The following wondrous things either make this site possible, or my life simpler, or both. I’m grateful for all of them.
- WordPress – an increasingly elegant blogging CMS
- Some nifty WordPress plugins:
- Akismet by Automattic
- Better Blogroll by Jon Dyer
- Efficient Related Posts by Aaron D. Campbell
- Google Analytics for WordPress by Joost de Valk
- Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachhold
- Maintenance Mode by Michael Wöhrer
- Simple Social Sharing by Andrew Norcross
- Snazzy Archives by Vladimir Prelovac
- Subscribe 2 by Matthew Robinson
- Subscribe to Comments Reloaded by camu
- WP to Twitter by Joseph Dolson
- Renate Kalloch – who created the dandelion seed graphic on which the site design is based
- stock.xchng – a wonderful site for free stock photographs, generously shared by the site’s users
- GIMP – an awesomely powerful, totally free image editing / graphic design tool
- Audacity – a free, cross-platform sound editing tool, great for podcasting
- Podcast Generator – simple, open-source PHP engine for creating and managing a podcast stream
- BlueWho – their Multi-hosting account accommodates all my websites reliably and affordably
- Slackware Linux – fast, lean and reliable, and perfect for my main data server
- Linux Mint – an elegant version of Ubuntu Linux with full multimedia support, powering my laptop
- rsync.net – geek-friendly remote storage for backing things up
- PHP Webcalendar – keeping my diary in order
- TaskFreak – taming my To-Do list
- Wikipedia – yes, of course I love it
- dictionary.com and thesaurus.com – so quick! so comprehensive!
- Delicious – managing my bookmarks
- bit.ly – managing my links (until Libya want their domain back, anyway)
- Google search – how I manage to pretend to be a competent multi-platform systems administrator
- And finally, if somewhat tangentially, First Direct – a bank that really understands web usability, and has consistently impressive customer service. If only they did business banking too!