About Paul Chappell

I’m a 70-year-old retired computer programmer, living in Marsden, West Yorkshire, England. I was born in Liverpool, which makes me a Scouser.

My main interests are:

Photography

I’ve been interested in photography since my late teens.

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 show them on this website (though there are issues doing this, see this post).

My current camera is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ2000 bridge camera, which I bought in September 2024. It was a compromise, I wanted a Canon or Nikon DSLR, but they were too expensive.

For photo editing I use the Affinity Photo Editor, it’s now available for free. The free version does not include any AI features or cloud storage, these are available for as little as £100 a year, with a Canva Premium subscription.

I’ll be publishing a lot of my photographs (and some from my friends and family) on this website. You are not allowed to use any of them without written permission, see my copyright page for further information.

The photograph of me on the right was taken by my friend John Buckley during a visit to the Hop Vine in Burscough some time ago. I wrote about that trip here.

Travel

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

I usually take loads of photos on these trips; I’ll be publishing the more interesting ones on this website.

Most of my adult life I’ve been a member of the Campaign for Real Ale, over 50 years! Last month I decided to leave, I’ve written about that here. I’ll be writing about some of the more interesting pubs I visit, most trips involve a visit to an interesting pub or two. One of my sources for finding interesting pubs is CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide, I’ve written about it here.

Music

I’ve always loved music.

Back in the seventies it was mainly prog-rock and folk. Nowadays I’ll listen to almost anything (though not heavy metal, thrash metal, hip-hop, rap or anything similar). When I’m in my study, music is always playing. Sometimes the music gets in the way of writing. Sometimes the writing gets in the way of music.

Reading

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of reading. I love a good book (me).

Now, in my retirement, I’m reading a lot more. A lot of my travels are by train, it’s nice reading a book on the train, occasionally looking out of the window to watch the world go by. If I’m in a pub on my own, it’s nice to read a book in a quiet corner.

The photograph of me on the left was taken by my friend John Buckley at Edge Hill railway station, in 1977. Almost fifty years ago!

Science, Maths and Engineering

I’ve always been interested in these subjects.

Back in the early/mid-seventies I did a civil engineering degree at Sheffield University. I never became a civil engineer; I decided computer programming was more interesting, after learning how to program in Fortran on the course. The one thing I did learn though, 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 (well, someone must). I was the first person in my school (a bog standard comprehensive in Liverpool) to get an ‘A’ level in maths, I managed to get a grade ‘B’.

Programming

I’ve been writing software for over 50 years. The computer world has changed massively during that time; that’s one of the interesting things about being a programmer for so long.

I’m now retired, though I still write code. I’m currently writing a static website generator for myself; I’m writing about this on another of my websites. It’ll probably be the last bit of complicated software I’ll ever write.

Websites

This is something I never thought I’d get into, throughout my career I never really programmed user interfaces, programs that interact with people.

I now write my own HTML, CSS and Java Script, as I am interested in very fast websites, websites that display in a browser very quickly. Html and Java Script where easy enough to learn (given that I’ve had 50 years’ experience of programming). CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) was incredibly difficult to learn.

There is more about websites and their design on my home page.

24th May 2026