Colophon

25 July 2025 · Updated: 25 July 2025

All of the tools I used to build this site are listed below (for geeks and other interested parties):

• Markdown is a plaintext language. Think MS Word without all the bells and whistles. To give you some idea of how to use markdown, instead of clicking a button to style a heading, you start a line with a hash symbol (#), like this # Heading. Or, rather than mousing up the page and looking for the bold symbol, you simply surround type with double asterisks (**). Markdown’s aim is to keep your hands on the keyboard rather than the mouse or trackpad. I’ve been using it for over 20 years, but it takes minutes to learn. Here’s a simple Markdown cheatsheet if you’re interested in finding out more.
• Obsidian is a markdown editor. This is the tool I spend most of my time in. Over the years I’ve used many markdown editors, but Obsidian beats them all. It is free to use unless you want to use its internal syncing tool. But you don’t need that, with the likes of iCloud for Mac or the equivalent on a PC you can sync everywhere. Available for iPhone, iPad and Mac, as well as the PC, Android and various tablets. Bear is the best paid-for app I’ve used if you don’t get on with Obsidian.
• Zola is the tool I used to build this site. It’s a static site generator – one of the many out there – and it’s free. If you haven’t looked into it before, you need to be able to use your computer’s CLI (command line interface) to install it and build websites. Not fazed? Give it a try.
• Fonts used on this site are Lato (sans-serif) and Lora (serif). Abril Fatface is currently used for the masthead, but Liberator, by Lost Type Co-op, will be used in future. (As soon as I get around to designing it.)

I will update this list as time goes on.