About this Site

Table of Contents

    Purpose

    As is typical of personal blogs, this site is a place where I maintain a journal online. It is quite eclectic because I have a range of interests but will mainly consist of STEM projects, the odd essay/reflection and photography. Some content is more formal or academic in nature and some, less so. I don’t claim to be an authority (nor even original) in my thoughts and to quote Nietzsche, “It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”

    The site is forever a work-in-progress so I welcome any feedback on content or presentation either by dropping a comment on a post or using the contact me form.

    History of the site

    • My First Website, "Mindenhancing" (1997)
      My First Website, “Mindenhancing” (1997)

    I have maintained a personal website since the late 90s – a few years after we got a family desktop PC. I designed a few sites commercially in the early 2000s prior to the advent of the open source CMS. I’ve always retained a hobbyist interest.

    This site has had several domains and ‘brand names’ – the very first (as shown) was called Mindenhancing. I would write HTML, utilising basic PHP scripts from sites like hotscripts.com, and upload it via FTP.

    The site went through several ‘brand names’ such as cheesypeas, later it became worldofjames.co.uk and I finally settled on this domain, jameshatton.co.uk, around 2005. Again it’s had various guises and backends since such as Joomla and now the site uses the wordpress CMS.

    Although some content has carried across from previous iterations, mostly it is a manual exercise for me to extract content from archives and bring it into this site.

    Header Images In Use

    The header images (randomly rotated) in the theme of the site are photos I have taken, as described below.

    Chesterfield Canal (2020)
    Inside the crater of Caldera de los Cuervos, Timanfaya National Park (2017)
    Cathedral in Valletta shot from Silema, Malta (2017)
    Devil’s Punchbowl, Surrey (2015)

    Header Images Previously Used

    Descending Ben Nevis (2013)
    Birmingham Cityscape (2007)

    Sensitivity

    My opinions are my own – obviously. I try to maintain some degree of political correctness in my writing so as not to antagonise but political correctness is a fickle fashion; so it is likely someone somewhere may be offended by my opinion. I can’t control what you may decide to take offence to. I am always keen to develop myself so if you feel content is incorrect, misinformed, defamatory, offensive then you have several options:

    • Form a constructive counter-argument and comment on the relevant post.
    • Use the contact me form to complain etc.
    • Leave the site and don’t re-visit.

    What I don’t want is contact from social justice warriors, those that jump on bandwagons like the non-sensical “cultural appropriation” fad or those that simply cannot endure any form of cognitive dissonance from exposure to a different opinion/perspective – trust me, your rant will take much longer to write than it takes me to hit delete and blacklist.

    Age Appropriateness

    While this site does not contain explicit of ‘mature content’, there may be adult themes discussed. Written content may contain profanity. While I am mindful that young people may visit this site, I do not specifically cater for that demographic.

    It is the responsibility of parents/guardians/carers to monitor the Internet usage of those they within their care and plenty of resources are available to assist – a good start is https://www.saferinternet.org.uk

    Accessibility

    Inclusivity is important to me but I am somewhat reliant on the underlying CMS’ (WordPress) ability to meet accessibility standards. I try to consider the needs of those with cognitive, visual, hearing or motor impairments; reading difficulties (e.g dyslexia); non-native English speakers

    If you have any suggestions about improvements to ensure this website is fully accessible, please contact me.

    Navigation and Content Organisation

    Please use the menus along the top of the site to navigate through the various sections, pages and posts.

    Static Pages

    There are some static pages on this site, which essentially structure the site. They do not typically change nor are they relevant to a specific time. This page is an example of static page. The static pages on are:

    Posts

    The majority of content, referred to as posts, are grouped into categories:

    • STEM – Science Technology Engineering and Maths – typically notes on projects e.g. software, microcontrollers, DIY/woodwork, textiles.
    • Professional – Typically posts related to business and education (the latter as an industry).
    • Human – Reflections on human activity (e.g. social, environmental) and philosophy
    • Outdoors – anything where I get out and about such as leisure activities, Scouting, bushcraft, mountain biking etc.
    • Creative – Anything I create that isn’t STEM such as card making or art
    • Misc – Miscellaneous stuf

    Posts are also tagged to help with navigation to find specific or relevant topics. The tag cloud below shows the tags in use (the larger the tag, the more posts associated to that tag).

    astronomy boycott Bushcraft business Camping cheat sheet checklist chesterfield computing coronavirus Crafts dream Ecology Education Essay fried gaming genealogy Hiking ict media minecraft movies mp3 music National Trust Navigation nostalgia Outdoors peak district philosophy phoography Photography poker programming recipes Scouting scratch STEM Teacher Training upcylcing Walking wildlife woodworking xbox

    The 20 most recent posts made are:

    Privacy

    I will try to protect other people’s ‘dignity’ so on a practical level, that starts with privacy. Some photos of people may be blurred if permission wasn’t explicitly provided. This is a courtesy I undertake and not a legal requirement. I may delay publication of posts depending on sensitivity and will often pseudonymise actors where appropriate. If, of course, you feel that your privacy (or someone else’s) has been breached on this site, then please let me know.

    As for cookies, I haven’t developed any mechanism myself and leave the underlying CMS, WordPress, to do its thing. I can access Analytics reports and get anonymised information about user trends. I could, in theory, access the same data as any other website if you browse this site e.g. operating system, browser version etc. but I neither have the interest nor time to do this to be frank.

    Intellectual Property

    The site’s content (written, software, images. videos, audio) is my own and therefore subject to copyright unless I explicitly state otherwise. I try to attribute any content authored by someone else and if you are concerned about a copyright breach, please contact me.

    I am happy for any of my content to be used freely for strictly personal or educational purposes. Attribution is appreciated but necessary. Please contact me if you are interested in using content for any other purpose (i.e. commercial).

    Acknowledgements

    The site is built using the WordPress content management system (CMS). WordPress is open source, it’s free, offers developer-contributed extensions, is self-hosted; and does not require too much technical knowledge. The current theme used is Poseidon.