review

I have a lot of CDs. It isn't a "serious" collection, but I have been collecting CDs for at least 30 years so I have a couple of hundred there.

Taking a large CD collection everywhere with you isn't feasible, so I've been ribbing my collection to MP3 for a number of years. Recently, I've started to notice that MP3 doesn't have amazing sound quality, which is more apparent on higher quality audio equipment. MP3s are fine for cars and similar, but not ideal for listening on more serious sound systems.

Since my CD player died a few years ago I have been unable to listen to them in any other way. There is just something about the physical experience of playing music from a medium like the CD that appeals to me so I have still been buying CDs since then.

Last year I was looking through the shop at Mechboards and saw that they had a number of Lily58 R2G (ready to go) kits available. These are kits that have all of the soldering done and are pretty much complete, they just need some switches, keycaps and assembly.

My trusty Keychron K2 has been my daily driver for about 3 years now, so I was looking for something a bit different to type on. I have found that if I try to swap to a keyboard that is similar to the K2 I end up hitting the wrong keys.

I've been doing some research into mechanical keyboards recently and I've realised that re-built keyboards are not the only keyboards available. You can buy keyboard kits from companies that contain all the needed components for you to put together your dream keyboard.

Most of these kits involve the use of a soldering iron to solder the components to the circuit board (aka PCB). Since my soldering experience is minimal (at best) I decided that I would look for something cheap that I could have a go at before embarking on something more serious.

Vissles recently sent me their new LP85 keyboard to review, and I've spent a few weeks giving the keyboard a go. I have already reviewed the V84 mechanical keyboard from Vissles just a few months ago and that keyboard has been my daily driver ever since. I was therefore very interested in testing out this new product. The LP85 is a low profile keyboard with optical switches that come in a sleek aluminium chassis. Instead of the usual mechanical switches that make a physical connection, optical switches break a beam of infrared light to activate the key press. As there is no physical switch being clicked this means that optical switches last longer than mechanical ones.

I recently acquired a Vissles V84 mechanical keyboard and I have spent some time giving it a go. Vissles was founded in 2018 and have a selection of decent looking accessories and devices including wireless chargers, headphones and monitors. The V84 is the second of keyboard that Vissles have created, iterating on the previous design.

The keyboard itself has 84 keys and is a 75% ANSI layout, this is also called tenkeyless as it is a normal keyboard without the keypad. This keyboard moves a few of the keys around in order to fill the entire surface of the board with keys, rather than separate out the arrow and home/end keys. The compact design gives the keyboard a slim look, but it doesn't feel cramped or small to use.

I (like a lot of other people) recently started to work at home a lot more, and with a permanent desk setup at home I wanted a decent keyboard to work with. My work machine is a MacBook Pro 2018 and I dislike the keyboard quite a lot. It feels 'poppy', has some interesting key placements (the up and down arrows in particular), has no escape key or function keys at all.

Continuing my review of some Drupal PaaS hosting platforms I am taking a look at Dropsolid.

What I'm not doing is a massive deep dive on all platforms. Ultimately, your milage will vary and what you get out of these platforms will be different for most people. You will know the requirements of your project and what you need to accomplish.

Also, if you want to know more about a platform, then please contact them directly. I'm sure they will be happy to hear from you.

Based in Gent, Belgium, Dropsolid is a Drupal development agency who have built a Drupal hosting platform. The Dropsolid Experience Cloud is a platform built from years of experience in hosting and maintaining Drupal.

I met a few of the team at DrupalCamp London 2020 and they were kind enough to supply me with a key to evaluate the platform.

Continuing my review of some Drupal PaaS hosting platforms I am taking a look at Platform.sh.

What I'm not doing is a massive deep dive on all platforms. Ultimately, your milage will vary and what you get out of these platforms will be different for most people. You will know the requirements of your project and what you need to accomplish.

Also, if you want to know more about a platform, then please contact them directly. I'm sure they will be happy to hear from you.

Platform.sh is a PaaS site created by Commerce Guys, who are the main driving force being the Drupal Commerce suite of modules. They split off in 2016 and have grown to become a very respectable company in the PaaS space. They have also expanded their service to support a lot more than Drupal so you can easily deploy your Drupal and WordPress sites side by side.

Continuing my review of some Drupal PaaS hosting platforms I am taking a look at Pantheon.

What I'm not doing is a massive deep dive on all platforms. Ultimately, your milage will vary and what you get out of these platforms will be different for most people. You will know the requirements of your project and what you need to accomplish.

Also, if you want to know more about a platform, then please contact them directly. I'm sure they will be happy to hear from you.

Pantheon provides a PaaS solution started in 2010 in the USA. They now have a worldwide support staff and have data centres in a variety of different locations throughout the world. They started out as a specialist Drupal host, but now have support for WordPress hosting solutions.

I've been looking at Drupal hosting solutions recently, and after trying a few I thought I would write a quick review of each. I was specifically looking for hosting providers that provide dedicated Drupal hosting support and an administration dashboard of some kind. It turns out that a handful of such suppliers exist. Whilst it is perfectly possible to setup a server on AWS or DigitalOcean and then install Drupal there, this isn't what I am looking at. The good thing about Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions is that you get hosting, backup, recovery, logging, tools, and analysis all built in. Some platforms even have extra tools like build pipelines, marketing systems or analytics.