$ whoami → Edward Hewlett — maker of things in code and in words
Two trades, one workbench:
tech and text.
I build websites and small, useful software — and I host other people's sites for whatever they care to give. When I'm not in the editor, I'm in the other editor: writing essays, stories, and the occasional stubborn poem. This is where the two halves shake hands.
the short version
A small shop, run by one person, on purpose.
There are firms that will sell you a website like they're selling you a car — all options, all upsell, all forgotten the moment the invoice clears. This isn't that. Hewlett Tech and Text Products is what happens when someone who actually enjoys the craft does the work himself: the markup, the words on the page, the server it lives on, and the reply to your email three years later.
Tech
Websites built by hand, hosting that runs on goodwill, and a couple of pieces of software I made because I wanted them to exist.
- Website production
- Donation-ware hosting
- WhatYou.site
- StoryWeaver.online
Text
A newsletter where geek culture meets old faith, a book of poems, and a quiet shelf of stories and verse you can read for nothing.
- Geek Orthodox
- My Heart Leaps Up
- Short stories
- Poetry
how I work
No fine print, because there's no print at all.
A few things I believe, that tend to show up in everything here.
01 Make it last
A web page is just text and a few rules for how to draw it. Built plainly, it can outlive every framework that was fashionable the week it shipped. I build for the long haul, not the launch screenshot.
02 Charge like a neighbour
Hosting here is donation-ware: a church, a craftsman, a bible school — they pay what the thing is worth to them, and nobody gets shown the door for a lean month. Software follows the same instinct.
03 Words count too
Half this business is writing, and it bleeds into the other half. Your site's copy should sound like a human wrote it — because, here, a human did.
the name, explained
Why http://?
Look closely at the logo and you'll find the whole idea hiding in plain sight: the letters http stamped over the punctuation :// — the little incantation that opens every address on the web. It's the doorway between a machine and a reader, between tech and text. That's the seam I've spent years working along, and it's the one this whole shop is built on.
One half speaks to computers. The other speaks to people. The trick — the whole trick, really — is making them say the same thing.
"The geeks have inherited the earth. The only question left is what we'll do with it."
— from Geek Orthodox, the newsletter behind the Text half of this shop
Got a site to build, a server to land on, or just a good argument?
Whether you need a website that won't embarrass you, a quiet home for one you already have, or you simply want to talk shop about code and the written word — the door's open.