Permanent Tourist

The personal website of Mark Howells-Mead

Posts from 2016

  • I have a 16Gb iPhone, with comparatively few apps installed. 70% of these 16Gb are filled with data for these apps, although only 6% are music stored for offline listening, and only 2% are photos. From the apps, the main offender is Facebook, which currently needs 571.6Mb to tell me what’s going on. One has to…

  • The new WordPress theme running this website has been improved by the use of WordPress’ get_template_part function.

  • I’ve been living in Switzerland since early 2001: coming up on sixteen years. Since arriving, I’ve been forced to contribute to the health system by paying monthly premiums to the tune of around Fr. 300 per month. This reflects the bare minimum–the obligatorische Krankenpflegeversicherung–which is a legal requirement. Just like car insurance, a person with health…

  • Niederhorn, Switzerland

    Heaven is this

    Sitting, cross-legged, a couple of arms’ length from the edge of a two-and-a-half-thousand foot drop to the valley floor, watching clouds drift across the lake into the distance.

  • A quick question for TYPO3 and front-end developers among you. If you’re using a framework like Foundation or Bootstrap in TYPO3, a) How do you install the framework? Via CLI? b) Where do you install the framework? To the Resources folder? To a subfolder? Thanks for any feedback, here or on Twitter.

  • Defining custom artboards in Sketch to better reflect modern screen resolutions.

  • Cudrefin, Switzerland

    Review of 2016

    My year in pictures for 2016.

  • A stripped-back, simple WordPress theme for my personal website, which I can begin extending as and when I have the time.

  • Land's End, Cornwall

    Land’s End

    Our holiday to the south of England this summer took us to the most south-westerly point of the British mainland.

  • Street typography

    Street typography

    There’s something very satisfying about watching a couple of guys painting road markings.

  • A summarized insight into maintaining individual features in your own WordPress plugins through the flexibility and organisation of modular development.

  • WordPress is much more than a simple tool for building websites. Here are a few prominent sites which use WordPress and its new REST API for much more than a simple blog.

  • I provide a free public Github repository containing example code for starting work on a WordPress theme which uses PHP namespaces and template parts.

  • I provide a free public Github repository containing example code for starting work on a WordPress plugin, which uses PHP namespaces.

  • Rickenbach, Switzerland

    Photographing picturesque villages amongst the rolling hills of canton Basel-Land.

  • A four-part National Geographic documentary on Pete Souza, Barack Obama’s official photographer.

  • Save your money for fun stuff and stay at a Premier Inn when you’re in London. Chain hotels, but excellent locations, high standards and free wifi.

  • An analysis of the visitor statistics during a recent web project showed that a large number of visitors were visiting the site using medium-small devices with 1024px x 768px screens. This corresponds to an iPad held in horizontal format. But further research into the statistics showed that a large proportion of the visitors with this screen…

  • Providing WordPress developers and designers in Switzerland with an online place to hang out and exchange tips and ideas.

  • Susten Pass, Switzerland

    Finding a magnificent view of a scene I know well, by going up a little road and turning a corner.

  • Ligerz, Switzerland

    A great spot to photograph the vineyards and sixteenth-century church at Ligerz, on the shores of Lake Biel.