951). Electric clocks : principles, construction, operation, installation and repair of mains and battery-operated clocks for domestic and industrial purposes (2nd ed.). Heywood & Co.

Impossible to find:

Pam & Peter Wotton (nd). Birth of the British Synchronous Motor Clock, (self-published?)

Adding https to my home web server

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My downstairs web server is currently running Ubuntu 20.04, PHP 7.4, Apache 2.4 and WordPress 5.5. WordPress and Chrome have been nagging me about upgrading to https for some time. Initially I looked at it from the WordPress perspective but of course I self-host WordPress, together with a few other websites, so the solution has more to do with Apache than with WordPress. And so I found this excellent tutorial: How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04.

At Step 4 you run the Certbot software to obtain the SSL certificate and optionally add redirects to the Apache config files.

“Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access”.

I wasn’t sure if my WordPress installation was ready to fly yet without http, so I said no. I would check if https was working ok and do the Apache redirects myself later. As it turned out I didn’t have to do the redirects manually. If you run Certbot again (you may as well install a new certificate) then say yes to the question about redirects.

The https installation worked but afterwards I noticed that the WordPress Site Health plugin was complaining about a few things, including:

  • The REST API encountered an error
  • Your site could not complete a loopback request

I spent a lot of time googling this problem. It is a common problem with many possible causes and fixes, none of which worked.

The second problem I noticed was that https was working from within my home network but not from outside. I assumed this problem related to the changes I had made to ufw and I spent far too long editing that. I also thought that Certbot may have mucked up my Apache config files. But of course neither problem had anything to do with Certbot or the tutorial. Eventually I realized I had forgotten to open up port 443 on my home router! This instantly solved both problems.