Follow up from https://bmorton.com/posts/pye49/ The Pye radio lives again! I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. It was in worse shape than I’d anticipated – the varnish was pretty far gone and the paint was chipped. The wood had swelled from water damage at some point. A bit...

Check out my “new” MS-DOS workhorse – the Presario 433. I picked it up alongside an old Acorn machine (yet to be fixed). It’s been scrubbed with a toothbrush, and matching speakers added. Looks sharp. Probably most importantly – I’ve found a replacement floppy drive which fits the unit...

Can you run Doom on AWS S3? Sort of, if you tweak it to ‘Can you run Doom from AWS S3′. I’ve been trying out options for mounting S3 buckets locally to revive an old project that needs a bit of cloud storage but wasn’t written for S3. I’ve...

Documentation and technical content don’t just support your SaaS product – they are an important component of your core user experience. Thorough documentation, easy-to-understand tutorials, and case studies that highlight the real benefits of your software are all vital to your prospective and existing users. Communicating with your users...

It’s important that technical writers start off on the right foot when working on a new project. You need to know the product and audience, as well as understand your client’s expectations before you start producing content for them. Before you start writing, you should: • Read the products...

This page showcases some of the high quality articles that I have been involved in the creation of. Many of these were written on behalf of others after interviewing them to find out what story they want to tell, while others are the result of extensive research into a...

I don’t like the layout of most calendar apps, and I want to be able to make notes, mark things as done, scribble etc. So, I built an automator script to export all of my calendar events and reminders for the day into a text file. I’m on Mac,...

✍️ Why I only provide technical writing services through agencies (and why I’m super picky about which ones I work with) 🏆 Quality: I only work with agencies that employ professional editors that review all content that is published. Written content can provide value for years, so it’s worth...

📣 Ego isn’t a dirty word. You need confidence in yourself, and your product to sell it with conviction. 🖋️ Written content allows individuals and teams to fully explain their product, the problem it solves, and the value to users. You then can hone your message based on the...

When I’m not writing or coding I like to restore vintage computers. I’ve got a collection of early Macs, Apple IIs, Commodore 64s and PCs. My favourite is my Compaq Presario 433. 🐟 Something strange I’ve noticed about these early home computers is the odour – old electronics often...

Doorbellcode.com continues to grow, and now has a growing active userbase on every continent 🎉 …Well, almost every continent. I still need Antarctica. 🐧 Does anyone know if penguins need doorbells? Jokes aside, I still get excited when I see users arrive from a new country or region, moreso...

A client of mine had a successful, but aging website that was based on an obsolete version of WordPress and that was designed to look flashy, but not load quickly or show the information users arrive looking for without a lot of clicking around. This was impacting both usability...

Some topics are not as exciting to write about as others. If you’re concerned that this may be reflected in the tone of your writing, consider putting some light at the end of the tunnel. Promise yourself a donut once the task is completed 🍩 You’ll gain momentum and...

Written content is one of the most effective ways you can communicate the benefits of your product to your audience. It allows you to fully explain your product and educate your current and future users about how the product can be used. Unlike podcasts, videos, and other multi-media, written...

I work as a freelance technical writer and developer. I love working, but the quality suffers if I let it completely take over. Thinking about work tasks when I’m not working just preemptively fatigues me from that task. While inspiration (and bugfixes) often strike me when I’m out enjoying...

We don’t need an ‘everything’ app – we already have one. It is a platform with billions of active users that lets you create and share anything you can imagine. You can chat, send payments, create apps, games, and art, connect with audiences and build a business, or just...

Doorbellcode.com provides free QR doorbells that notifies you via email or phone call when a QR code is scanned. It’s a neat little app that I developed a while back when I lived on the second floor of an old building with a non-functioning intercom system. The idea has...

Here’s a little project I’ve been working on – a way to add a glossary to any page. Words in the glossary are subtly underlined, and clicking them will show the definition. This should work on any page, you just need to create a glossary at glossowary.com, add the...

Here’s how I got MongoDB working with MAMP (an Apache/PHP server) on MacOS. There was a bit of messing about involved, including building the MongoDB PHP extension, so I’ve documented it for my future self – hopefully it helps others too. Prequisites Getting MongoDB working with MAMP’s built-in PHP...

Out of the box, VLC seems to frequently crash when running full screen on Raspberry Pi 4’s. Keyboard and mouse input will stop responding, and playback may or may not hang. It’s not possible to force a clean reboot either, so it’s quite an inconvenience. I’ve had this happen...

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I needed a quick and dirty Wifi bridge and the Pi Zero W seemed perfect. However, it did not automatically configure the USB ethernet adapter I was using. Here’s how I got it working. The Setup The aim here is to supply internet to the Pi via WiFi and...

This is a living document outlining the technical writing process I’ve been using, cobbled together after reviewing the materials provided by clients along with their expectations and comments/feedback received during the editing process.  It will be updated as I learn and tweak things. This process includes mitigation steps for...

Your clipboard contains a lot of sensitive info – passwords from password managers being the most obvious. Any app or website can read from the clipboard, so having this data just hanging around is a bit of a problem – a password could be read by some unintended app...

I photograph the odd collectable for gadski.com – and my flat is the worst possible place for it. It’s dimly lit, at best. To solve this, I’ve put together a cheap (less than 5 pounds) photography lightbox. The construction is simple: Ingredients 2x 2.5L Coke bottles (or the largest...

I’ve published my first Laravel package. It’s simple, but useful. My Laravel databases have been getting far too large, a result of 1) Long session lifetimes and 2) Sessions being created periodically by various bots and uptime monitors. This middleware solves this by allowing you to specify a list...