A note on accessibility
This site has been designed for and tested on the following browsers, under various different screen resolutions.
- Mozilla Firefox 2.x and 3.x
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5, 6.x and 7.x
- Opera 9.51
- Apple Safari 3.1.2
If you are running any of these browsers and having problems, please let me know and I will endeavour to fix whatever it is I have missed.
If you are running any other browser, please also let me know of any problems and I will do what I can to accomodate you.
Please note, if you are using anything less than IE 5.5 or Netscape 4 or any other seriously out-dated browser, you really need to upgrade and not pester me to fix my site!
Early days
I created my first personal Website in 1998, shortly after starting University.
The University of Bath kindly gave us all some webspace and I felt duty bound to use it for something. I had used the Internet for a while, but my web addiction truly began when I realised that, with a little bit of knowledge, I could easily and quickly create my own content. The site started with not much more than a few basic links and photos.
By 2001, I had developed my personal website to contain galleries of photos of my friends and of various holidays I had been on. I had also developed a seperate site, called "Sound Bytes" which contained reviews of bands, albums, singles and gigs I had been to. I ran out of Webspace on the Bath domain, so the Sound Bytes site was hosted with a free provider (at the time, almost advert free).
In 2002, the unthinkable happened and Sound Bytes vanished! It turned out the free host I was with had gone into administration and had emailed all their users giving them a months notice so they could move their sites. I never received the email they claimed to have sent and subsequent contact I tried to make with them fell on death ears. The problem was I had been quite slack with keeping my Websites backed up offline. This was the first big lesson I learnt in Website management: Always, always, always back up your website, no matter where it's hosted.
As I was coming towards the end of my degree, I realised I would also soon lose my Bath University Webspace. I decided therefore that the time was right to take the plunge and buy my own domain, as well as paying for fully supported Webspace. I wanted the new Website to become bigger, brighter and better designed than ever before. I went back to basics, reassessing everything I had done before in order to come up with a simple but effective design. The new site, I decided, would be more gallery focussed and I set to work on getting as many of my photographs scanned and online as I could. At the time I was using
Bonusprint to print my APS photos and their "photos on CD" service helped me no end with digitising my images in the years before I gave in and went digital myself. I also wanted the new Website to focus on my genealogical research, getting my information "out there" for other people researching the same information to find.
Recent years
Over recent years I have further developed the two main themes of the Website. In 2006, I finally moved to digital photography. and later that year, streamlined the generation of gallery pages and some other pages using Javascript.
In 2007, I made the decision to make the galleries on my Website purely travel related, so photos from old parties, nights out etc have now been removed.
Current developments
Most recently, I have been working on tidying up my code using SSI (Server Side Includes) and better using CSS to display site headers and footers. I have worked hard on trying to make the site as accessible as possible to a variety of different browsers and screen resolutions. I have hopefully made the navigation much neater and easier to use.
I have recently decided to begin a travel blog to accompany my travel photos, so look out for that coming soon!
Resources and credits
Over the years, I have used various tools and resources to develop my knowledge and streamline page generation. Some of them are listed below. If you think I have left you out, please let me know!
Ian Hickson - Gave me help and guidance in the early days. I know I'll never be as technically gifted as Ian and that is fine.
Phil Bradley - Phil's an Internet Consultant. He gave me plenty of food for thought when he presented "Practical Projects using Web2.0 Resources" at
Brunel University
Batch-it ultra - A program that allows you to manipulate and edit a whole bunch of images in one go. Very handy for creating thumbnails
Bulk rename utility - Rename a whole bunch of files in one go - great for the html and image files for galleries
Bonusprint - Their "photos on CD" service helped me no end in the days before I went digital with my camera equipment
HTML tutorials - There are loads of these out there and I never stick to just one.
JavaScript tutorials - Similar to HTML tutorials. Have a look at some of the links and choose a few you like.
CSS tutorials - This may be getting boring now. See above.
AJAX tutorials - AJAX is a new idea to me. Looking to incorporate some of the techniques into my galleries.
Roxio Photosuite - Before I discovered Batch-it Ultra, I used to heavily rely on this program's predecessor MGI Photosuite. I can't vouch for the current incarnation, but thought I'd link to it in any case.
Stat Counter - A free website that collects all sorts of Website usage statistics. It's handy to know for instance how many visitors run which browser and which screen resolution. These factors directly effect my design.
Google map API - I'm new to this technology but hopefully it will be incorporated into the travel gallery soon.
Dreamweaver - Although I barely use it myself, it's worth a mention as a good tool for someone that does not want to learn raw HTML. I have found it useful for creating image maps (those images with areas you can click on)
Youtube - It's where I store my video content for embedding in my pages.
