Larry’s Blog: Websites & iGadgets

VeloUK publisher Larry Hickmott writes about all change at VeloUK headquarters ¦ It has been quite a month!

After 10 years almost at British Cycling, the resignation letter has been sent in and I await their response. In the meantime, being the worrier that I am, instead of going out and spending two weeks on my bike in the sun of Manchester, I have been building this website. It’s what I do, learning new things. Over Christmas, I spent a lot of time learning about the Eye-Fi technology and MiFi devices and it was time well spent. Now I am familiar with Word Press websites.

 

 

“… technology has moved on so much from when I tinkered with a website called Echelon-Velo way back in 1999 …”.

 

 

These are created live on the net using templates like the one used for VeloUK.

Give me five years and I could probably tell you how to build your own at home and then make it live but technology has moved on so much from when I tinkered with a website called Echelon-Velo way back in 1999. That was built with a free giveaway on a PC magazine cover CD (Dreamweaver) and will always be a cherished period in my life as it was the start of so much.

Since then, I’ve been headhunted twice to work on websites (Rivals and British Cycling) and now I have started my own. I hope you like it and anyone who would like a website done, let me know because although I’m no expert (still a beginner if anything) but if you like what you see here, then I can do the same for you.

iGadgets
Finally, another learning experience has been working with digital Gadgets; iPad, iPod and iTunes. I’ve had a Classic iPod for many years and it is still providing the source for the music to which I write by. But the new iGadgets with their touch screens and apps are a different beast altogether. Sure they play music but they do so much more!

So, during this period of change, where building the website has been the main focus of my life, I have also spent the odd bit of time working with the iPad and some Apps for photographers or even those who just like a pretty picture. These apps perform tricks on photos that in a normal piece of software may take a while. Apps are really useful when I have an image on the computer that I want some effects applied to quickly and I can use my research here to know which app to turn to on my iPad, what it can do, and the pros and cons!

Here are some things I found while having a quick play on the iPad last night (March 29).

PhotoGenie: A nice little app that is not as intuitive as some and does seem to reduce the physical size in pixels of an image. Still more testing to be done on this but it is still one of the better Photo Apps.

PS Express: Limited in what it can do but at least the photos are saved at their full size. I applied a nice little olde world border to an image and when I saved it, the pixel size was the same but the file size much reduced so it appears to compress the images heavily. Again, more work needed to document each App for future reference.

Tiltshift: Lovely little app for iPhone and iPad but it crashes when saving full res images. Unusable therefore until they fix that.

That’s it for this blog. Another will roll its way to VeloUK soon
All the best, Larry

 

PS: no time to write blogs in 2024 LoL!