Welcome to the personal website and blog of software developer – Andy Heathershaw.
I’m a commercial Microsoft .NET developer and open-source PHP developer based in the West Midlands, England. I live with my husband and I’m daddy to a nine-year-old Labrador called Mickey and two growing boys.
Check out About Andy Heathershaw to read more about me, or browse my blog posts below.
Sunday, 10th November, 2024
Simply Remind Me was designed for people to send themselves reminders - hence the name, Simply Remind Me.
Over the years, I’ve witnessed many businesses who are using Simply Remind Me to send reminders to their customers. Everything from dentist surgeries reminding their patients of their upcoming appointments, to Government embassies reminding tourists when their visa expires!
Whilst this works (and are novel uses of the app) it’s not what it was designed for.
Introducing... Simply Remind Me Pro. Built for businesses and dedicated users.
Monday, 7th October, 2024
It was only a couple of weeks ago that Florida prepared for the arrival of Hurricane Helene. Yet now, the entire state is in the eye of Hurricane Milton which has just been upgraded to a category 5 hurricane, with sustained winds of 160mph.
Disney , Reflections Read more
Monday, 7th October, 2024
Florida is again bracing itself for the onslaught of another hurricane. This time – hurricane Helene.
She is forecast to hit today, 26th September, as a category 3 hurricane. As of 2:25pm local time, it is now a category 3 with wind speeds of 120mph. Effects are starting to be seen across the coastline with reports of possible “unsurvivable” storm surges expected.
Disney , Reflections Read more
Monday, 7th October, 2024
Back in October 2023, I teased a complete re-imagination of the “event” in Simply Remind Me.
An event is anything you want to be reminded about… a birthday, anniversary or doctor’s appointment. A reminder is an individual email, text or voice call related to an event.
Almost a year later, and I’m ready to invite people to the new event/reminder experience in Simply Remind Me.
Simply Remind Me , Software Development Read more
Friday, 16th August, 2024
As a Fasthosts technology parter, I was lucky enough to tour the Fasthosts data centre last December. During the tour, I learned that they were planning on improving their VPS product this year with 1Gbps bandwidth and new storage VPS plans.
Even with the knowledge of the improvements they were planning to make, I was excited when they announced a brand-new “2nd edition” VPS. After purchasing one, I discovered they are running on an entirely new platform, which is free of VMware.
In this article, I’ll review Fasthosts’ new “Edition 2” VPS offering, much like I reviewed the 1st edition.
Wednesday, 13th March, 2024
If I had a bucket list, this would be on it.
Last week I had the privilege of being invited to tour the new Fasthosts / IONOS data centre here in the Midlands (Worcester) and I jumped at the chance.
I got to see “back stage” of the purpose-built facility where Fasthosts build and host the 10,000+ servers that power the company’s web and email hosting, CloudNX and virtual server platforms, and dedicated/bare metal servers.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Friday, 10th November, 2023
The Fedora Linux project this week released their latest incarnation: Fedora Linux 39.
It is available for download now in the core Workstation, Server, Cloud and IoT flavours.
This article explains how to upgrade a previous version, such as Fedora 38, to the latest release.
Monday, 9th October, 2023
Rapidly approaching 500 new users this year, my free email and simple text message reminder app - Simply Remind Me - is earning a loyal following in the world.
In July, I had 131 new users that have signed up in 2023. As of today, I've trebled this to 466.
All of these new users are bringing great suggestions and feedback - particularly from a competitor's service that stopped working earlier this year.
I'm rolling all this feedback and suggestions into a complete overhaul of the "event experience" which I'm excited to preview today.
Simply Remind Me , Software Development Read more
Friday, 7th July, 2023
I've added a new feature to the website for Simply Remind Me - my free email and simple text reminder app. The website now shows live statistics, read directly from the Simply Remind Me platform.
The statistics show the number of new users, events created, reminders sent and the number of unique timezones the app has users registered in - since the start of 2023.
Simply Remind Me , Software Development Read more
Saturday, 15th April, 2023
I've today released a major new version of my free email reminder app and simple text and phone call reminder app, Simply Remind Me.
This release has been nearly 4 months in the making and introduces some new features I'm excited to deliver to you, and some important bug fixes.
This article describes the new features and enhancements that are now live in Simply Remind Me.