About This Website

My name is Paul Chappell, I’m a 69-year-old retired computer programmer who’s decided to write a blog. I’m doing this for several reasons.

First, I want to write about things that interest me, I also want somewhere to publish my photographs. There are many articles about what you should blog about on the internet. Most suggest a niche subject, maybe photography, science, travel, computer programming, all things that interest me. Well, this is my blog, so I’m the niche, so I’ll blog about anything that interests me. Absolutely anything.

Second, I want to learn more about how websites are designed and written, mainly small websites. I’m currently working on two, this one and Ulverston Fallen (which I’m currently in the process of re-writing). There are two areas of interest here: how websites are written (the HTML, CSS and Java Script) and made to display quickly; and the actual design of the website, what it looks like and how information is presented. I’ll be writing how I’m doing this on my blog. Just because I’m retired, I’m not going to stop programming.

Finally, I want to keep my brain active.

The photograph of me on the right was taken by my friend John Buckley at Edge Hill railway station, in 1977.

Because of this I’m associating each post with a category, in order to make is easier to locate similar posts. My blog has the following categories:

The first is that it allows me to write about things that interest me, the places I visit and to show my photographs.

Jekyll

Posts about writing websites using the Jekyll static website generator.

Personnal

Personal posts.

Photography

Photography posts.

Science

Posts about maths, science and technology.

Travel

Posts about travel.

I’m grouping my posts into categories, to make it easier to locate posts for a given category. I’m using the following categories:

Categories

Photography

I’ve been a keen photograph er all my life, so there will be posts showing my photos.

It all started when I was at university in the mid-seventies. In those days there were no digital cameras, it was all film. In my study, I have a large box of slides and prints. I’m hoping to digitise some of them, in order to use them in this blog (though there are issues doing this, see this post).

In 2007 I bought a digital SLR. It’s getting very old now, but it still works. I’m hoping to replace it later this year. I also use my mobile phone. For photo editing I use Gimp, it’s open source and free.

Science

I’ve always been interested in science, maths and engineering.

Back in the early/mid-seventies I did a civil engineering degree. I never became a civil engineer; I decided computer programming was much more interesting. The one thing I did learn on the course was how buildings are designed and built. For some reason, I’ve always loved big bridges.

The course taught me a lot about maths, most of it I’ve forgotten, but I really liked maths. I’d like to start learning some of it again.

Science was always fun (except for chemistry, I never got the hang of it).

So, there is plenty to write about here (and don’t worry, I won’t write about computer programming very often).

The photograph on the left is the Mersey Ferry coming into the Seacombe landing stage.

Travel

I’ve been lucky to travel abroad a lot in the past, but nowadays its mostly local. Around West Yorkshire and Merseyside. I’ll be writing about my travels.

I’ve been a member of the Campaign for Real Ale for over 50 years! I’ll be writing about some of the more interesting pubs I visit. Like the Ship and Mitre Liverpool, one of my favourites.

Creating this Website

I’m going to tag all my posts, to make it easier for you to find similar posts to the one you have just read.

This website was built with the Jekyll static website generator. It is free to use, open-source software.

The theme for the website was written by me. It’s still a work in progress, as I lean new programming techniques the website will gradually improve. Ultimately, I’ll publish the theme as open-source software for anybody to use.

The website is hosted for free on GitHub Pages, because it is a personal website.

So, writing and hosting the website is completely free, including editing your photos.

I’ll be writing about how I developed the theme for the website, but not here, on another website dedicated to writing websites.

29th March 2024