About The Site

Motivation

There are three main motivations for creating this site

• I had to test and understand the Sphinx documentation tool for work.
• I wanted to have an archive of the comic links I put out daily under my 'Selected' project.
• I wanted a place, other than Facebook, to put the essays I write from time to time on various issues.

Content

Current State

At the moment you will find the following types of content on the site

• In the Writings section, various essays, insights and other writings.
• In the 'Selected' section, the links to chosen comics I put out daily.
• In the Tech Corner section, articles on computer technology.
• In the 'You Don't Want to do it Like That' section, some tips about maintaining boats.
• A list of online comics and videos that I think might be worthy of your time.
• Links to sites of interest or practical use in the Online Locations section.

Future Plans

In the future I plan to add:

• A list of books I think others might be interested in.
• Articles on the Lifeboats that operate on the River Thames.
• A 'Bloggy Bit' (that's a technical term), letting people know what is going on.

Technical

Site Hosting

This site is hosted on my  Plusnet account. There is redirection in place from my personal domain name 'nbinvincible.org.uk'.

The site may move in the near future to another server owned by my redirection service,  FreeParking.

Site Design

This site is built using the  Sphinx documentation tool, originally developed for documenting the  Python programming language. A few modifications to Sphinx and Documents have been made via a Sphinx extension.

Why Aren't You Using Something Else

Wordpress?

This isn't a blog, parts may look like a blog but this isn't one.

A Content Management System

I would use a CMS but I had a need to use Sphinx at work and this is one way to develop and maintain my skills in Sphinx

A Wiki

I don't have any need for many of the facilities of a Wiki, particularly other peoples contributions. Many of the aspects of the way Sphinx is used to generate this site have wiki-like characteristics.

What Advantages Does Sphinx Have?

Sphinx sites are designed and controlled primarily through the use of plain text files containing reStructuredText markup, which is very like that used by wikis. In fact some Wiki Engines can read reStructuredText. This makes it easy for me to add content and make changes without having to get involved in editing HTML.

Because Sphinx uses plain text files this frees me from any issues related to maintaining database engines and the like. Because I run it locally I am at the mercy of no one but myself.

Sphinx Extension

The extension only affects HTML output and currently does two things:

• Corrects the code generated for tables to allow full control of formatting through a CSS Stylesheet. Previously all table borders were one pixel wide and could not be turned off.
• Implements the leading icon for external links and sets things up so a click on the icon will open the link in a new tab or window.

Further functionality may be added in future. I may well release the extension publicly, but quite a lot of work to make it more generally useful would be required.

RSS

There is an experimental RSS Feed. This has been generated manually using the  Listgarden perl script.

Until recently the feed was not operating properly, due to the malign influence of The Frame. The solution was the 'Frame Breaker' script I have added.

The use of Listgarden was not the first choice. There are a number of extensions to Sphinx that generate RSS feeds but none of them have the functionality I require. So automated RSS is a long-term aspiration but I suspect it will require considerable coding on my part to achieve it.

Meanwhile Listgarden does at least give me strong control over the content of the feed.

Book Lists

The Book List section is maintained through the  Tellico Collections Manager. Book data is held within the application using a custom collection format and periodically exported as XML. A rather brutal Python script is the used to generate partial pages of HTML which are then included into the Sphinx pages via the ''.. raw:: html'' directive. Whilst it might appear a complex way of working the system considerably eases the task of keeping track of book data.

The Frame

Most people would never have noticed, but the site was originally contained in an overall HTML Frame. Amongst other things this added complications for people who want to 'Deep Link' to items within the site.

Fortunately I discovered a way to break out of this Frame.

What is happening is that my redirection service,  FreeParking redirecting you to the actual host of the site,  Plusnet at  http://www.plus.net/ . However FreeParking are attempting to help me by disguising the fact that the site is in fact hosted by Plusnet through the use of a Frame, which is causing all sorts of problems.

Fortunately I discovered a very simple but useful  script at  TheSiteWizard which allows a site to break out of a frame. So if you arrived at this site via nbinvincible.org.uk you will now be seeing addresses that begin www.ricka.plus.com.

Header Images

The header images were prepared using the  Inkscape Open Source vector graphics editor.

The Fonts used were:

• IM FELL Great Primer PRO
• URW Chancery L
• IM FELL FLOWERS 2

The Fell Types were collected and created for Dr John Fell, a Bishop of Oxford in the Seventeenth Centuary, (from 1668 onwards) and subsequently bequethed to the Univercity of Oxford. They were the original type used by the Oxford Univercity Press (which Fell created) and remained in use until the the appearence of William Caslon's types from 1720 onward.

Faithful versions of the fonts are available free from Ignio Marini at  The Fell Types They are licensed under the  SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.

URW Chancery L is available from many sources online. It is licensed under the  GPL with Font Exception.