New page added

I few months ago I commented in one of my posts about WordPress plugins. They’re the little extra pieces of software that are written by individuals and usually released for free that you add onto your main WordPress software to make it do clever things that weren’t originally built into the program. There are some cracking good ones out there (and some not so good ones too, but the least said about those the better) and I’ve been fortunate in finding several that I’ve used in My Trike. For example, the neat way that images open in a blacked-out screen in a choice of resolutions is done by a plugin called Shutter Reloaded.

Since I first got MYRO I’ve been keeping a photo record, starting from when it first arrived on its trailer right through every step of the work I’ve done towards getting it ready to fly again. It’s not been perfect – when your hands are covered in grease, the last thing you’re thinking about is dashing off to get your digital camera – but it’s been pretty thorough. In fact with duplicates, I’ve taken hundreds of shots. I’ve always thought that I’d like to get them onto My Trike in an organised way so visitors could view them but without being involved in a lot of fiddly effort, and every now and again I’ve cast my eye around looking for some kind of Slideshow plugin. Well, my quest has ended at last 🙂

Over the last few days I’ve downloaded and tried several that I thought might do the job. As usual,a few of them just didn’t work and gave ‘fatal errors’ when activated (yes, I know 😕 ) so they went straight into the recycle bin. A few more looked as though they might work if only I could fathom their almost non-existent instructions. Some developers seem to think that people have the time to play little mind games working out how to run their software rather than waste their own time creating explicit instructions – in fact all that happens is that people like me just bin it. Finally I was left with two, both of which worked although one of them didn’t look as good to me on the screen as the other one. So that left me with just one. Hobson’s choice you say, but far from it! The final one was called WordPress Gallery Slideshow – not very glamorous but by the time I’d worked out how to get it running in the way I wanted it to and tweaked its settings, I thought it was amazing.

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, I can now announce the proud addition of a new page for My Trike. It’s called My MYRO Project and it’s all about the work I’ve been doing since I got G-MYRO to change it back from being almost a wreck into a flyable little aircraft. The link to it is under the heading ‘Pages’ in the right hand menu. Take a look and see what you think 😉