PC stuff
For the last few months, I’ve been using my 2014 Asus Zenbook UA303UA laptop for writing projects.
This month, I switched from Google Chrome OS Flex to Zorin OS (Linux) and I couldn’t be more delighted.
Continue reading Moving from Chrome OS Flex to Zorin OS on my Asus Zenbook UX303UA
If you’ve been building for the Divi ecosystem lately, you know the challenge. We are currently in a ‘dual-world’ phase. We have Divi 4, the reliable workhorse, and Divi 5, the lightning-fast, Gutenberg-compatible future currently in beta.
When I was updating my plugin, WP Rename Divi Projects – which lets users rebrand Divi’s ‘Projects’ custom post type into something more semantic like ‘Books’ or ‘Properties’ – I hit a challenge. I needed to ensure the code worked perfectly on both versions of Divi without constantly switching Git branches or, worse, manually copying files back and forth.
I wanted:
Here is how I set up a seamless Windows 11 development environment using a hidden gem of the filesystem: Junctions.
Continue reading Using Junctions for multi-environment WordPress development
I’ve been taking a hard look at the software I rely on day to day.
It’s partly because the current US political landscape feels increasingly unstable. But it’s also because so much of our default productivity and creative toolkit is dominated by a small set of mega-vendors, again, mostly American.
A quick scan of my own habits makes the pattern obvious: Microsoft Windows, Google, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Acrobat, Oracle MySQL. Not all of these are bad per se, and plenty of people have good reasons to keep using them. But when a handful of companies become unavoidable, we all pay for it in lock-in, pricing power and reduced choice.
The risk isn’t just cost; it’s dependency.
If your operating system, office suite, cloud platform, email stack and creative tools all sit inside one country’s corporate orbit, your options narrow fast when politics shifts, policies change, licensing tightens or data rules get complicated.
Continue reading Why I’m reviewing my software stack
I’m always on the lookout for a decent, free image editor. Especially one that I can recommend to web clients who are looking for something simple to editor and resize images.
I often recommend IrfanView, a small, free image viewer that packs in a number of useful features. But for cropping images, it’s a little fiddly.
This week I came across PhotoDemon which describes itself as a 100% free, 100% open-source portable photo editor. And while I’m not thrilled on the name, I have to say, I am very impressed with its ease of use and features.
Resizing images is simple. Cropping images is intuitive. Saving images to other formats is a breeze. It even supports layers and has a variety of visual effects.
For many tasks, this gives my usual photo editor, Corel PaintShop Pro, a good run for its money. It also looks more user-friendly than GIMP, the usual go-to for a free photo editor.
So, if you need a simple to use photo editor that you don’t even need to install, I can recommend PhotoDemon.
Microsoft has increased the price of its Microsoft 365 Family subscription again, which has nudged me to rethink whether I still need it.
I am keen to explore alternatives that feel lighter, more accessible and less tied to the bigger companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Corel.
So I have started testing OnlyOffice – a free, cross-platform suite that immediately surprised me with its clean design, generous scaling options and effortless compatibility with my existing documents.
This is the start of a tentative experiment to see whether it could replace Microsoft 365 for me.
Continue reading Trying OnlyOffice after years with Microsoft