About


About me

I’m an amateur website builder, and first-time blogger — experimenting here with my own particular idea of a ‘personal blog’

Me, in 2017

I’m not sure why? Maybe it’s because, for as long as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed making things, and finding out how things work. In my career I worked in manufacturing, advertising, and high-tech industries, in many different roles. But, as soon as I could afford to, I retired early, and moved away from that frantic life.

Now, I live with my dear wife in a quiet village in the north of England. We have three fantastic children — each settled with their own life-partner — and three much-loved grand-daughters.

Yet, I still struggle with my life, and I despair at the direction our world is headed in. So, I want to remember, and share here, some of the hobbies and distractions that have helped me through these scary times.

More than that, I’d like to continue to learn and grow. To embrace new technologies and ideas, and to discover exciting new things, even in our troubled world.

About my website

I hope this will soon become a place to share all my interests — but for now it’s mainly about the development of the site itself

For the longest time I’ve wanted to design and code my own blog. A blog that’s simpler, cleaner, and more capable than anything I could find on WordPress. With more independence and control than Ghost, or Medium. This is the closest I’ve got so far!

I’ve built my site using two main development tools: a content management system called Kirby, and a new CSS framework called Tailwind. Before using these two packages, I’ve had to learn some basic PHP, and how to use the command line interface.

It’s been a long process: learning, designing, writing, and coding, all at the same time. Now, after many false starts, I’ve finally gone ‘live’ with this part-finished, still-evolving blog.