Here's a list of software & websites that I used to create the blogs, website and all the bits in between that helped us plan these trips. Most of this software is free or costs only small amount of cash, the coding for the weather widgets and clocks may contain click-able links back to the websites that created them but there's nothing untoward about the sites. I'm always looking for way to improve the blogs and website so as I find and learn new things they will be added to the top.
Shortpixel, Emjysoft & Pingdom
I recently discovered these websites (Shortpixel & Emjysoft) which main aims are to reduce the megabyte size of the photographs that are embedded within the daily blog posts by compression with very little quality loss, the reason for this is the web-page can take forever to load on a slow connection or eat through a vast amount data on a mobile device. Most of the photos start at about 7 Mb on the camera I use & then get reduced down to somewhere in the region of 200 to 400 Kb & still looks fine on mobile & PC. In the past I have used a variety of image compression apps but most free applications have annoying adverts. Shortpixel free account gives you 100 image compression's a month where as Emjysoft is a Windows 10 app that works well offline with slightly more compression than Shortpixel with no noticeable loss of quality.
Pingdom is another free site & is sort of related to the above, its main aim it to test the size of the web-page & how fast it loads. Something I try to do is have a page below 12 Mb although you can shrink these down to less than 1 Mb with no quality loss if your a big company with lots of money.
Pingdom is another free site & is sort of related to the above, its main aim it to test the size of the web-page & how fast it loads. Something I try to do is have a page below 12 Mb although you can shrink these down to less than 1 Mb with no quality loss if your a big company with lots of money.
Code Play & w3schools
Something new I got into is HTML CSS coding, this is used in the animated banners and clickable quick link buttons that I've added into each blog. This helps in keeping the megabyte size of each blog lower which in turn makes it load faster. Most of this was created using an Android app HTML Code Play which has plenty of templates that you adapt yourself.
Prior to using this, I spent a couple of hours each night using a site called w3schools which teaches you the basics of coding but gets very complicated once you get further into it. Something I also found out was that some browsers like the original Edge don't work very well with the scrolling text boxes (new beta Chromium Edge works) but there is little I can do about that. Google Chrome and Opera seem to work fine though both on PC and mobile.
Prior to using this, I spent a couple of hours each night using a site called w3schools which teaches you the basics of coding but gets very complicated once you get further into it. Something I also found out was that some browsers like the original Edge don't work very well with the scrolling text boxes (new beta Chromium Edge works) but there is little I can do about that. Google Chrome and Opera seem to work fine though both on PC and mobile.
Pexels, Pixalbay, Videvo
The latest addition is something I've been planning on doing for a while & that was to make a short intro & exit clip for the videos, this turned up to be more complex than I thought it would be as most of my clips are in different frame rates. The best solution was to keep it simple & use Royalty free clips then edit them, the site's I used were Pixalbay, Plexa & Videvo & are all under creative commons license so can be reused and edited however you like in VSDC.
Kiss png & img play (Android app)
A fantastic free image bank with over a quarter of a million pictures, drawings & silhouettes with transparent backgrounds, these are used in creating the header photographs & merged in a photo layers program on each blog. It also created the badge style logo, lower third fly-outs on the videos & other overlays on videos.
Img play is a super simple way to add animation to my blogs without coding.
Although limited in what it can do you can create click-able animated links for photo galleries & so on.
Img play is a super simple way to add animation to my blogs without coding.
Although limited in what it can do you can create click-able animated links for photo galleries & so on.
Weebly
Weebly is the site that helped me create this website, this is something I've playing around with for a while now but don't want to buy a domain name at the moment. My plan with this site was to create a portal that will take you the blogs on Blogger each of which have their own domain name so you can see how this could get completed when trying to put it all together in one website. I had previously wasted far to much on WIX website builder and although it had everything I could want it seemed to take forever to load up to edit and the preview was very subpar at best. Weebly isn't without its problems but its by far a lot more easy to use and edit.
Photo Director 9 PC version
This is the first PC photo editing software that I have bought but technically it didn't cost me anything because I had been collecting Microsoft Reward point which you get by using Edge Browser & Bing search about 10 months, 30,000 point gives you £25 e voucher. The original price was £58 but it was on sale & this reduced the price to £42.
Most of these programs can be difficult to get the hang of but this one is well laid out with a host of online tutorial videos to get the most out of it. The main use for this is to sharpen night shots but I can see myself now going through my old photographs to see what I can enhance without it becoming obvious that it has been edited.
Most of these programs can be difficult to get the hang of but this one is well laid out with a host of online tutorial videos to get the most out of it. The main use for this is to sharpen night shots but I can see myself now going through my old photographs to see what I can enhance without it becoming obvious that it has been edited.
Blogger
So all of this was created with free software starting with Blogger which is super simple to use and customisable although there was more than one occasion when I had to revert to YouTube to get stuff to work, the local time clock on the to right of the side bar was just one although this doesn't show up on phones due auto scaling of the page, but in most cases once it's set up and you've spent some time on the design all as you are left to do is add the posts which can be done via the Android app but it is very limited with page layout and adding multiple photos so mostly used Google Keep app to write throughout the day then simply copy and paste later in the evening when I could use the PC or tablet.
Google Photos
Next up is Google Photos that automatically backs up you photos/video throughout the day as you hit free Wi-Fi hotspots, as Blogger is owned by Google it makes it simple just to pull photos in as well as adding the auto creation of movies that it compiles at the end of the day for you, some are good some not so but it's your choice to keep them or not.
VSDC video editor
For the more intense video editing that can only really be done on a PC I used this which is completely free with no adware or crippleware although you are asked to upgrade at the opening screen to the Pro version, it's only a click away to close it and will leave you alone until you restart the programme. Video editors can be complex even when they claim to be easy to use but after the demise of Movie Maker on Windows after I upgraded to Windows 10 there's not much choice but i think they did me a favour, a full featured video editor for PC start around £75 mark, this does more than I need as I don't shoot much video and is completely free as well as a YouTube tutorial channel to get the best out of it.
Power Director for Android
There is a free version of this which leaves a small logo at the bottom corner of the screen and prevents you from creating full HD videos in 1080p but they create massive files on a mobile so it's best for quick edits of videos on your phone to trim them and add other clips in you've taken, you can also add your own soundtrack or narration, it all works offline and saves into a folder that can automatically be backup to Google Photos once Wi-Fi is available. The paid version it's around £4.50 which I have so it's not going to break the bank.
Photo Director for Android
This is the photographic version of Power Director from the same company Cyberlink, again it comes in free and paid. I mainly used it for the removal tool to take things out of the background, I tend not to do much photo editing apart from cropping but I still have the paid version at £4.59 on Android.
Free Music Archive, Sound Cloud & Vimeo
I used this for the background music in some of the videos which is all royalty and copyright free music, only arbitrations need to be added. Couple this with Sound cloud you can achieve some good music and video combinations. It can still throw a fit on YouTube with content ID match even though they are copyright free so now I've started to host my videos on Vimeo.
Onenote for Android
This I used to take notes that built the days out and syncs with tab, phone & PC. This also comes in handy to take all your notes with you for what transport you had planned to catch, all stored on your phone or tablet.
LibreOffice 6
Free alternative Microsoft Office for PC, this came in handy for compiling a list for all the places we want to visit so I could then build day plans and work out what transport we would be using. I could rant on about how good this program is all day long.
Google Maps & My Maps
These are invaluable when it comes to planning especially on phone and tablet while I'm sat in the pub on a Sunday.
This allows you to save places, routes, draw your own lines, add notes. If you download the offline areas you need in Google Maps I'm assuming the routes work without the Internet but I don't always clear the cache anyway so its another way around it if doesn't.
This allows you to save places, routes, draw your own lines, add notes. If you download the offline areas you need in Google Maps I'm assuming the routes work without the Internet but I don't always clear the cache anyway so its another way around it if doesn't.
City Mapper PC and Android
One of the best multiple city public transport apps out there on Android, iOS & PC. Mobile versions work offline so you can still get real time alerts when you need to get off the bus and you can add more than one journey now. Obviously with no Internet access it won't tell you when the next bus will turn up.
Quicky transit android app (now retired)
Although no longer supported this app was wrote by a long suffering resident, this will give you much the same information as city Mapper but if you play around with the map it will cache the data so then you are able to bring up the map and overlay any route onto it with all the bus stops, good if you're in between places or end up somewhere else due an incident and no Wi-Fi or 4G.
time&date.com (clocks) & weatherwidget.io (weather)
They created the HTML code for the local real time clocks and weather widgets that appears on the screen. Some of the code I adapted to remove some elements but some of the weather items can still form a clickable link. These sites provide the information that runs the widget so they run adverts that pay for their websites. I also found I could combine 2 sets of instructions within one widget. Unfortunately I don't have the brains to make this work some mobile browsers, that quest will be for another day, at least this way its easy & quick to create.