Adding Graphs into WordPress

One of the things I wanted to add to the website was a graph of the output from our solar panels. I had a quick check round and came across two good candidates for this:  easychart and Simple-Graph. Being me, I decided to try both – see the solar panel output page for the result.

Easychart can be used when you want to produce a professional looking chart and you have a fairly simple set of data to hand. Once you have installed the plugin, you simply construct a paragraph  of text which defines all of the chart parameters and insert into any page you want.

Simple-Graph is designed to graph any quantity against time. The plugin adds a database table behind the scenes and gives you a data control page to load the data. It’s good for tracking your strength or weight for example.

Both of the approaches work well for the solar data – take your pick!

 

Improving Windows 7 Startup Time

Recently my laptop has started to boot really slowly. It’s true that it’s got an awful lot installed on it, but it’s a pretty powerful beast so it shouldn’t be this slow.

It turned out that a lot of the performance problems were caused by my trial of Perfect Disk 12 not getting on with my ESET Antivirus program, but along the way I discovered a couple of useful tips on diagnosing boot time:

  1. The easiest way to configure what starts up at boot time is to type “msconfig” in the search box at the start menu and hit return. This tool allows you control what runs at boot (careful…!)
  2. There is an excellent resource here on how to diagnose what is taking up all of the time. Basically, you open up Administrative Tools/Event Viewer and look in Applications and Services Logs/Microsoft/Windows/Diagnostics-Performance/Operational. Everything you need to know about boot up time is enclosed within.