[00:00:09.040] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.310] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.630] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.370] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.240] - 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 over the last seven days. And welcome back.
[00:00:24.720] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:25.670] - Gordon
So first of all, any news from your end?
[00:00:28.450] - Taylor
No.
[00:00:28.720] - Gordon
No news from you? There's a new WordPress update which is due very soon. I'm not sure it's come out yet. I don't think it's come out yet, but it's due very soon. Big changes. So those who use WordPress, it's a builder as part of the core WordPress. So it's like a theme builder. So you don't have to have any separate theme builders. Your finger was very big there, Taylor. For those people listening on the podcast, we just had a thing that had to be taken off the screen. So yes, that's coming very soon. And when it does, I think it will make a big difference, don't you?
[00:01:13.510] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:14.280] - Gordon
Because a lot of people use theme builders, and if there's one built in, it's likely to gain traction just like Guttenberg did. So we shall see how that affects things. So shall I start this week?
[00:01:29.470] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:01:29.900] - Gordon
So my topic this week is having a good old clean out. So you can't see this, but just behind the camera, there is a ton of stuff in this room. And the reason for that is because recently I changed my car. And those who listen to this podcast will know the reasons why that is. But when you change a car, you take everything out of the old car. You put it all in a bag, you bring it into the house or into the carport in our case. And then you get a new car and you decide at that point it's a good idea to check what you've got before you put it back into the new car and find a new space for it, because I don't have as much space in the boot as I did in the last car, so I have to check it all. So that started things off. So I had a big bag of stuff which, most of it is stuff that I feel like I should have in the car, but I need to go through it and actually work out what I actually use. And have I used it in the last year, last 12 months? And if I haven't used it, well, the chances are I don't actually need it.
[00:02:45.300] - Taylor
Unless it's a breakdown kit.
[00:02:46.930] - Gordon
Well, yeah, breakdown kit. Yeah, I think you have to have a breakdown kit. A spare tyre and a jack. And in my new kit that I got, a kneeling pad and a light which goes on your head so you can see what you're doing. I don't think either of those are necessary, but they're nice to have. But I have all sorts of other things in my car, like spare magic, so that should I turn up somewhere and for whatever reason, I don't have my magic with me, gonna sneeze, excuse me. Pardon me and I apologise to those listening. So yes, in case I turn up to a gig, and I've heard horror stories about friends of mine or colleagues of mine that have been at a gig and they've gone from one gig to another gig, and when they get to the second gig, they realise they've left all their kit back at the first gig and it's too far away to go back and get it and then get back in time to start the second gig. So by having a small backup kit in the car, that's really handy. That's really useful. And even though I may not have used it in the last 12 months, I think it's something important to have. So that goes back in. But there's all sorts of other things. I've got bubble wands in there that are there in case I have a situation where I need it. There is situations where sometimes I have turned up at a party for children and we've been locked out of the hall. The person who's supposed to open it isn't there. They haven't turned up for whatever reason, and they might be late. And by the time we do get to go in, we're late starting and everything else. So by having this bubble wand in my car, I can make bubbles outside and keep the children entertained because there's going to be a load of them with their parents waiting to go in. And so that's again, something that I don't think I have used in the last 12 months, but it's there just in case. So there are certain things that I will definitely be putting back in the new car, and there are other things that I just won't. There's also seasonal things like scrapers, ice scrapers. Well, you don't need those all the time, and the chances are if you do need them, you're going to be at home. So have them stored somewhere at home. Having said that, an ice scraper is not very big. It's easy enough to find a space for it. But there are lots of other things. And this led on to my office as well. I came back from America with a few bits and pieces, and they didn't really have a home. And there were several other things that I've recently had that don't have a home. And so anything that didn't have a home, I brought into this room here. And my aim is to now go through things. Pretty much all of it is new. So it's all going to be kept. But it's just a matter of finding the right location for it, where it's going to be useful when I need it. There's some magic here; there are some books; there are some puzzles; there are birthday presents. There's all sorts of things here that I need to go through. And I think just going through things every so often, once a year at a minimum, is a really good thing because you'll find things that you just don't use. And it'll either get archived, as in put somewhere where it's not going to be taking up space that other things could be put into that space, or you're just going to get rid of it. And I think it's a good thing to do, just like we do digitally. So we get rid of files we don't need, we get rid of things we don't need on our website. We add things that we think we do need. We find spaces and homes for new things. I think we should do the same with physical objects as well. And my office currently is very tidy.
[00:06:47.620] - Taylor
Because everything's in here.
[00:06:48.560] - Gordon
Because everything's in here. But I will make sure that everything finds a home. And that way, I will keep a tidy office and it'll get messy again as things come in and things get put down and they get dealt with later, or they're things I'm going to deal with later. But at that point, that's fine. It's nice to just stop and take stock of everything you've got and get rid of things that you don't use, find spaces for things you are going to use, and archive things that you might use in the future.
[00:07:28.540] - Taylor
Cool.
[00:07:28.750] - Gordon
And I think we should look at that as a philosophy for life, don't you?
[00:07:35.360] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:07:36.400] - Gordon
So, Taylor, you weren't here last... Well, during the week, I say, you weren't here. You just disappeared and you were gone all night. Where were you?
[00:07:47.740] - Taylor
I went to a WordPress meet up. So this was down in Brighton. And yeah, I saw it on one of the meetup websites and thought that'd be quite interesting. Let me have a go. It looked like it was the first one in quite a while. And yeah, it was good fun. It was nice to talk to other people that were in the WordPress space. We had a whole range of people from different areas in terms of their skill levels and what they focused on, the type of person they were. So if they're more a designer or developer. And it was really interesting. Lots of people to talk to and find out more information.
[00:08:29.200] - Gordon
So there's lots of WordPress meetups all over the world all the time. So do you want to just take us through your experience of what this one was? I mean, you've given a very brief overview, but give us a little bit more information about how it worked. And I realise it was a social, wasn't it?
[00:08:46.790] - Taylor
Yes, it was more of a social this time, although in the future they want to do workshops and talks and things like that. But because it was the first one, they wanted to gauge who was coming, and also what people wanted to see and what people wanted to do.
[00:09:02.580] - Gordon
Okay. And this was in Brighton.
[00:09:04.730] - Taylor
It was indeed. It was a pub called the Caxton Arms.
[00:09:08.610] - Gordon
Okay. Always a good place to meet, in a pub.
[00:09:11.050] - Taylor
Yeah, it was down underneath the pub. There was a comedy room, which was quite cool. And it's just behind or just on a side road near Brighton Station. So it's quite central. And yeah, it was good. There was lots of different people, like I said, from different areas. And I got talking to this really nice guy who, we had quite a lot in common. And we spent most of the night just chatting to each other.
[00:09:38.100] - Gordon
And did you chat about differences in the way you work, or did you talk about software and plug-ins and that sort of thing? What was the conversation?
[00:09:49.530] - Taylor
When I was talking to this guy called Adam, we spoke a lot about the development side and experiences with clients and having silly requests and things like that that we get. And he showed me, he'd built a... It's only like temperature gauge thing. So he'd hooked up an arduino, similar to an arduino, with a temperature thermometer. And then he had an app or a website that he basically logged the temperature every single day or every couple of hours or whatever because he had medication in there. So he wanted to make sure that he could keep track of the temperature in the fridge.
[00:10:31.890] - Gordon
That's a good use. Yeah.
[00:10:32.960] - Taylor
And he built, it's very, very bare bones. It had a speedometer type thing where it had red, green, and things like that, of the right temperature and where it should be. Very interesting. It's very similar to what I do with my personal website where I track all of my stuff. And it was interesting to see how he had used his coding skills to build something that was useful. Gave me some few ideas of stuff that I could do. Again, I think would be useful and would be fun to learn.
[00:11:04.450] - Gordon
That's good. So how long did the event take?
[00:11:08.600] - Taylor
There was no set time. I think we were there for about three hours or so. And at that point, I was hungry, so I left and went to get food.
[00:11:17.230] - Gordon
Disappeared to get some food. But you didn't come back. You stayed overnight.
[00:11:22.070] - Taylor
Yeah, I thought that I was going to be tired, which I ended up being tired. And so I stayed over in the marina. There's a hotel there, which was very nice. Got to overlook the sea. Yeah, just had a bit of time away, really.
[00:11:36.780] - Gordon
It's nice to have a job that we do, where you could just go to an event, maybe an hour away and just stay overnight if you want to. It's a nice thing and you don't have to be back for work because you can do work while you're there.
[00:11:51.070] - Taylor
Exactly.
[00:11:51.070] - Gordon
Which is great. So are you going to be going to more of these meetups?
[00:11:57.970] - Taylor
So they run this, they're going to be running this Brighton one every month, and I probably won't go every month because it's quite a way to go. And it's also quite expensive because parking is obviously not cheap there.
[00:12:12.360] - Gordon
Parking in Brighton is terrible. It used to be really good, but now it's just horrid.
[00:12:17.240] - Taylor
So I may go every once in a while. But if there's ones closer to me then, ones in London, that's obviously would be ideal. So I may have a look and see if I can find any.
[00:12:26.540] - Gordon
Yeah, good idea. So a meet up is a good place to meet like minded people and talk about the things that you are doing, the problems you're having, and discuss it with people who understand what you're talking about, basically. It's like a magic club for magicians, really. We go and talk to each other. And if we're working on something, we try and find people who've got experience with it and ask their opinions and show them what we've got and things like this. So it's a nice way to share ideas and get feedback, really. But in real life as opposed to just online.
[00:13:10.240] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:13:10.830] - Gordon
So yeah, good. Anything else you want to say about that?
[00:13:13.840] - Taylor
I don't think so. Just if you can find one in your area, then I definitely highly recommend them.
[00:13:18.600] - Gordon
So this one was actually shown on the WordPress News widget, I guess, on the main WP menu, WP Admin menu, so on the dashboard. So if you keep an eye on that, so whenever you log into WordPress, into the back end, you'll see a little news... Widget is a good word, I think. It's a widget. And it'll tell you latest news. And one of the ones that came up was this Brighton meet up, and I sent it to Taylor, and next thing I knew, he was telling everyone he was going. So it was good. So find a meet up near you. See if you can go and talk to other people. It's great to take your laptop and say, "Look, I'm having a problem with this," or "I really want to do this. Has anyone got any ideas?" Plus, if they do not just a social and they have a speaker, or they have a show and tell type thing, you could end up learning an awful lot just from turning up for one evening.
[00:14:25.770] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.
[00:14:26.730] - Gordon
So look out for that. I think that's everything that I have to say for today.
[00:14:32.890] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:14:33.670] - Gordon
Quite a short episode for us, but we have lots of things brewing at the moment. There's certain projects that we have on the go that I'm sure we'll talk about in the future. One thing I can say is that I mass launched my video library over the last week. I sent lots of messages out to people and gave them access to videos and was gauging how the feedback was coming back and if people were having problems. And we found a major issue, which we, well, I say we, Taylor fixed, which is great. And that required refactoring some code just to stop a conflict that was happening, which unless you do these things and you test it in the real world, you quite often miss those. You can't really figure those out before you launch something. Sometimes you just have to be on hand, ready to jump in, dive in, and fix something when you discover there is an issue. So that was very good. And Taylor jumped on that for me, which was very kind of him. But that is going really well. So we will find out how the next project goes. Last weekend, I filmed a dance school show, which is a big project I do every year. So I've now got that to edit. And then we're going to be using the new distribution model for distributing it to all of the dance school students and parents. So yeah, that will be a big test.
[00:16:17.570] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:16:17.570] - Gordon
We will see how that goes. So that's everything from me.
[00:16:21.730] - Taylor
And as well from me.
[00:16:23.420] - Gordon
So thank you so much for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe. We are on Facebook and on YouTube.
[00:16:31.280] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.
[00:16:36.860] - Gordon
So until next week, 1 o'clock on Friday afternoon when we go live, we will see you then. My name is Gordon, I am from Drayson Design.
[00:16:46.550] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:16:49.720] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:16:50.540] - Taylor
Bye.
