Masthead
One of my photos

Under the bonnet

I have just heard that I will have my anorak confiscated if I don’t list all the technology which makes this whole thing possible. There is a serious purpose to this though. Over the years I have noticed neat things on other sites that I wanted to do on mine. Sometimes the sites have provided information about what they have done, sometimes I have asked the owners and they have helped me, and sometimes I have had to look into the source html to get some clues. The idea is that if anybody sees something they like on my site and is wondering how it is done, they might find the answer here without having to do any detective work.

Also I find it handy as a checklist to make sure everything is in place and working after upgrades.

So here goes:

WordPress
The obvious starting point is WordPress which does all sorts of clever things with MySQL databases so I don’t have to.

Plug-ins for WordPress

  • Easy Tube is brilliant. It means I can embed YouTube clips in a post really easily. Without it I had to jump through all sorts of hoops. WordPress 2.6 introduced of this functionality but I still use this instead – though it might be even less necessary with the block mode in WordPress, I reckon I’ll need to keep it for compatibility in old posts.
  • Spotify Embed does the same sort of thing as Easy Tube but for Spotify
  • Uncanny Automator can do loads and loads of things but I only use it to send an update to my Twitter feed when I create a new post. Maybe one day I will explore all the other possibilities.
  • Akismet to cut out the spam comments
  • Cutline theme. Not a plugin really, but another way to extend the basic WordPress. Nice theme available in 2- or 3-column varieties, widget-friendly, and easily converted to do random header images. One day I may list all the little customisations I have done to it.

There are about 30 or so other plugins I have used over the years, but for various reasons I removed them all. The last batch went when I upgraded WordPress to v6.0.2 and php to v8 because there were so many incompatibilities.

Midphase
All this is hosted by Midphase Hosting of New York in one of their datacentres. No idea where. Loads of file storage and effectively unlimited bandwidth for a low price. Support is very responsive – although they still can’t find out why I get such heavy spam sometimes. I am running this on a Linux machine under a shared hosting package.

Lenovo PC
The computer itself is a fairly standard Lenovo running Windows 10. It has an enormous hard drive on it, but all the operating system and applications are on a fairly small SSD that I put in it. Hardly a state-of-the-art gaming machine but it does have a half-decent graphics card that can run a couple of big monitors with no problems.

Acer
Sometimes I use an Acer Aspire laptop. Also WIndows 10. I did try upgrading it to WIndows 11 but it ran so slowly I had to revert to W10. Not as good as the desktop but fine for surfing – probably. I hardly use it, but its a good backup for emergencies and kept me sane when I was in hospital for a month.

Virgin Media
I started with a dial-up connection from local company, Pinnacle, but moved to a Blueyonder cable connection when broadband came along. After several upgrades it is now up to about 300Mb/s.

Moto G9 plus phone
After a string of Sony phones I moved to Motorola for the larger screen (thanks failing eyesight!).  I am now on about my third Moto. Does everything I need, and long battery life

Samsung Tab A tablet
This is what I mostly use for keeping up to date with Twitter updates and news feeds. Replaced a Lenovo A8-50 tablet, which replaced a Nexus 7 (1st generation) that really was brilliant but became unusable after upgrading to Lolipop. Basically, each new tablet is bigger than the last. Another sign of eyesight getting worse!

Canon EOS 1000D
Digital SLR, for taking pictures to liven up the site. Came with an 18-55mm lens but I also got a Tamron 70-300mm telephoto with it, and a Sigma flash gun. I have since got a Canon 50mm prime lens which is lovely, and all sorts of accessories like tripods, filters and so on.
But they do say that the best camera is the pone you have with you, so increasingly any photos I post have been taken on my phone.
Some older posts will have photos taken with a Fuji FinePix E550 or a Canon Powershot A590, and some video from a Flip 8Gb.

DJI Mini 2 drone
A present from the children on my 60th birthday. Once I get the hang of it I hope I will be including some aerial photography results on this site.

PhotoFiltre
Its a bit like Photoshop, but obviously with fewer features as it is freeware. PhotoFiltre is French, as the name suggests, but is available in English. I find it great for retouching photos, adjusting levels and contrast and the like, cropping, resizing and doing basic effects.

Notepad
I’m a bit old-fashioned. Apart from this blog, I have some other websites of varying complexity, but I still use Notepad for creating all the pages. It keeps me familiar with HTML, which comes in useful for editing the templates on WordPress.

Flickr
I use Flickr to keep copies of my photos and share them. Its also handy for hosting larger pictures and is a sort of backup for me. Tagging facilities and sets make it easier to find photos tha on the PC sometimes.

Firefox
I not only still use Firefox for some things but I still refer to it as Netscape sometimes! I tend to do all my site admin in Firefox.

Google Chrome
Now my default, which I use for most things

Feedly
How I manage to keep up-to-date with various blogs – by subscribing to their RSS feeds. A replacement for the sadly discontinued Google Reader.

Montastic
This is a website which will monitor your own site and let you know if it is unavailable. You can do the same thing yourself by never sleeping or going out and staying at the computer all day, but its easier to use Montastic, and it is totally free.

Microsoft Office 365
I did try using Open Office but kept running into problems working on files from my proper job, also the Java elements mean that it takes a frustratingly long time to load, so now I have MS Office 365 – through the Microsoft HUP scheme. I would rather own the software than have in a SAAS basis, btu the extra cloud storage comes in handy.

AVG
Freeware anti-virus. So far it seem to be doing its job properly.

Samsung M2070 Laser
Its a black & white laser/scanner/copier. Replaced an Epson inkjet that worked OK but got too expensive with the inks. It turns out I don’t really need colour.

Spotify
Favourite new toy in 2009 and still going strong. This is nearly always streaming music in the background while I am typing away. Combined with Last.fm which keeps a record of what has been played.

Twitter
Only started playing with Twitter in mid-2009, but started using it a lot more in 2016 when I bailed out of Facebook and closed my account there.

PDF Creator
I am spoiled at work, having Adobe Acrobat Professional. I can’t justify that sort of expense at home, so use this freeware to convert various documents to .pdf files. You can’t edit pdf files, annotate them, create web forms, and all those other advanced things – but what it does it does well and it is free and open source.

Surprisingly, all this takes very little knowledge to run. Knowing some HTML tags and syntax helps when customising themes, as does not being afraid to hack around with some of the easier bits of php, but really it all runs itself. In fact it has to because it is ten years since I had to do any serious work on the site and since then I have forgotten nearly everything I knew about PHP, CSS and HTML.