about Paul
Hello. I’m Paul. I live in Hastings, work for an architectural conservation charity in London, and I like radio, computers, music, books and photography.
If you need me, drop me a line: paulcapewell@gmail.com
I'm paulnotpaulie on Bluesky and Mastodon.
about this website
This website is handmade in Visual Studio Code and stapled together using eleventy, a static site generator.
The raw files spat out by that process are then uploaded manually to the web via an FTP program - I have tried and failed to work out how to use git, Github, and automatic deployment; the above process is about my level of understanding and it works for me.
An update as of April 2025: I now pretty much exclusively write my posts (end edit config files and so on) in the terminal, or occasionally a text editor. These are saved as .md files, and then eleventy whizzes them up into HTML based on a bunch of filters and template files.
Those HTML files go into a /public/ directory, and I use rsync to push the changes to my web host. I constantly forget the syntax of rsync, so I've got a script saved with it all included.
While I'm working on my website, I use npm start which starts a localhost version which reflects the changes in real time in a nearby browser window (this makes me feel like I'm using a web editor from 2002 with a WYSIWYG window!). When that's all good, or when I've just dashed off a new blog post or quick edit, I then run npm run build && npm run upload - the former deletes the existing /public/ directory and re-creates the website in full, and the latter runs rsync to push the changes to the web. (I've set it so that only new or changed files get pushed online, which is a handy function of rsync and means I am no constantly re-uploading large audio files from /audio/ or whatever.)
I've made handwritten websites for more than twenty years on and off. Apart from a brief boost thanks to a web design course as part of my university degree, my web design knowledge is firmly rooted in the period 2002-2008.
Using CSS files instead of inline styles feels Scary and New to me.
I know.
I'm inspired by numerous blogs and personal websites which cut the crap and just allow the writer/owner to post stuff they find interesting, and while I don't hope to emulate 99% of what they do so ably, I do want to feel part of that sphere - and have done since 2002 when I put my furst website online under euroslash.org.uk (that domain was sold to me with a letter/certificate from Nominet which came in the post and I kind of wish I still had it!).
This website is updated as frequently as I wish, but it has an RSS feed if you follow websites that way. I do. I plan to upload a sort of blogroll-cum-OPML file of feeds I follow at some point.
As well as text-based blog posts, I also upload audio files from time to time. I used to post photographs more often, but I find that fiddly using eleventy so I've cut back on that. I've also gotten out of the habit of spending more time editing photos than taking them.