We are living in times when AI is becoming a daily tool we use at work and at school.

A lot of students support themselves by using AI to learn new things, quickly find information, and extend their knowledge.

I am from a generation who finish schools and University before AI existed. During my Uni times, it was the Internet boom, and access to information started pushing out the need to visit a library to gain knowledge. Yet, despite all of that, I am proud that all my hard work put towards my education was my own.

In current times, a lot of students want to go the easy route. Same as with the workplace, where it’s hard to find a hard-working employee on very demanding job role for an average salary.

People no longer want to work hard to earn money. Everybody is looking into the easiest route earing tones of money by doing the minimum. It’s not working like that, at least not for the majority of us. If you are the person who thinks that’s how it’s working, if you are not a millionaire right now, then you are delusional.

Same with education. Knowledge that you gain is for you to be a better person in future. You’re learning stuff to use in your future life. If you decide to go the easy route and ask AI to write you a work that you will just copy and paste, then submit to a tutor, there is something significantly wrong here.

You can do this; nobody is stopping you (almost) from doing that, but how much are you learning from that?

Following my post from last year, in which I shared my GitHub stars for 2024, I have now reviewed what I discovered throughout 2025.

I review my stars periodically, and the 31st of December 2025 was no exception.

By the end of 2025, I had accumulated (or rediscovered) the following repositories, all of which are well worth a look.

This is a curated list, and I have selected those most worth knowing for the coming year, 2026. I have avoided repeating anything covered previously. To see my earlier recommendations, you can read my 2024 Stars of GitHub.

In the past, I have been exploring various ways to increase the reach of my website and other websites that I am working with, which are publishing content regularly.

I have explored a way of publishing my content in Bing News, which was typically faced with rejection without any explanation. My last attempt on this matter was in July 2024, after which I decided not to bother anymore. Overall, this option was deprecated shortly after.

From time to time, my site is landing in Bing Jail for no reason. With my involvement in the past, I escaped from Bing Jail, but from time to time, I am serving a sentence again and again.

The most recent Bing Jail for my site happened shortly after 2nd October 2025 and lasted until 17th December 2025, when I started seeing a slow recovery without me doing anything in that matter. This nonsense that is going on with Bing prevents me from recommending search engines other than Google, such as DuckDuckGo, which relies heavily on Bing. Microsoft needs to sort out its nonsense if it ever wants to come closer to Google. In the current age of AI, I don’t think that will ever happen.

At some point, I explored publishing my content in Google News until Google decided to kill it as well.

Right now, popularity is gaining for another Google solution: adding websites as preferred sources of information in Search.

I have been a fan of Linux since I was young. My favourite branches are these Debian-based. Even though I never officially go full on it, Linux is a part of my daily life, and yours as well.

In daily life, I am using Windows 11, and my main driver is macOS, who derived from Unix. The macOS shares a lot of similarities with Linux, and thanks to the power of the terminal, I can do more than just rely on apps with a GUI (Graphical User Interface).

On the other hand, my other devices all rely on Linux. My router is Linux-based (OpenWrt), I got small Ubuntu server helping me explore stuff and a few Raspberry Pis here and there.

The best feature that I admire in Linux based operating system is the option of managing packages (software) installed in the system. With a few commands using apt (Debian) or opkg (currently in OpenWrt), I can quickly update all that I am currently using in the system.

This is a feature that I miss the most on Windows. To support myself in having always up-to-date apps installed, I used various software. Some are crap, some are doing their job, like UCheck, but none of them are doing everything.

Since Microsoft started to take its Microsoft Store on Windows to their advantage, more and more apps appear there. Most of the apps that are installed directly from their developer website appear there as well, even as a direct link to the installers.

In opposition to what I said, from a Mac user perspective, I am disappointed by how Apple is utilising its AppStore on macOS. Where iPhones rely on AppStore in 99% of the time, with macOS, there is plenty of staff missing, and that’s disappointing.

Thanks to the existence of more and more apps through the Microsoft Store, they can be quickly updated through it without any hustles and that great. However, this does not sort out all the problems.

I recently found time to watch a very insightful, fast-paced presentation by Adam Argyle titled “25 New & Rad Features of CSS”.

After just five minutes, when he demonstrated the use case of @view-transition { navigation: auto; } and the whole crowd reacted positively, I was hooked and watched until the end.

I learned a great deal and implemented many of the features mentioned in my websites. Some of them I had heard of before, but I am not keen to implement everything straight away. When technologies are still at the early stage of adoption in web browsers, I tend to wait. The problem is that later I often forget about them, which is why Adam’s presentation reminded me of some of the concepts I had already come across.

One of these was the use of color-scheme: light dark; and the light-dark() syntax approach for light and dark colours.

We have been aware of the End of Life (EOL) for Windows 10 for some time. If you don’t, and you are still working on it, then you must be living under a rock for some time.

Microsoft already spammed you with full-screen advice to purchase Windows 11, even on hardware that is not suitable for it!

Migration to Windows 11 has caused a lot of headaches, as it often requires users, even with very powerful hardware, to seek an upgrade.

In a business environment, it’s even more difficult, as all changes of this sort require extensive testing, but what’s more challenging, they require users to adapt to changes, which are not always the easiest ones.

Personally, I have been doing migration in a business environment for some time, before even the deadline was on the horizon (like it is now).

One year before the deadline (14th October 2025), all computers in my main place of work will have already been upgraded or replaced, and everybody will have been adjusting to work with Windows 11 for some time.

“Windows 10 end-of-life (EOL) is October 14, 2025. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide free security updates, bug fixes, or technical support for Windows 10. While your Windows 10 PC will still function, it will become increasingly vulnerable to security risks and less compatible with new software and hardware.”

In the past, I have followed a method of updating OpenWrt devices with an option to restore all installed packages and their configurations without needing to spend hours on reconfiguring and testing everything.

This method uses a simple script run in the terminal to generate a list of installed packages, followed by a web interface to generate a backup file used to restore everything.

As long as the backup file is generated correctly, the restoration process works well, but the problem arises when it isn’t!

On several routers with OpenWrt (24.10.x) that I worked with over recent weeks, I experienced a strange issue that caused me to rethink how I generate a backup file to later use to restore all packages and settings after updating OpenWrt to the latest version.

I discovered this issue the hard way when I wanted to extract a backup to retrieve some configuration from individual files. I noticed that the backup failed to extract correctly.

This was fixed in OpenWrt 25.12; however, I have left it for reference. If you are upgrading from 24.10 to 25.12 and your backup is generated incorrectly, you will not be able to upgrade to 25.12 while retaining packages using Attended Sysupgrade.

Back in 2023, I have looked at how to add relevant hreflang tags to my personal website, which considered adding self-reference to the current language, reference to a translated page (if available), and falling back with x-default to a page that is designed as a language switcher page.

Since then, I thought that this approach was correct, but found out that this solution, on my website, where not all content is 100% translated, is not good for sites fully translated by default.

Here is how I learned from it and how I optimised hreflang and x-default on websites built with Hugo.

Recently, I faced an issue with mwan3, a package on OpenWrt routers that is designed to manage multiple internet connections, either for load balancing or a failover.

At work, we have two fibre connections, where the main one is used primarily and the second is online, but only activated when the first goes down – typical failover approach.

First connection (lets call it fibre) is with metric 10 wheras second connection (fibre2) is with metric 20.

For tech guys, first fibre is uncontended with static IP, whereas our backup fibre is contended over PPPoE.

My main policy in mwan3 is fibre_fibre2.

fibre_fibre2 policy contain fibre_m1_w3 (Metric 1, Weight 3) and fibre2_m2_w2 (Metric 2, Weight 2) member.

When fibre is down, the fibre2 takes over and all traffic flows through nicely, almost.

With very short notice, Microsoft finally made a move to kill Skype altogether and concentrate on something that, by default, is integrated with Windows 11 – Teams.

I personally tried to move a few people out of Skype to Teams years back, but now there are no ifs or buts, as Microsoft is pulling the plug. There is no going back.

As much as I am happy, I quickly started feeling that removing Skype is putting some users back.

If you are not paying anything extra to Microsoft, you will quickly notice that you are missing some crucial features in Teams that have been available in Skype for years.

Update 14/03/2026
Due to changes by Google and a decision to make life more difficult for users, they have decided to shut down the excellent Gmailify service and the ability to fetch emails from other mailboxes using POP. Consequently, the team behind Gomailify has had to rebuild their entire service to meet these new requirements. They are now using the Google API to push emails to our inboxes. While it was a bumpy road at the start, the service now works brilliantly. I still highly recommend it and use it daily.

Update 01/07/2025
Because Gmailify.com was just too spicy for the trademark police, the owner of the service been forced to rename it to Gomailify. Apart of the nothing change, Same trusted service, same mission to supercharge your Gmail, just with a dash more go!

After years of using a free Google Workspace account, and after ups and downs with it, due to Google’s decision to kill it and then keep it alive, I decided to move my emails and other files back to my personal Gmail account.

My main reason for using Google Workspace was the ability to use my domain across Google services, mainly concentrating on the ability to send and receive emails within my domain, but still using the Gmail interface.

After extensive work I had done to move my data from Google Workspace back to my Gmail account, I set up an option for me to receive and send emails within my domain.

Adding a physical camera button to the iPhone 16 series was a great step towards people using it as a main device for photography and making videos, and believe it or not, there are a lot of them. Some people have even successfully made full movies with iPhones.

When I upgraded my 13 Pro Max to the 16 Pro Max, the camera button was something I had been looking forward to until I noticed that I was not using it at all!

A router with custom firmware (OpenWrt) is a basic device on my home network, but I am also using it in the business environment as a main device, and all works great.

In the past I used DD-WRT on my routers. Despite that their project is still ongoing, I found it lacking behind current needs.

OpenWrt use strictly depends on the device – router, that I am using. I always choose a device that will work for me and it will not bend under spikes of load.

GitHub is a great place to find some good resources and solutions. Whenever I need it personally or professionally, if the solution is really useful, I make sure to add a star to it.

I review my stars from time to time, and it wasn’t any different on the 31st of December 2024.

By the end of 2024, I had accumulated the following, which are really worth looking at.

The list is curated, and I pick the ones that are worth knowing for the following year, 2025.

The announcement of RCS support on iPhone with iOS 18 was a very big disappointment for me, as I mentioned in my earlier post; however, in recent days, the situation has changed.

I have been waiting patiently for the release of a new version of iOS mainly because of one feature – RCS.

RCS stands for Rich Communication Services. It is an upgrade to traditional SMS messaging, designed to enhance the messaging experience with features like read receipts, typing indicators, high-resolution images, group chats, and sharing larger files. RCS aims to provide an experience similar to messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage but integrated into the default SMS app on smartphones.

The main reason I have been looking forward to RCS was the ability to send messages to Android users, other than SMS, but still from the default Messages app.

RCS brings reactions, the ability to send pictures (replacing the outdated MMS service), and shows read receipts. Everything is standard when communicating between iPhone users using the iMessage service.

With the high popularity of WhatsApp, which filled the void and struggle when communicating between Android and iPhone users, RCS was meant to regain the market for native messaging apps.

Recently, I have been in contact with several people who have been thanking me for posting articles that have helped them significantly with their technological struggles or in easing their issues.

Some of them have been so happy that they would like to know how to donate a bit to support the cause. While this gesture is appreciated, most of the activities on my site are non-profit.

I used to have ads displayed on my website when it was hosted on WordPress. However, after migrating to Hugo, I soon realized that despite the speed benefits, the web performance was being compromised due to ads served through Google AdSense.

I managed to significantly reduce the costs for my website, so I decided to take the step of removing ads altogether, and I have been happy with this decision.

Buying a refurbished Apple product is a great way to save money. I purchased my MacBook Air with an M1 chip through this route back in 2021, and the device is still working well.

The good news when buying refurbished items directly from Apple is that they are treated no differently than new devices in terms of support and service. You are eligible to purchase additional protection through AppleCare, just like with new devices.

The savings on refurbished items, compared to the same item new, can be significant. Of course, you can buy them even cheaper if you don’t mind losing the ability to get extra care for them directly through AppleCare, but if you do mind (like me), then there is one more thing that you should think about before going this route.

It took years for Apple to allow gaming emulators on their platforms.

After a failed start with a fake emulator, it was time for the first one that worked and was not preying on someone else’s intellectual property. However, the creator quickly got scared and withdrew the application from the store. You can understand him to some extent, because in reality, David rarely beats Goliath.

Less than a week later, however, we were able to enjoy the Delta emulator, which remains to this day.

Just a few weeks ago I have been thinking about, what I am doing with my ageing MacBook Air with an M1 chip.

The MacBook Air Air with M1 was introduced in November 2020 but I purchased mine in July 2021, officially from Apple, but from their refurbished store.

I saved a bit on a base model and thanks to that I have been able to take 3 years of Apple Care and still meet my budget.

Despite that nothing happens along the road, so I don’t need to use this plan, I still wonder, if, after these 3 years, I will be able to buy, at least, a year more.

The device working well. I would like to have a bit more internal storage (currently got 256GB base), but apart from that everything working fine. The device is still fast and reliable. For my needs, I don’t see a reason for change.

I have been thinking about a possible upgrade when the MacBook Air is introduced with the M3 chip and that is what happens today (4th March 2024) through press release.

At the same time, Apple decided to discontinue MacBook Air with an M1 chip. Its place, in the same price range, has been offered to a 13-inch MacBook Air with an M2 chip, which is typical.

But what does that mean for users, who use MacBook Air with an M1 chip? Also, what does that mean for people, who just now decide to buy MacBook Air with an M1 chip?

Since Microsoft Edge transitioned to the Chromium engine (the same engine as Google Chrome), I encouraged Windows users to try the updated version. After all, both browsers offer similar functionality.

Microsoft Edge, when logged in with a Microsoft account, was nicely integrated within the Windows operating system, offering a seamless experience. However, I’ve noticed that for users who primarily use Android phones and rely heavily on Google Services (like Google Photos), this solution is no longer optimal.

I am quite a tech-savvy person and I know how to spot fraud, and how to protect myself from losing money to fraudsters.

To my surprise, I recently discovered 3 unauthorised transactions on one of my credit cards which is issued by Barclaycard.

Because I am using this card to pay for my balance transfer and nothing else, I have been logging into the app only once a month to pay a part of it.

Just last month, when was time to pay it, I noticed that the outstanding balance was higher than what I calculated that I needed to repay. I have looked into a statement and noticed that for the last months, from September to November, each time on the 8th, I have been charged for Amazon Prime £8.99.

The funny thing is, that I already have Amazon Prime, for years, but I am paying it annually and not from Barclaycard. I don’t have Barclaycard added to my Amazon account.

Because these transactions are not displayed on my Amazon account, I haven’t been able to sort this out with Amazon itself and need to contact Barclaycard.

Before that, I raised claims about unauthorised transactions for all three transactions.

As a precaution, I cancelled my Barclaycard and requested a new one with a new number as I thought that with a new number, no more new transactions would happen. Below I will show how wrong I were in that assumption.

As a Virgin Media customer for many years, I have always appreciated the fixed price guarantee that I get when I sign a contract. There are no hidden fees or price increases, and I can be confident that my monthly bill will stay the same for the entire contract term. In the month before my contract ends, I will be able to negotiate a new contract or switch to a different provider if I find a better deal.

Unfortunately, Virgin Media has decided to join the trend of other companies and raise their prices. They have notified their customers that their pricing terms will be changing.

As explained by them, price increases are being attributed to rising inflation, which is currently at a 40-year high in the UK.

Imagine waking up one day to 11 unread emails from Apple asking you to verify your Apple ID. Someone has just created an Apple ID with your email address on their new iPhone!

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told my friends and their friends not to send pictures over WhatsApp. If you must do it, please at least change this one thing first to make everyone’s life easier.

The great thing about Hugo, a static site generator, is that it got a lot of options for customisation and more are constantly added.

There are templates embedded into it, but they can be easily overridden by custom templates, like headings, through render hooks.

Setting a hreflang meta tag on your multilingual website shall be as simple as a piece of cake. Just put the relevant meta tag on your website, refer to the translated version and on translated version refer back to the original one.

Looks as simple as that. End of story? Wrong!

Do you encounter a problem that your router slows down from time to time? Websites that usually open very quickly suddenly slow down. It’s not always your internet connection’s fault. Sometimes the fault lies with the router.

I used to use podcasts. Wherever I walk a dog or beat the traffic on my way to, and back from, work, I like to listen to something that I like. When recently I cleared my list of saved podcasts I feel emptiness.

Most of the podcasts are from Simon Sinek and his series “A bit of optimism”. When I finished past episodes I was searching to feel that space.

The series didn’t finish. The new episodes are still released and available in the UK almost each Wednesday, but once played, there is still something that I want to listen further before the next one.

I tried some other podcasts but I didn’t stick with them. Tried some of Hal Elrod but then I found that some of his views are not aligned with mine and stopped.

Once again I reached for a book.

Not so far ago I elaborated on adding copyright information for images on a Hugo-based website. Through this approach, I managed to learn how to get images per post, then list and use in Schema for Images.

Recently, when I read updated Google image SEO best practices I noticed a section called Use an image sitemap where we read:

“You can provide the URL of images we might not have otherwise discovered by submitting an image sitemap”.

I decided to see how I can implement that into my Hugo website.

As much as I am not a fan of reading books, there are some titles that I really would like to go through. There is only one problem, I barely got time to do that.

If I want, I would find the time, but there are so many distractions, that this will still be a challenge.

I even purchased a book months back to read (Simon Sinek - Start With Why). I started, and it was interesting but then I do not come back to it despite leaving it on my desk so each time I am going to bed I see that this is not finished.

Everybody is amazed by Netflix TV Series Wednesday and I can confirm that it’s justified.

This TV series is a bit different, a bit odd, but that kind of odd that we didn’t expect.

Ukraine, Energy, Inflation and Pay. That’s how we can summarise the whole year of 2022. Here are my wishes for 2023 for you.

Everybody is writing down about the latest Apple TV 4K 2022 model as a perfect premium box for streaming movies. Due to the upgraded main chip and (already) wide support for controllers, everybody is forgetting that this is quite a decent gaming box as well.

I purchased my Apple TV 4K (2021) with the idea, to get back to playing games on a big screen. I don’t have time to invest in game consoles anymore and, for occasional playing, Apple TV as a game console would be a good alternative.

I survived!

I should be proud that I reached 40. Some people, some of my friends, will not be able to say that.

It doesn’t matter what’s in the past, we are here and now and we moving forward hoping to change the world for the better.

I reached half of my lifetime, or at least I hope so. I would be very grateful if in further 40 years my mind will still be here and I will be able to see how the world changed.

So far I learned a lot, and even more, I will learn in the future.

What I know already, at this age, I want to share with you.

Through the “interesting” days when people started migrating to Mastodon, I found a quite interesting toot from one of its users, where he mentioned adding Mastodon discoverability for any domain using the WebFinger protocol.

I have been quite interested in how to implement this on my end, as I prefer people to discover me through my long-standing email address rather than a newly created username on a selected Mastodon server.

As my website is hosted on Netlify, I decided to check if I could implement this. Here’s how it goes.

After reading today’s Guardian post about Twitter abruptly dissolves safety council moments before meeting followed by continuously growing hate speech on the platform I decided that I got enough.

We are living in a world that feeds us and looks after us but also kills us.

The air that we breathe gives us life and the same air is killing us slowly.

We destroying our planet so it can destroy us much quicker.

We are like viruses and mother Earth is creating new things to kill us. It needs to kill us so we don’t kill her first.

Someone said, “the only thing you need to do is to try”.
What I would add from myself is to “put a whole heart” into your “try”.

From this perspective, you can achieve wonderful things, but there is one problem with it. You need to find the other end to give you this opportunity to “try”.

It was all about immigration. It was all about controlling our borders.

bollocks, bollocks, bollocks…

How is it going brexiteers when you need cheap labour for simple jobs and you will not get away with a £10 per hour rate?

Difficulty: Low
Preparation Time: 30 minutes + 45 minutes for dough rising
Baking time: 15 minutes, 180C with fan per insert

If you are not a first time on my website you already know, that I like simplifying things and using a minimal approach with a complex solution. Overall, if something complex can be done that same, but simple, why not try?

This time I want to cover Favicon during website design.

“A favicon is a browser icon that represents a brand or website. Most often seen next to a web page’s title in browser tabs, favicons can also be found in address bars, bookmark lists, search results pages, toolbars, browser history, and other places across the web.”

What is a favicon? @ blog.hubspot.com

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, as there is already a perfect solution for that, well written and documented by Andrey Sitnik from Evil Martian.

An extreme heat reached the UK today. Where temperatures easily will go above 40C (in shade!), days before, people, especially the working class, start looking into employment law, health and safety and all other guidance to see what rights they have and what employers need to do in their workplace.

To disappointment, all come to one conclusion… nobody is required to do anything about that.

I have been using Apple Watch since series 4 when my wife made me a gift and presented it to me. It was Apple Watch Nike Edition 42mm.

As a Mi Band user at the time, it was an upgrade in functions but a downgrade in battery life. However, the battery of the Series 4 hasn’t been so bad and allows me to easily last the whole day.

From time to time I see and look at some SEO articles to see what others are writing about and what’s new that I need to look at.

I have started reading an article about some SEO mistakes to avoid, and the first thing that stopped me from reading further was a point about “Read more” links.

It was stated that the severity of using the “read more” link for SEO is high and that the developer of the site should remove the use of “read more” links in favour of article links (for example title as a link).

That particular author claimed that when that has been done, the site visibility “went through the roof”.

Partly I can agree with that, but removing “read more” links shall not be advised if it is done right. Here is why.

Are you advertising for job positions on your website?

Trying to hire somebody is a bit difficult these days in some industries, especially when companies looking carefully at their budgets, everything is getting more expensive so is salary expectations higher than usual.

When the good places to advertise a job vacancy are plenty around if the company decided to put it on the website, it’s worth using the power of Google and getting this offer working for the company (it will not find itself without the right approach).

If you looked through Google for job offers you may see that some offers are displayed directly in search results (Jobs section) and they are not paid advertising (at least not most of them). Most of them are pulled from other sites.

The good thing is, that you can add your job vacancy to Google for free as well, you just need to inform the search engine the right way.

The right way to do that is with JobPosting Schema.

Designing a website is not a thing that I am doing for a living. My day job is giving me the security needed, and everything else is a development of myself – to see what I can do and extend my skills. If at some point these “little” skills can change into something bigger, that’s great.

See my LinkedIn profile if you want to get in touch.

When I made websites, I discover new ways of doing the same things – improvement. I am not doing things (writing websites) in the same way, that’s the main thing. A new website is a new approach. I am reusing well-working elements, but still, it’s like making everything from scratch, and I like it.

With every new creation, I discovered ways how to improve projects that I have already live, and with this one there was no exception.

When Google announced that they would force us to move away from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, I wasn’t happy. The official tracking code is notoriously bloated — weighing in at around 171kB in some instances—and is frequently blocked by various ad-blockers. Given the lack of lightweight alternatives, I wasn’t looking forward to compromising my site’s performance.

I started searching for a solution, but finding nothing that met my needs, I decided to take a “hit-and-miss” approach and build my own. What began as a simple snippet has now evolved into a highly refined, professional-grade tool. With the release of version 1.11 (the “Gold Master”), the script is more robust than ever, while remaining incredibly lean.

The Evolution of the Script

While the primary purpose remains tracking essential metrics like page views (page_view), session starts (session_start), and returning users (first_visit), each iteration has added powerful capabilities:

• Version 1.06 - 1.07: Introduced site search detection (view_search_results) and search query capturing (search_term).
• Version 1.09: Added scroll tracking (scroll), firing an event when a visitor reaches 90% of the page depth.
• Version 1.10: Implemented file download tracking for specified extensions and any links containing the download attribute.
• Version 1.11 (The “Gold Master”): This latest update represents a total architectural overhaul. It introduces UTM persistence to fix attribution gaps, accurate Average Engagement Time via the Visibility API, and Outbound Link Tracking.

By moving to a dedicated GitHub repository, I’ve also implemented a modern Event Delegation model and Storage Safety Checks to ensure the script runs flawlessly even in strict private browsing modes.

On the 16th of March 2022 Google announced its plans for a shutdown of Universal Analytics property and replace it fully with Goole Analytics 4 (v4) that been in the market since late 2020.

Google like to kill off their services. Luckily, this is not about shutting down Google Analytics but only the method, how analytics data are collected from websites. If you have been using Google Analytics for some time, then it’s more likely that you have been using Universal Analytics. You will know that by looking at your tracking code that will carry UA- on front of the numbers.

Analytics in its 4th version (UA is 3rd) has been developed for some time, but it wasn’t adopted as quick as Google could expect (or want), this is why they forcing a change by shutting down one in favour of another.

Over some time I have been looking for ideal Cookie Consent Banner implementation on my websites. The main goal was to make sure it’s not causing CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) resulting in poor Core Web Vitals (and downgrading website in Google Search).

I found the solution that worked for me for some time.

Together with other optimisation works I managed to achieve my goal, however, from time to time I saw a spike in PageSpeed Insight for some pages and I couldn’t figure out what else I could do to make sure that Cookie Banner (Bar) is not causing CLS.

My wife is a magnificent cook and recently she found herself experimenting with Brownie. From experimentation to perfection she made today a perfect Baileys Brownie Cake.

Difficulty: Low
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Baking time: 35 minutes, 175C with fan

We are living in TL;DR¹ world and I got only 15 seconds to give you an IT advice. In this series, I will try to do this. Here we go with how to change the default search engine in the internet browser.

We are living in TL;DR¹ world and I got only 15 seconds to give you an IT advice. In this series, I will try to do this. Here we go with how to test your internet speed, using just an internet browser.

We are living in TL;DR¹ world and I got only 15 seconds to give you an IT advice. In this series, I will try to do this. Here we go with how to take a screenshot of a website natively in a desktop web browser.

Each of us would like to use the computer for as long as possible, so that the money invested in it would pay off in time. Therefore, a large number of people would also like to use the latest system from Microsoft, which is Windows 11.

Microsoft has introduced a certain barrier when it comes to what equipment will be able to freely run Windows 11.

If you’re thinking about sharing some of your thoughts or creations with the wider public, one of the good things is to start your website - a blog for example.

Initially, you may think that social media could do the job, but think about social media as a tool to promote your creation, not as a primary place for it. Always back up your stuff with something that is yours.

A blog, where you own the content is yours, not somebody else. On social media you don’t own stuff that you publish, social media companies did and they profit from it.

I have been using my M1 MacBook Air since the end of July 2021, when I replaced my beefed MacBook Pro that I purchased over a year earlier.

It was some kind of a downgrade at the time. My MacBook Pro (2020) has twice the memory and twice of storage as my “basic” MacBook Air. Also, I purchased my MacBook Air refurbished directly from Apple.

Months are passing. We already got rumours of MacBooks with M2’s to be released this year, but still, I look on my MacBook Air, and I can’t believe how such a small thing like an M1 chip could do such a big shakeup on the market.

“You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day.”

That’s how the TV Series Person of Interest used to start in the past.

Since the last series was aired in 2016 past couple of interesting years. This TV fiction shows how abuse of power could lead to invigilation of the world citizens.

The problem starts when the fiction starts becoming reality, and we do not even know about it.

In September 2018, I wrote a few words about Windows Defender, as my default antivirus for Windows 10. It’s been a few years since I’ve used it at work (as well as the rest of the people in the company). I recommend Microsoft’s default solution built into Windows 10/11 to anyone I help with their computer.

So I decided to check if Windows Defender is still a solution worth recommending. After all, it’s free, and you have to pay for all the others, so what’s the catch?

I decided to move yet another website from WordPress to Hugo. This time the website has much more traffic than any other “of mines” (the ones that I am managing).

The main reason was speed (but also recent discussion about the environment and impact of technologies on it).

Just a thought…

Politics blaming each other’s, but right now trying to blame European people, that they don’t want to come and help Britain in need.

Everybody forgets what was shown last year. Thousands of HGV trucks have been stuck in companies car parks as they were not needed. The world has been fighting with Covid so no such many goods have been moving around.

When you buy Solid State Drive (SDD) the last thing is to have your drive fail and all files are lost.

With SSD is not as easy to restore anything as it could be with mechanical drives. If they fail it’s rarely anybody will bother to fix it, and most companies will just give you a new drive if it’s still on warranty.

Don’t expect any money back or help in the restoration of your files from faulty drives. None of the warranty covers that from any manufacturers - end of the story.

However, in this rare instance of failure, you expect swift action without any hassle and any extra cost for yourself. You already have a big (unrectified) cost for losing all your data so why to get another one?

And here the problem occurs.

I never classed myself as a creator despite I have learned to use new things to create something new.

I am more of a person who can use certain skills and available tools to achieve my goal.

Looking across various internet forums, from time to time I see people asking a support question, and straight away they add their apology for their poor English.

Most of the time, the question, issue or general query is formed correctly. English and not native English speakers can read and understand what the author got on his mind. The addition to showing the author’s weakness in the language (where he is not an English speaker) is unnecessary.

When I moved to Hugo with my website, I looked to optimise everything and implement new techniques. Once Safari gain native WebP support back in 2020, I implement WebP following PawelGrzybek.com - WebP and AVIF images on a Hugo website. The post introduced not only how to implement WebP (at the time when Hugo <0.83 haven’t support it), but also shown how to go step further by implementing AVIF.

This method require you to have WebP/AVIF files stored along with PNG/JPG and not relay on rendering them when the site is build.

I was interested in implementing this as well, but after some tests in my environment I decided not to, and here I will explain why (and it is not about browser compatibility — Safari incompatibility).

Since I migrated my personal blog to Hugo, I dusted off my knowledge for HTML and CSS. It’s like been back in 2008, with some extra magic available.

When WordPress starts been popular, I been using it on every project. Luckily, that’s not a case anymore.

For over a couple years my employers website been served from shared hosting solution on Namesco. On recent years however, we feel that we been left behind. It started with just PHP, where we stick with the 7.3 version without not plan to go into 7.4 and not thinking even with 8.0. Until significant issues with performance of the servers (where even Customer Support couldn’t help without persuading you to migrate to dedicated servers), it was time to think what’s next.

Recently I found myself in an interesting situation at work.

I have been sitting comfortably on my office chair, slightly distanced from my desk, empty-looking on the computer screen that doesn’t display anything apart of my desktop with icons.

A bright observer from the “outside” can say that I am not doing anything, wasting time or even pretending I’m working. In reality, I got a brainstorm and debate with myself on how to do this and that.

This is how sometimes a job of Quality Manager looks like.

It happened! Google calculated that the business it got into with Google Photos, while it has irreversibly changed the way we store photos, is very expensive for itself.

Disk space (storage) and its maintenance cost a lot, and not a little. The energy necessary to ensure the continuity of its services plays an even greater role, especially in the era of caring for the climate.

Someone at Google did not consider the fact that people like what is free, especially when you can’t see the difference. And we are talking about photos and videos stored by us on Google Photos in compressed form, but without losing visual quality, and at the same time without them taking up disk space available as part of the service.

And so after over 4 trillion (4,000,000,000,000) photos uploaded by users to Google Photos, and as large companies began to look at the money they were generating from their operations during the pandemic, it was time for Google to start thinking like a profit-oriented company.

On one hand, someone had a great plan, to offer something that would revolutionize the market. On the other hand, someone had an even better plan!

Did anyone know that after a few years (over 5) of using Google Photos, it would be increasingly difficult for anyone to move from it to another solution, if such a thing exists?

Some time ago on my blog I touched on the topic of storing and managing a collection of photos. With the development of Picasa coming to an end, I decided to use Lightroom.

My adventure with Lightroom lasted for some time, but I always felt insecure when it came to storing photos.

I started writing the following post back in February 2016, when the Internet started screaming about another Google project being killed. This time it was a program that millions use, but Google didn’t find a direct source of income from it, so it’s doing what it always does… killing it.

Some time ago I prepared a simple iPhone Ringtone Converter for Windows. This time it was a time for a modification na preparation version for macOS.

Recently I have been looking for a simple and easy method to convert ringtone or a song from MP3 to M4R, a ringtone format used widely in iPhones.

The conversion from MP3 to M4A and later change of file extension to M4R is not something difficult for myself, however less experienced users this can be challenging.

Because of that, using various methods I decided to prepare something, that till be working on just dropping MP3 file and double-click on specified file to ret in short moment ready ringtone for use on our phone.

I have prepared couple batch files and used for this purpose FFmpeg converter. This is the final product from my work.