Evernote Rules – an update

May 14, 2025 | Comment

Back at the beginning of April I released Evernote Rules, a play on Outlook Rules, where you can define actions that are carried out when a note is created or updated in an Evernote notebook. I have wanted this for almost as long as I have had Evernote and I finally got fed up of waiting for Evernote to implement it and wrote it myself.

As explained previously it works by receiving a webhook from Evernote every time that a note is created or updated and by reading the payload associated with that webhook you can see whether there … Read the rest

Uploading Videos with php2Bluesky

May 10, 2025 | Comment

Ever since I launched php2Bluesky a couple of years ago, I have wanted to add the ability to upload video as well as images. Initially, that wasn’t possible as Bluesky didn’t support videos, and then they did, but it wasn’t in the API. Now, however, it is all systems go, and so I have updated the library to support videos.

How to Upload a Video

First things first. In order to start uploading videos all you need to do is update the library. The way you call the library remains exactly the same, so you would do the following to … Read the rest

Decoding the Evernote Webhook

May 7, 2025 | Comment

Evernote doesn’t like you using the search functionality in the API to look for changes that occur to a note. Instead you are encouraged to get notification of changes using webhooks. This works by receiving an HTTP post from Evernote every time that a note is created or updated and by reading the payload associated with that webhook you can get some basic information on it.

What does the Webhook look like?

The very first thing to know about Evernote webhooks is that in order to receive them you need to have registered for an API key and also … Read the rest

Family History Database Searches

May 1, 2025 | Comment

Amongst all my many hobbies is researching my family history, which I have been doing on and off (well, more off actually) for the last 30 years. Over that time, how you research has changed enormously with so many records now being available online. Also, when I first started, the only way to record your information was on paper, but now there are numerous software packages that have largely replaced the need for paper.

Data Mining

The main issue with recording your family history information in a software package is that you are beholden to the developer’s choice of what … Read the rest

Adding your own resources to Scratch

April 16, 2025 | Comment

Scratch comes with a built-in library of resources that you can use in projects but they only go so far. Fortunately, it is possible to add your own backgrounds, sprites and sounds to your projects.

In this short guide we are going to be looking at how to search for and find resources such as images and sounds you or your child can use in your Scratch projects. 

You can do this with Google but we are going to be using DuckDuckGo.

What is DuckDuckGo?

DuckDuckGo is a simple and private search engine that helps you find information on … Read the rest

Evernote Rules

April 1, 2025 | 1 comment

I have been an avid user of Evernote since July 2008 and have amassed over 53,000 notes. Over those 16 years, I have seen many changes to both Evernote the company and the client itself. The recent purchase by Bending Spoons had the potential to make or break the company but has, in my opinion, been overwhelmingly positive for Evernote (despite what the naysayers on Reddit say!).

Introducing Evernote Rules

One feature I have wanted Evernote to have is some form of automation that manipulates notes based on rules – very similar to the rules available in Outlook. After … Read the rest

What Should I Watch Next?

March 1, 2025 | 1 comment

Back last December I wrote about a project that I had written called What Should I Play Next? where it would randomly choose something from my record collection to play. This month’s project, part of my 👨‍💻12 Apps in 12 Months challenge, is the visual equivalent.

The Plex API

When I want to watch a film I am sometimes constrained by the amount of time I have and usually have some feeling of the genre I want so I wanted something that catered for that plus could also exclude things that I had watched before.

While I do subscribe to … Read the rest

Using php2Bluesky without Composer post v2.0.14

February 23, 2025 | Comment

In January I wrote about Using php2Bluesky without Composer for those that wanted to take this approach. Since then I have updated the code so that it conforms to PSR-4 for loading with Composer. This in turn has a knock-on effect for those loading manually. The rest of this article explains how loading now needs to take place.

Multiple Files

Prior to v2.0.14 all the code was contained within a single file called functions.php. The naming reflected the history of the library which was originally developed to be included as part of a larger project. When I spun it out … Read the rest

Simple WordPress Post Stats

February 1, 2025 | 2 comments

Every year, over on my personal blog, I write a round-up post covering what I have done during the year. This includes books read, films watched steps taken etc. What it has never covered are my creative endeavours which would be my developments over at Github and my blog posts.

Where are the WordPress Stats?

I sort of assumed that there would be stacks of stats in the WordPress dashboard but no if you want that you have to install Jetpack and get the nagging messages asking you to upgrade. These stats are very similar to what you … Read the rest

👨‍💻12 Apps in 12 Months

January 28, 2025 | Comment

It seems to be en vouge at the moment to challenge yourself to develop an application a month and do so in public. These apps tend to be AI driven, very slick, with their own landing pages etc. I wanted to stretch myself this year and increase the cadence of my development and so a 12 Apps in 12 Months challenge sounded like a good idea.

But not like that!

While a challenge seemed like a good idea, I didn’t want to be producing apps just for the sake of it. I felt that for it to be worthwhile, I … Read the rest