Ross Wintle
Ross Wintle
Ross Wintle
Hi, I’m Ross. I’m a mid-forties, multi-disciplinary geek from Swindon, UK. I’m currently employed as a full-stack web developer working with PHP, WordPress, JavaScript, and React. I’ve previously worked as a freelance software developer who used technology to help people solve problems and to do good – frequently working with charities, non-profits and small businesses. I use WordPress, Laravel and other web tech to build websites and web-based applications.
Latest Posts
After a short pause while things were busy, I’ll finally have time to put into developing Turbo Admin again. Hooray! (For those that don’t know, Turbo Admin is my magical WordPress browser extension that adds a command palette and other...
While I’m making recommendations and shilling other people’s products and generally turning into some weird kind of lifestyle blogger, allow me to talk about my tiny keyboard. You see, there was an iOS-only app called Zeitgeist, which I...
I made a big, long, technical post a short time back about building a 1-person “social network” app. This is a short post explaining what it is without all the technical details. A short time ago I made a 1-person, Twitter-like social...
I have pretty consistently used TickTick for years now. It’s really good. But no one talks about it! It’s a thing, right? You either try all the todo apps and change every few months. Or, if you are a developer, you write your own. But I...
I’ve recently observed that the washing-up sponges we use seem to be starting to fall apart faster. I don’t know if this is a real thing or not. In any case, it got me a little bit annoyed that surely loads of micro-plastics must be...
Yes, despite being an AI doom-speaker, I tried using a app-builder to make a simple, social-media-like, private, journalling web app. You can see it at https://yousky.veryuseful.app/. This post explains what I did and why, and outlines...
Unlike some, I’ve been building, hosting and maintaining small personal apps for years. Games, productivity tools, little calculators for specific things. I’m an experienced software developer with years in the industry and good...
Playtiles is a new, indie product that lets you play Gameboy-emulated games on your mobile device. It’s a little, credit-card-sized device that “sticks” (not permanently) to your mobile’s screen and gives you buttons that press onto the...
One of the “25 lessons” I presented at LoopConf this year was “Software can be finished”. I tried to remove this lesson from the talk to make room for something else. But it kinda took on a life of its own and wanted to be in the talk....
In-person events are good. I have missed them. Last week was the reboot of LoopConf – an independent tech conference for WordPress developers. It was excellent, and it was an honour to be speaking. Here’s some thoughts on the event and...
I’m going through a phase of figuring out what I can get out of the cloud and “own”. Particularly with regard to streaming services. I’ve never paid for Spotify. But I’ve had iTunes Match so that I can take all of the weird,...
Sssh! Don't share this!! This is a secret post! Read more about RSS Club. I can’t lie, I have been wanting to join RSS club for a while, and David Bushell’s Mastodon post today (which I see Dave Rupert has subtly acknowledged ) has...
I came across this brilliant little MacStories article on using a tiny 8BitDo Game Controller for automation and control on a Mac. “What a neat idea!”, I thought. “I have one of those, I’ll see if I can use it for anything.” Sadly, I got...
Note: I’m a Brit with a huge self-deprecating streak. So I find some of what I have written here really quite cringey and embarassing. But as I worked hard on some things, and did good at some things, I want to show off for five minutes....
I’ve discovered some great little indie iOS (and sometimes Android!) apps recently. I wanted to quickly jot down some links to some of them, and links to the places that I found them – usually interesting newsletters. Newsletters First...