Posts

A week's holiday to the Isle of Arran

The Isle of Arran is the Scottish island I have visited most often. This time we stayed in Whiting Bay. I enjoyed a hike up Arran’s highest point - Goatfell, lots of good food and even took an Alpaca for a walk.

Saturday, June 29, 2024

Automating the publication of my Out of Ten reviews using Zapier and Notion

Using Zapier’s free plan I attempt to automatically trigger the Github action workflow which publishes this website, whenever I add a new Out of Ten review to my Notion database.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Back to Edinburgh for a mini zookeeper experience

My second trip report to Edinburgh - this time it was for the mini zookeeper experience at Edinburgh Zoo, a visit to Edinburgh Castle and the adjacent Camera Obscura. Edinburgh really loses none of its appeal over time and is a must visit.

Monday, November 13, 2023

A week in Balamory / Tobermory (Isle of Mull)

Tobermory was the filming location for the Balamory children’s TV show. We visited for one week to find the Balamory houses, enjoy some great food and take in all of the wonderful nature and wildlife on Scotland’s Isle of Mull.

Sunday, September 10, 2023

Three nights as a tourist in London

Three night trip review of London - including afternoon tea at Claridges, Buckingham palace summer opening, Chinatown dumplings and a great boat trip down the Thames with the Thames Clipper / Uber boat.

Saturday, August 26, 2023

A trip to the internet in 1996 with The Rough Guide 2.0

Prepare to be transported back in time as I delve into one of my all-time favorite books from my teenage years: The Rough Guide 2.0: The Internet & World Wide Web.

Saturday, June 10, 2023

Relaunching my personal website as planetjones.net

An overview of how I migrated planetjones.co.uk to planetjones.net including a custom Hugo theme using Bootstrap, rendering my out of ten reviews from Notion and publishing automatically using Github Actions.

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Google Cloud Run with Micronaut and GraalVM

App Engine. Google Cloud Functions. And now the pinnacle: Google Cloud Run. Here I build a container running (thanks to GraalVM) a natively compiled Micronaut framework application on Google’s latest serverless for containers offering called Cloud Run.

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

First steps running a Cloud Task on Spring Cloud Data Flow

Everyone is talking cloud native. Spring might not be the newest kid on the block, but Spring Cloud Data Flow holds bags of promise. Here I give an introduction to Spring Cloud Data Flow and write my first Cloud Task.

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Cold weekend in Copenhagen

A winter weekend break to Copenhagen - home of the Little Mermaid and many fantastic restaurants.

Monday, February 29, 2016

Ten days in Spain - Madrid & Seville

With ten days to enjoy Spain we eventually succeeded in buying a Renfe Spain pass and made our way to Madrid and Seville.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

60 hours in Edinburgh (festival time)

A 60 hour visit to Edinburgh, our old hunting ground during the August festival season.

Monday, September 7, 2015

72 hours in London

A visit to London was long overdue - so we headed for 72 hours of sightseeing, tourist attractions and to stuff our faces full of food!

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Internationalization on the Web - an often inconsistent and frustrating experience

Many websites / internet services are now offering their content in local languages - but the way this internationalization is implemented can cause frustration and annoyance to those whose only language is English.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Google App Engine Endpoints (REST services), with Java, Maven & Intellij (Part 1)

Google’s App Engine now provides Endpoints, which offer a simple way to create RESTful services for clients. Here a simple Endpoint is created using the Java API, Maven and Intellij.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Taking the WebSphere Liberty Profile for a spin, using Intellij on the iMac

The WebSphere Liberty Profile is built for developers - here I take the beta of the Next profile for a spin - using Intellij on the iMac, a new set-up for me.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

New York City Food and Drink write up

Reviews of the food and drink venues we enjoyed in Manhattan, New York City during our November 2012 trip to the Big Apple.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Disneyland Paris trip report and review

Brief write-up of our day trip to see Disneyland Paris - unfortunately minus Mickey Mouse and any of the other characters.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Paris food & drink experience

Write up of our food and drink experience in Paris, from our May 2012 visit.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Hungary: Budapest & Heviz Trip Report

A 10 day trip to Hungary’s capital Budapest and a 3 night trip to Heviz, a town near Lake Balaton which is home to Europe’s largest outdoor thermal lake.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Isle of Skye

A week long trip in May 2008 trip to Scotland’s Isle of Skye, where we were fortunate enough to get great weather!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009