This photo was taken from the top of Derwent Edge looking along Ladybower Reservoir. Just out of shot would be the more famous Derwent Reservoir and Dam.

The quest for speed continues! I have signed up for a CDN service with MaxCDN. What this means is all my static files are now hosted on servers based all over the world reducing loading times for people wherever they visit from. Thanks to Yoast for the 25% discount voucher! Early tests seem to indicate a significant improvement to repeat view loading speed but it’s too soon to tell fully.

Loading speed is vital to the overall success of any website. A quick loading speed means much more then just how many seconds it takes the page to load. It’s more about how well setup that website is and how much care and attention the owner has put into tweaking various elements. As the owner of a photoblog I have been guilty of neglecting the optimisation of my photos for some time, but that’s changing now.

I’m steadily working back through all my posts and optimising the photos. Why you ask? Well I have tweaked the remainder of my website and I’m very pleased with a score of 98/100 on the Web Page Test. Now all the actual setup is as lean as possible it’s the right time to concentrate on the actual loading time my visitors experience.

Another trip to the Peak District. Some snow was on the ground and more was promised later in the day as the moody sky suggests. The footpath from Lose Hill to Mam Tor is very busy but the views are spectacular either side of the ridge.

Although the sun wasn’t out for this amazing walk the calm weather made for some excellent reflections in the water.

Just below the famous Kinder plateau is the Kinder reservoir, you can park near the village and walk up the lovely valley onto the peak itself. A lovely circular walk of about 10 miles. It’s quite interesting in the snow though!

The wreckage of this B-29 Superfortress is just off the Pennine Way footpath in the Peak District. The plane crashed in 1948 in bad weather. Sitting high on Shelf Moor it is a bleak and exposed place but a surprising amount of wreckage remains and is clearly identifiable. The easiest way to find the crash site is park on the A57 on the Snake Pass in a large layby and follow the Pennine Way to the cairn at Bleaklow Head. From there follow the smaller path that heads back to the trig point by the Higher Shelf Stones. You will see the wreckage 100m below the summit.

Once again another year has gone by and I’m back taking pictures of Snowdrops.The Snowdrop Website hasn’t come along much but the picture library is coming along nicely.

This photo was taken on the Hastings sea front on an amazingly bracing January day. I got a Canon 10-20mm ultra wide angle lens for my birthday so this was the first proper chance I have had to test it out. The composition isn’t great but seeing as Ncky and the chips were being mugged by seagulls time was limited!

Happy New Year everyone! Since I wrote about the Spam Free WordPress plugin by Todd Lahman on 6th December I have been totally spam free! I don’t get masses of traffic but 3 to 4 spam comments a day gets a little tiring so I’m very pleased. I also run a couple of other blogs using Akismet and Bad Behavior but they are still receiving spam comments that require deleting each day.

You can get it from Todd Lahman’s website here or from the WordPress Plugin repository here.