[00:00:10.610] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:11.000] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.480] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.340] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.720] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses is over the last seven days. Happy New Year to you.
[00:00:27.700] - Taylor
Happy New Year.
[00:00:28.630] - Gordon
Yes. We missed out on last week and we'll come to the reason why that is in a moment. But not only is it a new year, but a new season.
[00:00:40.430] - Taylor
And did anyone guess the right colour?
[00:00:43.480] - Gordon
There we go. Yes, it's green. We chose green to go this year. So if you were thinking green for the colour of the season, then well done. However, it's not just green for the season. We decided to update the accent colour in the website as well.
[00:01:02.890] - Taylor
Yes. So what we do is we change the global colour, which is kind of, well it was orange and it's now green. So we've got like a blue and a green, which is our obviously season accent colour. And yeah, it kind of gives it a little refresh and a paint kind of thing, and just yeah, matches the new season. So you kind of know what season we're on.
[00:01:24.320] - Gordon
Yes. So I hope everyone is well and healthy out there. We got some big news to share with you for February, which we'll leave to another episode.
[00:01:37.710] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:37.710] - Gordon
So this year was already quite exciting for both of us. So I think let's just get straight into it.
[00:01:46.440] - Taylor
One thing. I've got some news.
[00:01:48.230] - Gordon
Okay. Go ahead.
[00:01:49.400] - Taylor
So WordCamp - it is a convention for WordPress, which is obviously the community of people that use WordPress, the open source software. And I'm going to be going to WordCamp 2022 Europe. So it is the third to the fourth of June. It is in Porto in Portugal and I'm really excited.
[00:02:12.490] - Gordon
Excellent. So have you booked your ticket already?
[00:02:15.030] - Taylor
I've booked my ticket for WordCamp, but I haven't booked my flights or my accommodation yet.
[00:02:20.700] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:02:20.990] - Taylor
That is next on my list.
[00:02:22.410] - Gordon
So you're a third of the way there.
[00:02:24.090] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:02:24.740] - Gordon
Excellent. So if anyone out there is a WordPress developer and they're looking to go to WordPress or WordCamp Europe, then get in touch with Taylor and I'm sure he would love to meet up with you.
[00:02:36.880] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:02:37.320] - Gordon
We always like to meet people who are subscribers and people who watch our content. So thank you for that. Any more news?
[00:02:45.890] - Taylor
No, that was all from me.
[00:02:47.400] - Gordon
Okay. Shall I start this week?
[00:02:49.790] - Taylor
Yeah, you can go.
[00:02:49.790] - Gordon
So this week, and the reason that we didn't do last week is because I'm right in the middle of Pantomime. Now, we did mention this before. It's "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," and it's a Pantomime that I wrote during Lockdown, and I've directed, and I'm also in it as well. And there's an awful lot of work that goes into creating a show. And I've just been up to my eyeballs in it really, just getting everything ready. So the week before the Pantomime starts, pretty much every day we're up at the theatre getting everything ready: doing tech rehearsals, doing music band calls, doing dress rehearsals, getting all the scenery ready, the props ready, the costumes ready, setting up everything in the way that it needs to be for the performances. And that takes, you know, like the whole week.
[00:03:49.120] - Taylor
Yeah, most of your time really.
[00:03:50.390] - Gordon
Yeah, it takes an awful lot of time. And so last week on the Friday afternoon when I was supposed to be here with Taylor doing this, I was actually up at the hall decorating it. We were putting up bunting and posters around the hall. So, yeah, apologies that we weren't here for that.
[00:04:09.440] - Taylor
If you are watching us live or on the Friday afternoon, today, there is one show this evening today.
[00:04:21.240] - Gordon
Friday evening, and there's some tickets left for that.
[00:04:23.350] - Taylor
And there's also tomorrow, which is Saturday. And yes, there's two shows.
[00:04:28.940] - Gordon
There's two shows. The afternoon, I believe is pretty much sold out. But the evening does have some tickets still. So, if, I'm not sure when the captions are going to be put on this, so I'll give you the address now. It's www.sdclub.org.uk. And you can buy your tickets there. The details are on there. If you're trying to buy tickets for the day of the performance, you won't be able to but come along to the venue and you'll be able to purchase them at the venue. Don't bother for Saturday afternoon because it's sold out. But it's going really well. It's going really well. I mean, I was very concerned as the director, with things that have been happening. I've been watching the news over sort of November and December, sort of just to see how things were going. And a lot of the big theatres in the West End were having to shut because a member of the cast got Covid, or a member of the cast and their understudy got Covid. Well, we don't have understudies, so if a member of our cast gets Covid, well, that's it, show's over.
[00:05:40.960] - Taylor
We have some people playing more than one role.
[00:05:43.770] - Gordon
Exactly. Yeah.
[00:05:47.170] - Taylor
The other way round.
[00:05:47.170] - Gordon
So I am so pleased that we are currently where we are, and still being able to do the show. We had ten performances starting last Saturday. So we had two on the Saturday, two on the Sunday. We had Monday night off. We had the show on Tuesday, which always goes a bit strange because we had Monday night off.
[00:06:08.010] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:06:08.010] - Gordon
And then we do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then two on Saturday. And fingers crossed, hopefully we'll get to do all ten performances...
[00:06:16.760] - Taylor
That would be great.
[00:06:16.760] - Gordon
Which will be amazing. I mean, just beyond my wildest hopes really, having seen what was possible and the fact that other shows were closing.
[00:06:28.730] - Taylor
Definitely.
[00:06:29.480] - Gordon
I wasn't expecting to get this far, to be honest.
[00:06:32.400] - Taylor
Is it going well?
[00:06:33.600] - Gordon
It has. It's gone very well. And Taylor's been up there for every performance. He's been working very hard backstage. Because not only do you need the cast to perform this show, but you need the dancers, you need the crew. They're really important to change the scenery; to get all the props ready. You need the musicians, of which we have five musicians in the show. We have the lighting engineers, we have the sound engineers, we have the front of house people quite often forgotten, the people who make sure that tickets are looked at and take people to their seats. It's a whole group effort and I'm sure I've missed people. There's chaperones in the children's room, to make sure that the children can be there.
[00:07:23.200] - Taylor
And get on stage on time as well.
[00:07:25.400] - Gordon
Yeah, to get them on the stage, but also look after them when they're not on stage. We have two groups of children, so they do every other night. It's so much coordination that goes into this. And I haven't even mentioned the people who make the scenery, paint...
[00:07:45.130] - Taylor
Aren't there on the actual night.
[00:07:46.170] - Gordon
No, they're not there, they do all the work beforehand. Make the scenery, paint the scenery.
[00:07:52.010] - Taylor
Costumes.
[00:07:52.810] - Gordon
Costumes. There's, I don't know, there's hundreds, hundred, maybe costumes in this show and that's all done by two people.
[00:08:04.170] - Taylor
TLC, when stuff rip, clothes like.
[00:08:05.200] - Gordon
Yeah. And there's the upkeep of them. There's the washing of them. There's just so much that goes on in this. And this is all done by amateurs, volunteers, people who just do it for the love of it. And we just hope that people come and watch the show so that they can enjoy it, support it, and cover the costs so that we can then put on the next show.
[00:08:32.010] - Taylor
I believe there's only two professional pantomimes still going in the UK.
[00:08:37.250] - Gordon
Is that right?
[00:08:37.910] - Taylor
I believe so, from what I heard from chat the other day.
[00:08:42.180] - Gordon
Yep.
[00:08:42.180] - Taylor
Yeah, only two professional pantomimes still going.
[00:08:45.000] - Gordon
Well, we have an amateur pantomime in Purley, which is not too far from where we are, and they're not due to go on until next week. But they've cancelled. They've just decided it's not going to be possible for them to do the show. They have a lot less people involved in it, and they've just realised that if one person is unable to make it, the whole show has to close. We are lucky in the respect that we have eight children and two groups of eight children. We have five of the senior chorus, plus the main cast, five musicians. And again, if any of the chorus or the children or the musicians, if they weren't able to make it, well, we could still do a show.
[00:09:37.240] - Taylor
You could get by.
[00:09:37.240] - Gordon
It wouldn't be as good, obviously, because we've planned for them to be there, but we would still be able to perform a good show. If any of the cast went down. Well, that's a bit more difficult. So, you know. We are really...
[00:09:54.610] - Taylor
Script on stage.
[00:09:54.610] - Gordon
Yeah, well, people have learnt the script. That's right. It's very difficult just for someone else to stand in.
[00:09:59.210] - Taylor
I think that happened once, from what I remember.
[00:10:01.680] - Gordon
We have had someone stand in.
[00:10:03.730] - Taylor
People going on the stage holding...
[00:10:05.240] - Gordon
With a script. It's not as good. And to be honest, it's not how we would want our audience to see us, especially the last three performances, which are pretty much sold out. The Saturday, I say there's tickets, but the Saturday night has what, twelve tickets ish, I think at this point, something like that. So if you were thinking of coming, then make sure you're first in the queue basically, to make sure you get a ticket. There are still some for tonight, for Friday night. So again...
[00:10:38.360] - Taylor
If you're watching it on the Friday today when we go live.
[00:10:42.740] - Gordon
Yes. What is the date today? It is the 14th. So if you're watching this on the 14th January, you still have a chance to come and watch the show.
[00:10:51.290] - Taylor
If not, you're a bit late, but you can be early for next year.
[00:10:54.150] - Gordon
Exactly. Yes. Book early for next year.
[00:10:56.730] - Taylor
Or the year after, if you're watching it two years.
[00:10:58.850] - Gordon
Well, yeah, whatever the next January is to you, we are likely to still be doing it. This is our 82nd pantomime and they've been going since way before the war started. So, yeah, hopefully we'll still be going this time when you're watching this in the future. So that's it. I just wanted to sort of catch you up with why we didn't have one last week and what I've been up to, and it's just taking all my time at the moment. It's the only thing I'm thinking about. I'll come to more technical things maybe next week, because there's photography, there's videography, something I'll deal with next week because there's more tech involved with that. But that's enough for today.
[00:11:44.960] - Taylor
Exciting.
[00:11:45.820] - Gordon
So, yes, that's me done. Taylor, what would you like to talk about?
[00:11:49.450] - Taylor
So, before we kind of finished for Christmas until the new year for our podcast, I mentioned that I was working on OxyChangelog, which was a personal project that I was working on with my friend, and we launched it. I can't remember if we launched it before or if we were close to launching it. But it's in the future now and it's been launched. And it went really well. A lot of people really love the idea. A lot of people love the design, which is obviously all creds to Pedro. He did a great job there.
[00:12:23.530] - Gordon
Well done Pedro.
[00:12:23.530] - Taylor
Some people didn't understand it, which is understandable. Some people don't understand the point of...
[00:12:29.370] - Gordon
They didn't understand it and that's understandable. Hmmm.
[00:12:33.910] - Taylor
As in I can see from their point of view why they would think that.
[00:12:37.480] - Gordon
So they were thinking "why is there a whole website dedicated to things that change in Oxygen?" Yeah?
[00:12:42.950] - Taylor
Yeah. I think more for them, most of those people don't understand the point of community projects, open source, and just stuff that doesn't earn money directly. A lot of people have the mindset of, "if you're not doing it to earn money, what's the point?"
[00:12:57.370] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:12:57.960] - Taylor
For me, it was to have fun, try out new stuff, practise, learn. And also try and bring something that could be of use to other people. For example, the Oxygen just don't have a changelog all in one place. So it can be very, very difficult to actually find the information that you're after.
[00:13:20.240] - Gordon
Yeah. And search for it, even more importantly. Because if you think, "does Oxygen have this feature?" It's very difficult to actually find out, and you have to traipse through all of the change laws.
[00:13:30.790] - Taylor
Unless it's a major feature like a repeater for example, or something. You may not know if something's been fixed, or things like that. So we just thought it would be a nice way to show off what we can do and just help the community. If it helps at least one person, then that's the job done for me.
[00:13:49.120] - Gordon
I agree. Do you want to give the address so that anyone who's watching can go and look at it?
[00:13:53.280] - Taylor
So it's Oxychangelog.com
[00:13:55.140] - Gordon
And you're spelling Oxy O-X-Y.
[00:13:56.570] - Taylor
Yep. O-X-Y-C-H-A-N-G-E-L-O-G dot com, dot C-O-M. If you're gonna spell it out
[00:14:03.020] - Gordon
Yeah. I have to say, it's a great website. It's being manually updated at the moment, isn't it?
[00:14:10.350] - Taylor
So we have an automation that watches the RSS feed for the Oxygen website and watches for new posts inside of the category releases, which is where they put all of their releases.
[00:14:24.880] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:14:25.670] - Taylor
I then create a post just with the title of the release or the post that they've created. And I then email myself and Pedro to say there's a new release that's been posted.
[00:14:39.920] - Gordon
You automatically email yourself.
[00:14:41.670] - Taylor
Yes. It then gives us a link to say, "you can view the draft post here." We then just have to check the release, copy and paste the Changelog. Because the way that it's been output on Oxygen's website, you can't just copy the Changelog. It's not like any consistent, anything like that. So we have to just manually copy and paste it.
[00:15:02.060] - Gordon
So you can then style it.
[00:15:03.300] - Taylor
Yeah. But most of the stuff is kind of already in there and sorted. So that's kind of the website and the functionality and how it works.
[00:15:12.630] - Gordon
Fantastic. So if you're using Oxygen, this is a new resource you can go and have a look at. You probably already know about it, if you are on any of the Facebook groups, but if not, go and have a look. If you're not using Oxygen and you are using WordPress, it's something you should really have a look at. It's a very good builder, although it has got quite a steep learning curve, so you need to get into it. But once you do, it's very good and it's very efficient.
[00:15:41.480] - Taylor
Yeah. I mean, it gives you a lot of flexibility. If you're more of a developer, it gives you the power to do stuff that you would normally be able to do in a custom theme, while still retaining some of that builder wizzy with drag and drop that is easy to use and for speed and quick development. I still think it could be used by newer people that don't have as much experience, but it just means that you just become a better person and a better web designer/developer because you have to learn. But you also learn and understand more of the actual underlying concepts about how DIVs work, rather than calling them a 'container' or a 'column,' as most builders call them. So you actually get to terms with actual terminology of a website and the structure of it.
[00:16:28.840] - Gordon
Very good.
[00:16:30.550] - Taylor
So, yeah. And my kind of second /just little other bit of information for this week, is I have just upgraded my headphones, so I, for three, four years, maybe have used my Bose QC25 headphones, which are wired noise cancelling headphones, and they're probably the comfiest things I've ever worn. I wear them pretty much every single day for six plus hours at a time, very very easily. The only downside to the QC25s is that they're wired only, which is fine when you're sitting at your desk. But I have a standing desk, so I kind of like to stand up, being able to walk around. If I go to the kitchen and I take my laptop with me, I can walk around and make a coffee still without having to be attached. And so I invested in a new pair of QC35s, which is the model up from the ones I have. And these are Bluetooth, but also have a cable if you run out of charge. But, yeah, so these now give me the wireless capabilities while still retaining the noise cancelling that I absolutely love for both planes and, aeroplanes when holiday or abroad, but also having the good quality and just the comfiness of the headphones. I'm not sure what I'm doing with the current headphones, but I will find them a new home.
[00:17:59.870] - Gordon
Good. And I have to say, I've got my Bose noise cancelling headphones, which I think are QC15s.
[00:18:08.830] - Taylor
Which is the ones before mine.
[00:18:10.640] - Gordon
Yes.
[00:18:11.260] - Taylor
My original ones.
[00:18:12.230] - Gordon
So I bought those a long time ago now, and they were about £300 at the time. They were really expensive. But again, I use them a lot. And whenever we used to go on holiday and Taylor was a lot younger, in the aeroplane because of the loud noise, I used to put them on his ears and just turn on the noise cancelling so that his ears weren't hearing this really loud engine sound. And so one of the reasons I bought it was so I could listen to things on an aeroplane without the loud noise. And for the first sort of ten years of owning them, I didn't actually ever get to use them on an aeroplane because I always had, "dad, can I have your headphones, please?"
[00:18:58.270] - Taylor
And my girlfriend actually, when we drove up to Birmingham a couple of weeks ago during Christmas, my girlfriend asked if she could try them, and yeah I lost them for that trip. And I'm trying not to give in to let her use them more because I love them. But now I've got my own pair I can, if I give them to her if she wants them.
[00:19:24.310] - Gordon
Okay. So that's it from me.
[00:19:28.050] - Taylor
And from me as well.
[00:19:29.190] - Gordon
Thank you very much for joining us. I'm off to go and get stuff ready for Pantomime this evening, so thank you for watching. If you like what we do, please like, share and subscribe on YouTube and on Facebook.
[00:19:44.870] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk, to find all of our past episodes and have a look at the new colour scheme, our new redesigned, well not redesigned just updated, colours for the website.
[00:19:59.130] - Gordon
For season three.
[00:20:00.293] - Taylor
Which is green.
[00:20:00.590] - Gordon
So yes, that's it. We'll see you next week at one o'clock in the afternoon. Until then, my name's Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:20:08.420] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:20:11.040] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:20:11.550] - Taylor
Bye.
