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 break up long desk sessions.
Energy and utility costs now factor into Taylor’s decision to work from home, office, or gym facilities.
Taylor plans to use the gym’s showers to save on heating and enjoy better water pressure than his flat’s setup.
A major focus is turning the flat into a smart home to automate chores and free time for deep work.
Taylor uses Home Assistant and smart devices like automated curtain closers tied to sunset schedules.
Security is a priority with a new alarm system to protect business equipment in the flat.
A smart lock with keypad access allows temporary codes for deliveries and remote unlocking by trusted contacts.
Gordon has been helping assemble extensive flat-pack furniture and recently invested in a drill to speed things up.
Taylor’s pre-move planning meant the layout and purchases closely matched his original vision.
The show will continue weekly on Fridays, potentially recording from various locations including the new flat.
 
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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 free account with paid options with higher limits
Getting excited still
Home Assistant and 3D Printing
Doing something and failing, and then fixing it and the excitement when you have a success
Vacuum sealing not working, bought a more powerful unit which double seals
3D printing issue for the first layer – slowed things down and upped the temp a bit and it worked after a few failures
Home Assistant automation – presence sensors know if you are home or not – if I am away, the office doesn’t need to be heated
Using Cursor and AI to build Home Assistant automations and dashboards – https://cursor.com/home
Problem Solving is another things that excites me
 
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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 project was bigger than WordPress would handle
Same to flat files
Stache caching
Open Source and Pro version available
Considering it for a personal site
 
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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
Are blog posts becoming more important with the advent of AI Search Engines?
Maybe just for AI rather than real people these days
Neil Patel is a good resource – https://neilpatel.com/
Do a search for your business to see what is shown in ChatGPT and Google
Recent Personal Tools
Cinema calendar script updated – removing film times that aren’t relevant to us
ChatGPT searching for this information? Testing in progress
Using Slack on the web script to hit a button…
Tampermonkey Extension – https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo
Scanning website pages for contact numbers and email addresses
Change the YouTube duration time depending on the speed you are watching
Newsfeed Eradicator – blocks the newsfeed on social media to prevent being distracted
 
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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 start
Long term planning is what you need with proper frameworks
Rebuilding software around a framework
Experience lets you think further ahead to plan better
Creating global variables
Rebuilding personal website 4 times
Don’t spend time on over engineering when it’s not needed
Commenting on your code and processes
AI understands comments and helps to work with code the way you want it to
 
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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 developer, making sure it is easy to use for existing users
Adding notes to explain where a feature has moved to
The solution is the opposite
Not having time for certain things and spending time on other things you shouldn’t
Deadlines work well for some people
Having a break to let your brain think things through on their own
Forcing a solution doesn’t always work well
Thinking through fully instead of jumping into a half formed idea
 
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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 device, over 50% charge and plugged in
AirPods updates happen when they do
Mac OS update procedure is different…
Backup first
Check if your essential apps will work on the new OS (maybe use a separate device)
Updating gives you new features and security updates
I always update as soon as I can
Running betas on main devices
Rebuild the whole computer software by wiping and re-installing everything
 
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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 film or not
Using a proxy when required
Tado – new heating system – sent me an email
I have thermostats on different radiators to set the temp in that room only
They are changing their API requests limits from unlimited to 100 a day !!!
This is a huge change and I have just finished installing the system, which now won’t do what I wanted without paying a subscription
The Home Assistant community is not happy about this change – seems like a change of contract
New Apple Products released with new software coming next week
AirPods Pro’s new translation feature
 
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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 business to do
Outsource it if it makes financial sense
It always takes longer than you expect
Giving yourself some extra time
Sometimes there are issues and admin to do
Hardly ever does anyone ever complain if you start a project early
Automate admin if you can
 
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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
Contact Jezo for more information – https://www.jezo.co.uk
The sport – Padel – like tennis and squash
Using your skills for different things
Building smaller web apps
Padel uses racket ball skills in a different way
Thinking differently to use existing skills
Entertainment can be a lonely existence
 
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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 products
Consistency – mindful of what is going on, deadlines and work to be done
Putting the time and energy in to be consistent
Keep communication going with colleagues
 
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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 painted
Can only be done when I am not using the box – for example when I am on holiday
New rubber wheels with locks
Vinyl print on the front from friend of the channel Rob Gaffney – https://customshirtsandmore.co.uk/
It’s all very exciting to have the box made better than ever
Find time when you are not using something to get it looked at
 
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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 think about
Explaining care plan at the time of quoting
Including 2x 30 minute tasks a month into the care plan
It’s good enough…
Saving yourself a headache down the road
Investing in a tool that may not be good for the future, and may be difficult to move away from
 
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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 faith
Getting a mortgage before leaving the agency
The changes of working for someone else, to working for yourself
White Labelling for others
Getting used to being isolated
Finding like minded people
Bouncing ideas off them
Best and Worst decisions
One piece of advice
What does success look like?
 
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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 trick I have been doing forever with 3D prints
Thanks to Liam Ball for the help with the design, and to Richard Pinner for his advice
Finding solutions to problems
EMA Plastic Weld
 
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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 or expensive quickly
Using names is much nicer than “hey you”
New banners arrived this week – buying really good quality ones
Magic box is looking tatty (with some recent damage) and has old branding on it
Magician friend is going to fix it up while I am on holiday (only time it isn’t being used)
Tatty is not a good look as a first impression
 
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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 everything you need moved over
Upgrading my 3D printer – from an Artillery Sidewinder X2 to a Bambu X1C and AMS 2 Pro
HUGE UPGRADE as far as technology goes
Use newer materials like PETG, TPU, ABS etc.
All enclosed, multi-colour prints with multiple materials
Currently on sale at: https://bambulab.com/en until 15th July 2025
Gave away the last two printers to a friend, and he is now getting into this new hobby
 
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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 June in Kraków, Poland – https://europe.wordcamp.org/2026/
Watch all of the talks at https://wordpress.tv/
 
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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 transport and trams
Visited Lucerne, about 1.25 hours train ride away from Basel
Went up Mount Pilatus by cable car, and then a bit of walking – did the high ropes and zip wires which was really tiring
Hotel at the top of the mountain
Thought about the infrastructure that was needed to run a hotel so high up
We are now back but were unable to release this episode last week.
 
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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 us know if you are going.
 
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