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  • Bazalgette: Diary of a WordPress Plugin – Part 1

    Bazalgette: Diary of a WordPress Plugin – Part 1

    Back in the 1980s, I loved reading game development diaries in Zzap!64 (these days I subscribe to Freeze64, which also includes developer diaries) and, so, I’ve decided to try one out myself, albeit for a WordPress plugin rather than an 8-bit video game.

    Bazalgette is a plugin that I’ve been trying to complete for a number of years, each time being partially coded and then abandoned, for varying reasons. However, after promising at WordCamp EU in 2023 that it was going to happen, one year later, I thought I really should do something about it.

    Now, I’m going to split this diary over a number of posts and each “day” won’t be sequential, but there may be many days (or weeks) between each entry. However, when a post looks pretty long, I’ll publish it before drafting a next part for later publication.

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  • Be careful posting on Reddit: Cult of Mac may take your content!

    Be careful posting on Reddit: Cult of Mac may take your content!

    There’s lot of news about Reddit selling their content to various companies, particularly for AI, but not, that I’m aware, to Cult of Mac, an Apple news site.

    But Cult of Mac are using it anyway.

    Oh, and then adding their own affiliate links on top of other people’s content, and all without telling them about it.

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  • My weirdest Reddit thread (so far)

    My weirdest Reddit thread (so far)

    So, somebody put up a guide on the worse used cars to buy. It was pretty terrible, with no quoted sources, so I replied with this response…

    Where has this information come from (“Annual Auto Surveys” is a bit too generic)? It appears to be US participants. How many? How “much-worse-than-average” do they have to be to be on this list?

    Data without sources is pretty redundant, imo, and best taken with the lightest pinch of salt until proven otherwise.

    At the time of my writing this, it’s had 2.3k likes. I’ve never known anything like it.

    But, aside from those accusing me of owning a car on that list, which is why they think I’m annoyed at it (I don’t), I keep getting one thing constantly thrown at me, and I never could have expected it.

    And it wasn’t even the person who tried to correct me by saying the expression was “a grain of salt” (both version are valid and “pinch of salt” is usually used in British English).

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  • A little site refreshment

    A little site refreshment

    I moved my site over to its first block theme, Bjork, some time ago. I didn’t really change it very much and, as a consequence, never really got to learn much about using the new full-site editing theme. Since then I’ve been working on another website, which used Twenty Twenty Four, and I’ve been enjoying exploring what can be done with it.

    Consequently, I’ve made the decision to do the same here – the theme has switched to Twenty Twenty Four, and I’ve been making changes from the default look, with more to come (those custom font selections have my name all over them!). It’s also highlighted to me some badly neglected pages, which I’ve been busy tidying up.

    It’s a work in progress, so please bear with me.

  • My (quick) WordCamp Whitley Bay diary

    My (quick) WordCamp Whitley Bay diary

    It’s traditional for me to write up a post whenever I go on any kind of work-related event. WordCamp Whitley Bay was the only WordCamp occurring in the UK this year, and I was chosen as a speaker. However, it was a one-day only event and all happened quite quickly. So, this is going to be a much shorter than usual summary.

    A lack of social media too means I have a lot less to share and, for reasons I’ll get into, I lack personal photos too.

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