About Me

I'm Alix, I'm 70, I'm dyslexic, and I've been messing about with computers since before most people knew the internet existed.

It was 1995. I was on a Mac running System 7.5, and a friend — a Unix man who didn't even like Macs — set me up with a TCP/IP connection so I could get online. Somewhere in the process he accidentally turned my desktop Trash icon into a blue telephone. I didn't care. I opened Netscape Navigator, ran my first search, and was completely bowled over by what came back. The world had just got a lot bigger.

There weren't many of us online back then. I used to send emails to myself just to check things were working. I found a couple of geeky forums and lurked nervously until the people there turned out to be wonderfully kind. I was hooked.

For someone who's dyslexic, that first spell checker was like being handed the keys to a door I'd been rattling for years. Suddenly I could write without dread. Computers didn't just connect me to other people — they gave me a voice.

NLP, Language, and Helping People

Around the same time, I trained as an NLP Master Practitioner. For fifteen years after that, I ran my own NLP and personal development company in South West Scotland, working with job seekers, women's groups, airport staff, public sector employees — all sorts of people who just needed a bit of support to find their confidence. NLP is all about how we use language, how we process the world, and how small shifts in the way we think and communicate can change everything. I loved that work.

I've always loved learning. I've got a curiosity that won't sit still — if something's new and I don't understand it, I want to pull it apart until I do. That's how I taught myself everything I know about IT. Nobody showed me. I just kept going. Always asking questions: I wonder how that works.....? What does that do? How can that make a difference?

Building Websites — The Long Way Round

Over the years I went from building my first web pages in Claris Home Page, to wrestling with Dreamweaver, to settling happily with a brilliant British tool called RapidWeaver — which I used right up until last year. What started as a hobby turned into a small web design business. My customers were mostly local voluntary groups, a viols ensemble, and the occasional artist. Nothing flashy. Just useful sites for good people.

Home

I live at the top of the Pennines, in a remote little town on Alston Moor. I first moved up from the Midlands in 1979 and fell in love with the North. I left for a while, but came back in 2010 to look after my mother — she was 94, and I wanted her to be cared for in a community I knew would rally round. This is home.

Living somewhere this remote, the internet has always been more than a convenience for me. It's how I learn, how I connect, how I work. It matters.

And Then AI Came Along

These days, heart disease means I can't do much of the physical stuff anymore. But I can sit at a computer for hours, and that's exactly what I do — because when AI came along, it changed everything all over again.

I discovered I could use AI to vibe code database-driven websites, which led me to build the Alston Moor Directory. In discussion with a IT Professor friend of mine, I realised something: instead of just using Claude to write prompts for coding tools, I could use Claude to build an entire website directly — a flat-file, self-hosted site, no databases needed, living on my own servers. And that's how The Prompt Toolbox was born.

Why This Site Is a Bit Different

I'm not a tech person writing prompts for other tech people. I'm someone who spent fifteen years helping ordinary folk find their confidence through NLP — understanding how language works, how to ask the right questions, how a small change in wording can completely shift the response you get. That's exactly what prompt writing is. My NLP background isn't a footnote — it's the whole foundation, especially in the Thinking & Decisions prompts you'll find here.