Cardpod

March 21, 2025 | Comment

Over the years, I have backed a number of Kickstarter projects with a varying amount of success. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have found that I am more likely to support someone that I backed before and like what I have received – or even just received it as that’s not always a guarantee. So when a company called CARD who I’d previously backed announced a new project I was interested. Their previous project, the Kablecard, is excellent and I still use it today.

Kablecard – The Swiss Army Utility Card for Charging on the go!

Enter the CardPOD

The CardPOD… Read the rest

What Should I Watch Next?

March 1, 2025 | Comment

Back last December I wrote about a project that I had written called What Should I Play Next? where it would randomly choose something from my record collection to play. This month’s project, part of my 👨‍💻12 Apps in 12 Months challenge, is the visual equivalent.

The Plex API

When I want to watch a film I am sometimes constrained by the amount of time I have and usually have some feeling of the genre I want so I wanted something that catered for that plus could also exclude things that I had watched before.

While I do subscribe to … Read the rest

Using php2Bluesky without Composer post v2.0.14

February 23, 2025 | Comment

In January I wrote about Using php2Bluesky without Composer for those that wanted to take this approach. Since then I have updated the code so that it conforms to PSR-4 for loading with Composer. This in turn has a knock-on effect for those loading manually. The rest of this article explains how loading now needs to take place.

Multiple Files

Prior to v2.0.14 all the code was contained within a single file called functions.php. The naming reflected the history of the library which was originally developed to be included as part of a larger project. When I spun it out … Read the rest

RWOL from Alexa

February 10, 2025 | Comment

At the end of 2023, I wrote about how I had used a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as a machine to remotely turn on and off a media server that I had in my house. The idea being that it was unnecessary to have it on 24/7, consuming electricity when I was asleep for much of that time.

While I had a nice little web app from which I could trigger the start up and shut down I always wanted to be able to do it using voice commands via Alexa. Today I finally got round to doing that … Read the rest

Simple WordPress Post Stats

February 1, 2025 | 2 comments

Every year, over on my personal blog, I write a round-up post covering what I have done during the year. This includes books read, films watched steps taken etc. What it has never covered are my creative endeavours which would be my developments over at Github and my blog posts.

Where are the WordPress Stats?

I sort of assumed that there would be stacks of stats in the WordPress dashboard but no if you want that you have to install Jetpack and get the nagging messages asking you to upgrade. These stats are very similar to what you … Read the rest

👨‍💻12 Apps in 12 Months

January 28, 2025 | Comment

It seems to be en vouge at the moment to challenge yourself to develop an application a month and do so in public. These apps tend to be AI driven, very slick, with their own landing pages etc. I wanted to stretch myself this year and increase the cadence of my development and so a 12 Apps in 12 Months challenge sounded like a good idea.

But not like that!

While a challenge seemed like a good idea, I didn’t want to be producing apps just for the sake of it. I felt that for it to be worthwhile, I … Read the rest

Using php2Bluesky without Composer

January 26, 2025 | 1 comment

I have been asked how to use my php2Bluesky library without having to install it using Composer. Given that this is a common request I thought that I would document it here.

Pros and Cons of Composer

Before we get into the specifics of using php2Bluesky without Composer let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of using Composer. Feel free to skip this bit and go straight to how to use php2Bluesky without Composer!

Using Composer to install a package has several advantages over manually downloading the code and requiring it. Composer automates dependency management, … Read the rest

COLMi Smart Ring

January 21, 2025 | Comment

I have been looking for a way to track my sleep habits, and given that I love a good gadget, I thought that this might be the way to go. Initially, I tried wearing my Apple Watch in bed, but I found it uncomfortable and the results didn’t seem very accurate, so I gave that up. Then, I was listening to The Rest is Politics podcast, and Rory Stewart was waxing lyrical about his Oura smart ring, and I thought now that might just be the answer.

If you’re Rory Stewart being paid £1 million a year for your … Read the rest

Preparing and Adding a new Project to git

January 15, 2025 | Comment

I always struggle when I am ready to push my first commit to a new repository and always end up with errors, so I thought I would document the process here as an aide memoir for me and, hopefully, others will find it useful too.

Prerequisites

These instructions are for when you have already got a folder of code that you want to commit for the first time to git. The first thing to do is to create and setup your .gitignore file. This tells git which files to exclude when uploading. Things to include here are config files with … Read the rest

Discogs Wrapped

January 8, 2025 | Comment

If you’re not a Spotify user, as I’m not, then all the self-congratulatory Spotify Wrapped posts at the end of each year can become quite wearing. It’s not that I don’t listen to music; it’s just that I don’t consume it through streaming. I’m an old-fashioned, physical music kind of guy, and I have lots of vinyl records.

What I thought if I could have my own version of Spotify Wrapped? Enter…

Discogs Wrapped

My music media collection is all catalogued in the online service Discogs which also has an api. In fact, it was this that I used this … Read the rest