About this Site: Site Credits

Almost everything you see on this site is copyright Mark Moxon, from the writing and photos to the XHTML and Perl scripts. Unauthorised duplication is against the law – not to mention downright irritating after all the hours of effort I've put into creating this site – but if you'd like obtain permission to reproduce something from my website, please see Using My Content on Your Site. The only parts of this site I didn't create myself are:

• In implementing the dynamic HTML, I've used the fantastic jQuery framework.

• The Guestbook is powered by the excellent phpBB.

• The icons on the home page are from Mark James's wonderful silk icons set.

• The introductory music to my audiobooks and podcasts is by Might Could, and can be found at the Podsafe Music Network.

• The player for my audiobooks is the excellent jPlayer, which in turn uses the jQuery UI library.

• 16 photographs in the Morocco section were taken by Peta Moxon, as indicated by a different copyright message. These neatly fill the gaps caused by my camera giving up the ghost when the desert temperature hit 48°C in the shade...

Everything else you see is my own, original work... or, to put it another way, you should blame me.

How I Created My Site

Over the years, I've used the following products to create and maintain this site for your enjoyment and delectation:

• HTML: The first version of this site was written by hand in Zap, and the second version was created with HoTMetaL Pro. Versions three and four saw me returning to hand-coding, this time with the excellent BBEdit, and for versions five and six – this version – I again hand-coded everything, but this time in TextWrangler. This site has been validated to the HTML5 and CSS3 standards by W3C's validation service, and has Level AA Conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. For more information on the latter, see the accessibility statement.

  

  The site has been tested on various versions of Mac OS and Windows, and on various browsers. All functionality has been designed to degrade gracefully and in an accessible manner on browsers that do not support DHTML.

• Perl, PHP and JavaScript: I wrote the Search and Random Tale scripts using that wonderfully obtuse language Perl, and I wrote the Photo Library, Image and Map pages in the somewhat friendlier language PHP. Dynamic HTML is implemented in event-driven JavaScript, using the fantastic jQuery framework, and I've made a number of enhancements to the excellent phpBB forum system to implement my Guestbook.

• Tales: Up to mid-2002 I used to write all my articles on location using an Acorn Pocket Book II; I would then port them to EasiWriter and later Word, before giving up on this route and switching to the HTML editors above. From mid-2002 to mid-2013 I wrote all my articles on location using a Palm m125 and a Palm Keyboard, writing them manually in XHTML; I then copied them to my Mac and used TextWrangler to add all the page furniture. From mid-2013 onwards I switched to an 11-inch Macbook Air, which does everything I need in one lightweight machine and allows me to write HTML that I simply upload to my website when it's ready.

• Photos: Most of my early photos were taken on my trusty Minolta X-300 SLR and were scanned with a Canon N670U scanner. After my Minolta died halfway through my trip to Morocco I bought a Pentax MZ6, which I used to photograph West Africa, and for my Land's End to John o'Groats walk I finally went digital with a Fujifilm FinePix F401. For my tubewalk I graduated to an Olympus SP-550 UZ, which worked very well, and now I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ40EB-S, which manages to combine portability with great photos and a built-in GPS.

• Audiobooks: I installed a Shure SM58 microphone and a lightweight boom stand in an upstairs bedroom (the quietest room in the house) and ran a 6m (M) XLR to (F) XLR cable down the stairs to the room where my iMac lives. I plugged this cable into the input port of a Behringer Tube Ultragain MIC100 microphone amp, and plugged the 6.3mm end of a 3.5mm stereo jack to 6.3mm stereo jack into the output of the microphone amp. The 3.5mm end then slotted into a Griffin Technology iMic USB Audio Interface, which went straight into my iMac's USB port. I then used Garageband (part of iLife '06) to do all the recording and editing.

• Site Design: I designed the site and created all the graphics myself (except for the icons on the home page) initially using ArtWorks, and then using the wonderful Corel Xara. The buttons that appeared on earlier versions of this site started life in Xara WebStyle, but they also ended up in Corel Xara for greater control. I finally dropped all graphical buttons in version 4 of the site.

• Hardware: The first version of this site was created on a StrongARM-powered Acorn Risc PC, the second on a Pentium PC running Windows NT, the third on a combination of a PC and an Apple PowerBook G3, the fourth purely on an Apple PowerBook G3, the fifth on a 20" Apple iMac G5, and the sixth (this one) on a 24" Apple iMac Intel Core 2 Duo. I like variety.

Site History

Here's a very brief (and rather incomplete) history of this website.

• September 1998: Version 1 of site launched, using frames and background images. Not nice.

• April 1999: Version 2 of site launched with a much more minimalist design. A relief.

• October 2001: Version 3 of site launched with the emphasis more on the travel writing.

• March 2003: Version 4 of site launched, which introduced expandable left-hand navigation.

• May 2004: 600 new photos added.

• June 2004: Searchable photo library added, covering 1100 travel photos, and eBooks published of all my writing.

• July 2004: Writing added from Burkina Faso, the Gambia, Ghana, Mali and Senegal.

• August 2004: Photos added from Senegal, the Gambia and Mali.

• September 2004: Microsoft Reader eBooks added, phpBB-based Guestbook launched.

• September 2004: West African eBooks added, plus photos from Ghana and Burkina Faso.

• October 2004: eReader eBooks added.

• November 2004: Random tale button added.

• December 2004: Enhanced photo library added.

• January 2005: Enhanced search added.

• March 2005: Writing from Cuba added.

• April 2005: Photos and eBooks from Cuba added.

• November 2005: Site recoded to be Level AA accessible and released as version 5.

• December 2005: Dates added to all photographs.

• January 2006: RSS feed launched.

• March 2006: Podcast and audiobooks launched, desktop wallpaper added.

• April 2006: MP3 audiobooks added.

• November 2006: 1400 large images added.

• December 2006: Home page slideshow added.

• January 2007: Screen saver added.

• February 2007: Accessibility improved, accessibility statement added.

• March 2007: Fast multi-site search added.

• April 2007: India 2007 added.

• June 2007: India 2007 photos added.

• January 2009: Version 5 of site launched, which saw the introduction of the current design.

• June 2009: Photo library added.

• April 2011: eBooks updated with latest content and released in EPUB (iPad/iPhone) and MOBI (Kindle) formats.

• June 2011: Search extended to cover Guestbook posts.

• August 2011: Next/previous links added to large images, to enable you to step through sets of images more easily.

• September 2011: Improved page loading time significantly by implementing Google's web performance best practices.

• April 2012: Converted site from XHTML 1.0 and CSS2 to HTML5 and CSS3.

• July 2012: Added responsive design for small-form devices, such as phones.

• November 2012: Added location maps to the sidebar for all travel tales.

• October 2013 to April 2014: Writing and photographs added from Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia.

• July 2014: Replaced hand-drawn country maps with interactive Google Maps

• April 2016: Added support for Retina images.

• May 2016: Revamped site to be fully responsive with a much-improved mobile experience.