This Week with Taylor & Gordon

Lots of small tasks completed this week

Two 6 hour coding sessions for Taylor

Blackpool Magic Convention is happening next week

Longing this year by 1 day or 33%

Worlds biggest Magic Convention

Catching up with friends you don’t see very often

Very tiring but also very rewarding

Friend’s Meetings

Making time for friends and family – scheduling them like a meeting

Cinema and Tennis as examples

Giving your sole attention to other people so you don’t push them away

Ma...

Herman Miller Chair – https://ukstore.hermanmiller.com/collections/seating/

Fully Adjustable – very high quality chair

Expensive but very good.

Purchased second hand one on Facebook Marketplace, 1 hour away

Built June 2025, so very new

No headrest – but one has been purchased and will be delivered

Researching and purchasing the best we can afford

Tax Bill paid

Keeping track of your energy usage

Fuel company supplied In Home Display

SMET2 compatible power monitoring

Bright App – https://glowmarkt.com/bright

Gl...

What Makes Today a Success – web app

myThreeTasks – currently in beta

Gamifying Productivity

Lots of ideas to improve the app

For streaks, only working days count

Invite only – great marketing

User gets to choose what their tasks are – big or small

Frustrations this week

Video issues for the Panto video – corruption is to blame

The next step when the video is complete is to find the root cause and fix it

Big video job coming up so this is important<...

Helpful Triggers

Create triggers to give you good habits

Obligation is a good trigger

Rewarding yourself for doing tasks that maybe you don’t enjoy doing

Putting the Kindle in the right place to make picking it up easy

Put things by your car keys to remember to take them with you

Wednesday… working on Panto DVDs

Problems with recording hardware

Errors in the Bambu AMS – Automatic Material System, and having to take it apart to clear the broken filament

Tiny magnet...

New Season, New Colour

Pantomime week

Filming shows, taking photos, rehearsing and performing

Next job is editing

System created a couple of years ago to allow for streaming

Doesn’t really make a profit – but I do it for my own reasons, and is very rewarding

Taylor is 3rd Generation for these shows

Widow Twanky in Aladdin

Time Logging – Tallyho – https://tallyho.app/

Toggl is great but has more features than needed

Tallyho is minimal and does what it does rea...

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

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Busy performing for Christmas

New 3d printer delivered, which was better than my last delivery

Tracking information wasn’t great but the delivery was fine

44kg in weight – need to make sure I was in

Heavy even after packing taken off

Taylor helped me carry it upstairs and checked that it worked

Bambu H2C – 2 print heads and 7 nozzles

Scraper was the first print, followed by a poop chute (which was a great design)

Third print was an accessories box, which I am really...

Another new location – which do you prefer?

Discovering an empty room, since Taylor moved out

Best use of the new room

Upgraded guest room to a larger room and a double bed

Removed single bed and put up shelving to make a storage room

Solid surface needed for new 3D printer, along with places for filament

Visit to Ikea – asked Taylor to help in return for helping him

Lots of other house upgrades

Robovac and mop – new front door

Knock on effect...

Busy season – lots of projects to finish

The Budget was this week

Managing expectations – Yodel delivery company

Two different delivery times on two different days missed – not even attempted

They hung up on me when I called them

Web chat was as useful as a chocolate spanner

Knock on effect for expectations

Looking at if I am not setting correct expectations in my company

Amazon are very good at failed deliveries

In the future I will probably pay slightly more to choose...

Back at Gordon’s Home

New Bambu Lab 3d Printer

Talking about the H range of 3d printers

How to deal with filament purging

H2C introduced to combat this

Purge towers and induction heating

Duel heads, 6 swappable nozzles

Automatic Material System (AMS) requirements

Nozzle sizes

Pricing and features

Ordered TPU for the first time

Taylors first weeks living alone

New responsibilities, cooking, cleaning, washing, budgeting

Unexpected purchases

Saving goals

...

A week off due to Taylor moving into his first flat.

Taylor bought his own flat after a six-month process and had to purchase and assemble nearly all new furniture.

The move temporarily reduced Taylor’s work output as he prioritised making the flat livable.

Taylor is debating whether to keep his office space versus working from home, balancing cost and social benefits.

Working at the David Lloyd gym has become harder for deep work due to social distractions.

Living alone adds responsibilities like cooking, cleaning, and maintenance that br...

Most episode in this season so far?

Wispr Flow – speech transcription – https://wisprflow.ai

Easier to speak than to type – works better than Siri

Removes Ums and Ahhs, and is context aware

Smart by including people that have been mentioned (in Slack for example)

Apple Intelligence should be at this point by now, but isn’t

Microphone from the laptop doesn’t work when in clamshell mode, need an external mic

Elgato Wave Link – https://www.elgato.com/uk/en/s/wave-link

Wispr Flow has a f...

Putting Your Life on Hold

When other things happen

Shut down for a week long show

Resting for months at a time due to health issues

Income Protection and Critical Cover

Insurance for Income if you are unable to work

Cover for customers

We are able to take over each others customers if needed

Plan ahead if you know you have a break coming up

Plan ahead for unexpected breaks

Statamic CMS – built on Laravel

Scope of a...

Only Newcomer’s Award at the local magic club

3D printed plate stand for Taylor Squash Plate award

SEO and the changes that are happening

A brief history of how SEO has worked in the past

Search engine results are now showing an AI summary first in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages)

Learning how to optimise for the AI is something to learn right now

Jump ahead of your competitors

Indexing all the content on your website and used as an answer in the AI...

Origins of our podcast

Home Assistant – https://www.home-assistant.io/

Using recent experience to make the experience better

Creating a universal notification hub

Using ChatGPT to create automations

Creating a list of entities for use with AI

AI can then use the correct entities in scripts and automations

Creating another list so AI can suggest automations

Creating a list and alerts to let me know when batteries need changing or recharging

Short term gratification is what everyone wants when they first st...

Project design signed off after lots of work

Revisiting – organising and hosting our local community day

QR code would show them a live schedule, which could be changed on the day

Software that powers it has changed since last year and isn’t as user-friendly as it could be

Previously used https://Frontly.ai

Revisit software you don’t use very often and see what has changed and added

Update apps on your computer, especially ones you don’t use very often

Updating apps as a develo...

Perspective

Training plan at the gym – restarting

Giving yourself a forfeit if you fail

Give yourself a motivation

“I only have an hour and a half”, or “I have an hour and a half”

Looking at the situation with a different perspective

Forfeit instead of reward

The monetary amount of the forfeit is all relative

Updating Software

iPhone OS updates are likely to work with all apps that are current

Backup first

Have enough free space on your devic...

Another week has passed

Stingers – after credits on a film

Wednesday night cinema trip

Automating the timings for leaving, travel, time to eat and then time to enter the screen to miss the adverts

Bonus extra content during and after credits – https://aftercredits.com

No API available but it does run on WordPress

That means there is a REST API

The request returns the information and that is then added to the automation calendar content so we know whether to wait at the end of the...

Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Stop saying yes to please people

Setting core values to allow you to make decisions

Do you have the bandwidth to do things?

Declutter projects

Delete projects, no archiving

Saying yes to help people

Doing things you want, and enjoy doing

Family and Friends are possible exceptions

If you say no, then offer some alternatives – someone else for example

Admin – a tedious and boring job

Not the things you got into busine...

Back from holidays

Renovating my Gordon’s Magic box of tricks

Jezo Bond took on the project, vinyl graphics printed by Rob Gaffney

Went to see Jezo perform at a holiday park in front of a real audience

Can be a difficult audience, need to grab their attention

When collecting, the box was amazing

Brand new rubber wheels, with locks on the back ones

Painted, sanded, painted and repeat

Felt fabled on the inside of the box as well as on the top

Last episode before holiday

How Gordon research’s

Look at what I use a product for and what I want to use one for in the lifetime of a future upgraded version

What is the product capable of, what do competitors versions have, what features are the most important to me.

Mid range is normally a good place to start

YouTube is a great way to research, brands and models

Reviews are also useful from people you trust

Learning everything you can about your new pr...

Voicepal (phone app) – Ghostwriter in your pocket

Helps to rid yourself of writers block

Transcribes your verbal thoughts and then asks questions using AI

Learns from examples of your writing style

How strict or free do you want it to be

Creating blog posts to your website is great for the search engines

Getting ideas down and in a usable form

Making the most of downtime

Banners replaced recently

Box needs to be refurbished

Sanded down, filled and then pa...

Planting seeds in the minds of your customers

Busy week performing as it is the end of the school year

Moved from December to Summer over the last few years

Sowing the seed for another show next year – pointing out the positives

Performing at one child’s birthday, 4 years running

Making a suggestion of what we could do next year that is different and exciting

Making sure the last day of term is a good one

Not a hard sell, but a seed they can thin...

Visiting Jake Woods in Ireland

Main platform is WordPress, but also a little bit of Shopify

WordPress is open source and easier to work with

Which is better – depends on what you are selling

Shopify allows only 3 variants of a product

Started in Hospitality, but saw the possibilities of the Internet

Self Taught – and built a simple website which got some attention

Moved into marketing and found WordPress

Worked for an agency and then went self employed

Taking the leap of fait...

Taking Time Off

Watching F1 at Silverstone

Laptop hardly got used, no work was done

First time podium for Hülkenberg

Great infrastructure for getting people in and out

Systems in place for emergencies

Feeding huge numbers of people

Celebrities attended including YouTuber Colin Furze

Staying Curious

New 3D Printer – Bambu X1C

Improvements in technology, speed, software, materials, accuracy

Connect 4 – with spirals that auto-separate themselves

Replacing a prop that has got really tatty for a tri...

New 3D printer accessories arrived

Printing infill patterns

Tidying Up Loose Ends – last 20% of a project takes 80% of the time

New systems in place to track and complete projects

Checklists to make sure everything is done

New workflow with new projects

Brand Image update

Changed from Magical Entertainment to Gordon’s Party Piece to Gordon’s Magic

Changing to new flyers is a slow process when you have 10k printed

Updating flyers, stickers, banners, videos etc. is difficult in a short period...

A very expensive week

New roller banners – replacing with good quality ones

New bunny hutch to replace one that is nearly falling to bits

New MacBook Pro M4 – rewarding himself for working hard

Raycast – https://www.raycast.com/ – your shortcut to everything

A really useful application for finding things and information quickly

Adding your own modules that pull information from anywhere

Installing apps on a fresh install of MacOS instead of migrating

Run both computers for a couple of weeks to make sure you have...

WordCamp Europe 2025

Showing off WP Extended

Putting faces to names from forums

Mini celebrity in a small niche

Talking to vendors

Site Mait – WordPress AI Voice Agent – https://sitemait.com/

WP Umbrella – manage multiple websites themes, plugins and so much more – https://wp-umbrella.com/

Integration with Patch Stack – https://patchstack.com/

Drunk nerdy people

The Admin Bar – https://theadminbar.com/

Building up the group of friends – thank you to all those we met

Next year is on June 4-6th Jun...

Our episode recorded in Basel, Switzerland (no mic so sound is not as good)

WordCamp EU 2025 – largest of the WordCamps in the world

Networking and meeting up with friends

WP Entended – https://wpextended.io/

Functionality that should be in core – No conflicts between modules

Free and Pro versions available

Conventions are really tiring, but you do so much in that time

Visited The Dreiländereck monument, standing at the exact point where Switzerland, France and Germany meet

Worked out the public transpor...

Bank Holiday Weekend setting up Home Assistant Automations

Lights on and off in office

Playing Apple TV will dim the lights and turn them back up on pause

Wordcamp Europe 2025 – Basel, Switzerland – https://europe.wordcamp.org/2025/

Talks, workshops, networking, looking around Basal and the Alps

Might pre-record an episode next week at Wordcamp

Looking forward to talks and seeing how people use WordPress

Talking to developers of plugins and themes

Lots of drama in the WordPress world in the last year

Let...

Home Assistant – Home Automation

Discussion on Home Assistant and its relevance for Taylor’s flat

Purchasing and setting up the Home Assistant Yellow

Details about the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5

Experience with the component issue and customer service from Pi Hut – http://thepihut.com

Cost analysis of setting up the Home Assistant system

Hardware and software setup for Home Assistant

Comparison between Home Assistant Yellow and Green

Exploring Home Assistant’s local privacy-first voice assistance

Integration of Home Assistant with existing smart ho...

Trix – Children’s Entertainer Convention

Meeting and networking with other professionals

I was in Stoke on Trent from Sunday through to Wednesday

Seeing people you only see once a year – stopping and chatting

Lectures, Talks and Shops

Chatting is what I find the most useful and interesting – Brainstorming

4 hour drive each way plus late nights and early mornings means very little sleep

Uploaded a new FACE the Podcast episode for people to listen to on their way to the convention

Wordcamp Europe – https://europe.wor...

Gordon performed in a VE Day performance at The Magic Circle this week

Wordsearch Game Creation

Generate a wordsearch that is customised with certain words like a birthday childs name

AI Code Creation using an app called Cursor – http://cursor.com

WordPress Local, creates a local install of WordPress so you can built quickly without needing the internet – https://localwp.com

Edit code locally and the refresh the page to instantly see the changes

The AI will accept prompts to build software

You don’t need t...

Frustrating Things…

Very annoying especially when you have no control

Waiting for a new battery pack for devices like my phone

Found it cheaper elsewhere after the order so cancelled the order and re-ordered

Lost in the post TWICE

Royal Mail appears to have been the culprit by losing or not tracking the packages correctly

I ended up having to do about 6 hours worth of calls, emails and investigation to find out what has happened

Plan for things that might go wrong, outside of your co...

5 year anniversary for This Week With

News: The chatbot on the website will now show you which episode content is in.

Expense Tracking – looking to move out and getting finances sorted

Subscriptions that get forgotten

Figuring out existing subscriptions and new subscriptions / monthly expenses that are coming soon

Annual payments, like TV License, add them up, divide by 12 and save monthly in a separate account, the money will be waiting for you when you need to pay the lump sum

Finding the best way to collate the fi...

Special Guests: Marc P Summers & Leo Summers

Travel with family

Tracking flights with Jet Lovers app

Training Leo to find his way around an airport

Maths – using numbers for anything you want

Fibonacci as a middle name

No limit to Maths

Problem solving is the fun part

The Hedgehog Principal – https://worldofwork.io/2019/07/the-hedgehog-concept/

Anything other than operators Leo enjoys

Maths problem live on the podcast

Fibonacci is found everywhere in nature

First 5 numbers of the...

EPISODE 200

Special Guests – Marc P Summers and Caroline Ainslie

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro for a second time at the age of 64 in January 2026

Looking for more people to join Caroline’s team

Using your skills to achieve success

20th anniversary of Bubbly Maths

Oldest person to climb Kilimanjaro was 89

Success mentality – Aiming to climb for her 90th

Fundraising for Alzheimer’s and there will be a mathematical resource available

If you think you can, or you think you can’t – you are going to be...

Special Episode leading up to our 200th episode next week

We have guests, Marc P Summers, Automated Marketing Agency and Caroline Ainslie, Bubbly Maths

AI in Business – The Portrait Agency – looking for high value customers using AI to check an estimate of their home address house value

Then checks with AI to see what position they hold in a business on Linkedin if possible

Using info as a guideline

If they can’t afford it then you can use AI to create a canvas printed image

Automate as muc...

Embracing the Unusual

Magic Show and Magic Workshop

Surprise Birthday Party – he was blindfolded

Working with another entertainer

Also a party in a marquee in a scouting field

1.5 hours straight with no break

Used my EcoFlow power for sound and electrics – Use link for 10% off – https://www.ecoflow.com/uk/referral-rewards?inviteCode=ALLJXEKDBP

If you think you can do the unusual to a high standard, then go do it

Adding a new format to my parties makes me more bookable

Taking Time f...

Next Steps when hitting a brick wall

Stepping away to think about things

Or breaking down the problem into smaller chunks

Projects taking longer than they should because you have to think and decide on the way forward

Making notes about processes that you don’t do very often

Keeping in contact with customers

Difficult when there is no progress to see

Under Promise and Over Deliver

Souvenirs instead of rubbish

Signed Playing Cards – making an experience unique

Taking out...