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, 26th December, 2021
It’s been four years since the last update to Simply Remind Me – my free e-mail and SMS (text message) reminders app. Since the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, sign-ups have increased significantly. It’s therefore a perfect time for a refresh and an update.
This blog post shows you a preview of the new-look Simply Remind Me – version 3 – launching soon.
Simply Remind Me , Software Development Read more
Saturday, 19th June, 2021
It’s been almost 18 months – and a global pandemic – since the last update to Solid Tools for Developers, my suite of free online debugging tools for software developers and system administrators.
Today I’ve released a new update to Solid Tools which, unlike the previous update, is more evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
This post details all the changes; you can check them out for yourself now at soliddevtools.com.
Software Development , Solid Tools for Developers Read more
Thursday, 8th April, 2021
Over the past few weeks I’ve migrated my website to a new content management system – ExpressionEngine.
I took the opportunity to upgrade my website’s front-end technologies to their latest releases – Bootstrap 5 and VueJS 3, for example.
This post documents some of the changes I came across migrating Bootstrap 4 to 5.
Software Development Read more
Thursday, 12th November, 2020
Apple today released the biggest update to macOS in recent years.
It’s so big in fact, it no longer carries the OS X (version 10) moniker it has carried since the early 2000s. No sur; Big Sur carries an all-new version 11.
Wednesday, 15th January, 2020
Announced around a year ago, Microsoft today released their brand-new version of Edge – the default web browser since the Windows 10 release.
The new Edge browser is based on Google’s Chromium project. Chromium is the “base” software that Google builds the Chrome browser on.
Software Development Read more
Sunday, 12th January, 2020
It’s been over a year since the last update to Solid Tools for Developers – my suite of online tools for developers, system admins and network managers.
Yesterday I published my latest release to soliddevtools.com which gives the suite a fresh makeover and a few improvements to the tools.
DevOps , Software Development Read more
Saturday, 11th January, 2020
For my first blog post of 2020, I thought I’d share one of my challenges of being a parent to the boys and a 5-year old Labrador called Mickey: crossing the road.
Our local estate is generally quiet for traffic, so crossing the road is usually uneventful. As you’d expect, there are times we have to wait for a passing car before we can cross. I’m constantly re-enforcing to the boys that they must wait until the road is clear of cars before they cross.
Which means when someone stops and waves us across the road in front of them, whilst it is a kind act, it does irritate me.
Saturday, 31st August, 2019
It’s 3 years to the day since I made the first commit to what would become Blue Twilight – my open-source PHP photo gallery.
Today I’m delighted to announce the availability of Blue Twilight Cloud.
Blue Twilight , Software Development Read more
Sunday, 24th February, 2019
Google is the registry behind the new .dev TLD – the ultimate vanity domain for developers.
The .dev extension has historically been used by developers fudging their host files to create realistic-looking development environments. Now, .dev is open in Early Access Preview to allow the world to register their .dev domains.
DevOps , Software Development Read more
Sunday, 27th January, 2019
My first post of 2019 is a tutorial that’s all about the cloud.
I’m going to show you how to deploy a PHP application with a MySQL database on a cloud server from UpCloud. I’ll be using the brilliant RunCloud control panel to deploy my PHP photo gallery – Blue Twilight – to an UpCloud server.
My friends over at UpCloud have provided an awesome promo-code for free credit to try out their service. Details at the end of the article.