Posts

One of my pet hates is cookie notices. Not only do they constantly interrupt my web browsing, but also it’s a faff to set them up on my own sites. Thanks to GDPR and similar legislation, website owners are legally required to obtain consent for collecting visitors’ personal data with tools such as Google Analytics. I was delighted to discover Fathom Analytics, a straightforward alternative to Google Analytics that doesn’t require cookie notices. Yes, that’s right. Fathom doesn’t collect personal data: it anonymises visitors’ IP addresses and doesn’t track people across websites. Plus, all the data from EU traffic is processed within the EU, which helps with GDPR compliance. ...

I’m trying to follow a self-imposed rule of backing up important work to at least three places. Given much of what I do is text-based, online git repositories are an obvious choice. But what if one of them suffers a DOS attack? Or tomfoolery around data protection and tariffs means it becomes unavailable in specific regions? I resolved to push my commits to both GitHub and GitLab. Initially, I tried GitLab’s mirroring to automatically pull all my changes from my GitHub repo. Although this works perfectly with public repos, it was a lot more fiddly with private repos. I definitely didn’t want a manual process or one that involved configuring additional passwords. ...

Although Zotero works smoothly with Word, not everyone wants to dedicate the best years of their life to Microsoft products. While Google Docs won’t necessarily bring you much more joy, at least it’s free and doesn’t occupy half your hard drive. In this post, I’ll explain how you can use Zotero to create citations and bibliographies in a Google Doc. To use Zotero with Google Docs, you need two elements: ...

One of my many new year’s resolutions was to impose order on my Gmail inbox. Despite my best efforts, I have several gigabytes of emails - all of which makes it difficult to back up or migrate them. Many of those email are invoices, receipts, or statements. I need to keep them for my business records, but they’re seriously cluttering up my workspace. Although I could create a mail archive with an email client like Thunderbird, that’s not very accessible. To find a specific invoice, I’d need to reimport those thousands of emails. I suddenly wondered whether there was a way of systematically saving the PDF attachments to a folder. After all, I don’t need the email itself, just the file. Needless to say, there wasn’t an especially straightforward method, or one that didn’t involve paying a third-party and giving them access to my mailbox. Finally, I discovered that I could run a script on my Gmail. ...

Mindmapping software can often feel overly rigid and complicated for capturing ideas quickly. Scapple, from the makers of the brilliant Scrivener, is a free-form, non-linear application for capturing your thoughts. It’s the closest software can get to a piece of paper and a pen – but you never run out of space. Scapple is available for both Mac and Windows. I’m basing this post on the Mac version, but it works broadly the same on both platforms. ...

When it comes to notetaking tools, I’ve always struggled with monogamy. After the initial excitement has worn off, I’m easily distracted by a more alluring alternative. Although my head has occasionally been turned, I’ve now been using Obsidian solidly for over three years. What’s different this time? In this post, I’ll explain my six main reasons for using Obsidian, and why I’ve chosen it over some of the alternatives. Now, I’ve seen people expressing strong feelings in the notetaking world 🔥 I’m not saying the alternatives are bad or wrong, it’s just that Obsidian better serves my needs. At least for now. ...

One of my main concerns about moving from WordPress to Hugo was, “How on earth do I create a contact form on a static site?”. Fortunately, Netlify came my rescue. Netlify already provides an excellent free service for deploying smaller static sites. I discovered that it also handles forms without the need for any JavaScript or plugins. In this tutorial, I’ll explain my process for setting up a simple contact form. Submissions are both stored in Netlify and emailed to me. I’m using the Papermod theme for Hugo, so your setup might vary. ...

As your Zotero Library grows, it’s important to maintain quality. If it’s messy, it’ll be harder to find what you need and also you’ll spend a lot of time fixing citations. Here are some tips for keeping everything tidy. Find Unfiled Items Zotero can filter your Unfiled Items. This shows you anything that doesn’t yet belong to a Collection, such as random articles you saved without a specific project in mind. ...

I’ve been using WordPress for at least two decades. During that time, I’ve become intimately acquainted with its quirks, and mostly indulgent of them. A couple of years ago, though, I realised that I’d stopped blogging. The more significant WordPress updates - namely the block editor - had introduced a lot of friction. It was taking me 20 minutes to draft a post that should have taken only 10. Also, I noticed clients grumbling about WordPress a lot more. Although frameworks like Genesis and GeneratePress made it easier, they also added another layer (and learning curve) on top of WordPress. And keeping plugins up-to-date was a part-time job. ...

Although syncing your Zotero Library ensures you have a cloud-based backup, it’s also a good idea to schedule independent backups. Why am I giving you extra work to do? Well, if you accidentally delete a bunch of items in Zotero just before it syncs, your empty version is copied to the Zotero servers. This is a fairly unlikely scenario, but it’s not one you’d want to encounter. In this post, I’ll explain how to back up your Zotero Library, and then outline some methods for restoring your items in different scenarios. ...