Category: My Sites News Updates

Shopping Trip with a View

By this Tuesday just gone (8th July), we we’re running short of stuff again, specifically butter and bread.

We were completely out of butter (regular + spreadable stuff), while the sourdough I’d gotten for my Dad from Morrison’s on that trip I posted about earlier: one from a brand called “Jason’s” had run out, while the Morrison’s in-house bakery thing had gone so hard you could probably use it to take out an Iranian nuclear facility if you dropped it from a high enough height (and I’d had difficulty getting a clean slice out of it, wasting most of it).

So it was off to Aldi and Sainsbury’s again. Continue reading “Shopping Trip with a View”

Upgraded to a Better Mobile Phone Finally

After roughly 10yrs of trying, around this time last month I finally managed to successfully upgrade to a replacement for my trusty old iPhone 3GS smartphone.

It took just over a year of saving, but after 2-3yrs of looking longingly at it as an option, I finally upgraded to a refurbished iPhone 12 Mini in Black, with 128GB of onboard storage.

I’ve paired it with a TORRO phone case, made from genuine black leather rather than the fake PVC leather crap some of my previous cases have been made from that eventually start flaking like a chimney sweep with bad dandruff. Continue reading “Upgraded to a Better Mobile Phone Finally”

Change Coming To This Blog – SSL Status

After weeks or maybe months of considering it, I have decided to make a small change to the jduck1979 website / jduck1979 blog you see here.

In order to keep Google and assorted Web Browsers happy with the SSL / HTTPS status of this place (and because I need the advertising revenue), I have decided to switch this place over to a sub-domain of one of my other websites in order to avoid having to cough-up £125 a year to the Web Hosts for more than two SSL Certificates.

Using SSL / HTTPS will (in theory) keep this place more secure, and maybe even make it run a bit faster when I’ve got it re-wired properly. Continue reading “Change Coming To This Blog – SSL Status”

Bought Some More Domain Names

Once upon a time I ended up owning around 120 domain names after a wild stab at trying my hand at domain name investing around 2007/2008 after 1&1 UK (now “Ionos“) tag teamed with a company called SEDO.

In the intervening years after turning some of them into actual websites, or getting shot of them to save money I wittled them down to only having around 14 of the things.

Now I seem to have developed an urge to have another go at it, and picked up 6 of the things in the past month.

Might pick up a few more in the coming months if I see anything decent going cheap.

I picked up “StupidSillyStuff.com” + “StupidSillyStuff.co.uk” to go with the “Stupid Silly Stuff” facebook page I inherited that’s somehow grown to 10k followers.

I’ve bagged “FunnyCatVideos.co.uk” because “Funny Cat Videos” is apparently a cheap keyword with lots of traffic. Continue reading “Bought Some More Domain Names”

Ramping Up Instagram

I’ve had an account on Instagram since at least March 2013 (based on my earliest upload there I can find), but been pretty hobbled with what I could do with the place since all my devices got too old to run the latest version of the app.

 

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A post shared by John D. (@jduck1979)


Not that it was much easier to get stuff up on there when they still worked, having to first transfer stuff from my camera to the PC to the device in order to get it up on Instagram.

Once the mobile devices were no longer an option, I kinda left it for a while until having a stab with Android emulator software Bluestacks. Continue reading “Ramping Up Instagram”

Changing Blog Themes

The other day I finally got round to changing the wordpress theme on this blog.

I’d been meaning to for at least a year, maybe 2 years, but like many things never seemed to get round to it.

I’d already done a similar switch on some of my other blogs where I’d been using one called “Responsive” after google started getting naggy about how you make your website around 2014-2016 insisting you use “responsive web design” (shortly before they then got naggy about using AMP as well / instead of)….

As much as I like the theme when I first installed it, the creators seemed to make a bit of a hash of it through numerous theme updates.

For now I’ve gone with the “Twenty Sixteen” theme until I find something better. Still probably have a bit more fine tuning to do with it.

Trying To Create Content, Without Really Being Able To

I started this year kind of wanting to try a bit more to push forward with the content creator thing writing my blogs here and elsewhere, as well as try and get my YouTube channels back on track.

As with a lot of content creator types who mostly rely on going outside with a camera doing things to get their content, that has pretty much gone right down the s****er.

This has also had a knock-on effect on trying to cobble together blog posts on things that don’t require me to go outside to do things to be able to put together some content.

I kind of get ideas for things I could write when I’m away from where I can actually write things down, but then when I’m sat back down here where I can actually write them I’ve forgotten most of it. Or just as I’m about to try write something, I get called away to do other stuff.

I’m just really creating this post to try get out of the funk by writing any random s**t that comes out of my head to try get back in the habit of more frequently tinkering with my websites and social media. Continue reading “Trying To Create Content, Without Really Being Able To”

New Mouse Mat

So, my new replacement mouse mat arrived back on 28th April from Amazon UK.

I was originally aiming for an Amazon Basics gaming mouse mat, but that became unavailable a few days before I had the money available to put the order through, so i got a Kensington Memory Foam Mouse Mat instead, which at least brand matches the Kensington Keyboard wristrest I got before I later bought my leaky old Fellowes Gel Mouse Mat (thought I got it around same time, but looking back through my Amazon orders shows otherwise) Continue reading “New Mouse Mat”