A number of years ago now this site started off as my personal blog. Politics, news and general rants were the topics, with the occasional review of tech products that I’d bought. In time the latter started to take over and my new-found interest in writing WordPress plugins.

As a result the site has become more a commercial venture and personal posts now seem inappropriate to the point where I rarely add any. None-the-less I wanted to still put finger to keyboard occasionally so I decided to separate out my personal posts. I looked at 3 different ways to do this…

1. Get the site to exclude personal posts and list them in their own separate section. Sadly, excluding one category from certain parts of WordPress is not as simple as it seems and just caused me problems when I tried it.
2. Use the Multisite option in WordPress to set up a secondary site. Unfortunately, as I have an established site with set (and indexed) URLs, introducing a 2nd site would likely to cause problems.
3. Create another site. Thankfully I already had one. A few months ago I decided to create a separate sandboxed WordPress installation for testing my plugins. Hardly used except for the odd bit of testing I realised this would be the ideal candidate – I can still use it for testing as if this site goes down for a short while it’s not a big deal.

So, I’ve done it. The sandbox website has had a splendid new theme (although not of my design – I used a free “out of the box” one) and I’ve transferred over all my personal posts. Many of these are quite old so were in need of TLC – videos spilling out of page widths, missing images, etc. I also had to go through and add new categories to them all (and there’s over 100 posts!).

Click here to visit my new personal site – I’ve already christened it by way of a new post today.

This review is part of the 1 Pound Challenge – can you find a decent gadget in a pound shop?

There are a number of card readers on the market, but this one I particularly like. It’s only compatible with 4 card types but it’s the latter card that’s most interesting – MS, SD, Mini SD, Micro SD. Unlike other card readers which say they are Micro SD compatible, but they expect you to use a converter in the SD card slot, this has a slot for Micro SD cards.

The reader is really quite compact measuring just 7.5cm long, 2.5cm wide and 1.6cm deep. The top is see through plastic of different colours (mine is blue) and the rest of the device is sold white plastic. There is a long loop at one end, meaning that you can add this to a keyring if you wish. A 2cm captive USB cable tucks underneath.

Plug your memory card in and you’ll find the speeds are comparable with pretty much any other card reader (including those built into laptops).

Signalex has recently repackaged the product and it can be found on the Poundland website. It appears to be the same but they are promoting the fact that it is USB 2. I believe the current one is already USB 2 as the speeds it was reporting were higher than USB 1 would be able to produce.

Summary of Signalex Multislot USB Card Reader

Brilliant – compact, cheap and has it’s own very useful micro USB port. An essential for any PC user’s toolbag!

Reviewed by David Artiss on 3rd January 2012.

This review is part of the 1 Pound Challenge – can you find a decent gadget in a pound shop?

PoundWorld are selling something that’s named (deep breath) “2 in 1 Laptop Screen Protector & Mouse Mat”. Basically, it’s a thin, black mouse mat with a rubberised back that measures 12 x 8 inches (approx.). It’s sold flat in a cardboard sleeve.

It’s “2 in 1″ because it can be stores on the top of a laptop keyboard when the lid is closed. This protects the keyboard from damaging the screen (yes, this does happen – the TrackPoint on my ThinkPad Edge, for instance, leaves a mark on the screen). However, I’d only recommend doing this if you feel the hinge is strong enough and the lid doesn’t “latch” into place (i.e. if you simply fold it down then this should be fine as the mat won’t cause an undue pressure). At 12 x 8 inches it’s unlikely to be big enough to cover the keyboard, but meerly keep it seperate from the screen. Well, unless you have a Netbook or small laptop – it’s far too big for my Edge 11.

Although it’s sold primarily as a screen protector it’s greatest strength is as a mouse mat. And it works really well – as good as the gaming mouse mat I bought some time ago for a lot, lot more than £10 (and that came rolled up and took an age to get to go straight!).

Summary of 2 in 1 Laptop Screen Protector & Mouse Mat

As a mouse mat this is brilliant – well worth the money. It’s use as a screen protector, although this works, is suspect as jamming something between a closed laptop lid is only likely to cause problems in the long run. Ignore the latter, concentrate on the former and it’s great!

Reviewed by David Artiss on 2nd January 2012.