Gordon has been rebuilding the Sanderstead Dramatic Club website, replacing a 10-year-old manual site – https://www.sdclub.org.uk

The new site runs on WordPress but is fully dynamic, pulling in shows, photos and awards automatically

Taylor and Gordon designed the site together in a single Saturday session for another group, ATG, which led Gordon to finally tackle his own

Using AI, Gordon extracted cast, crew and chorus names from an archive of programmes going back to 1907

Every member and every show now gets its own dynamically generated page

A new “Name That Face” feature lets viewers tag people in old photos, crowdsourcing identification

Suggestions are auto-approved once two people agree on a name, cutting down moderation work

The group’s next show runs in January, with tickets now on sale

Taylor has been building “HQ”, his own combined personal and business task management tool

It merges contacts, companies, projects and tasks into one system that can separate work and personal life when needed

Designed to fight decision paralysis by surfacing a maximum of 5 priority tasks at a time

An MCP integration lets Taylor manage tasks through natural language in Claude

Tasks left untouched for 7 days get flagged in a “Decide” section to snooze, complete or archive

Repeated snoozing is tracked so patterns of avoidance get flagged

A limit of 3 active personal projects at once stops Taylor starting too much at once

The system can filter to show only work or only personal tasks depending on context

Both agreed that “good enough is good enough” – starting imperfectly beats not starting at all

Building your own tools means full ownership of maintenance, hosting and security

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

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com
The Creative Tinker Website – https://www.thecreativetinker.com

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Youtube: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/youtube

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Severe PHP vulnerability patched this week, rated 9.2 for severity

The patch was released after an unofficial disclosure, leaving site owners to scramble with mitigations

Gordon’s am-dram play “A Murder in the Mine” sold out every performance, including an added dress rehearsal for turned-away fans

A three-act format: a staged murder and jewel theft, audience questioning of suspects, then the reveal

Cast had to improvise truthful answers on the spot without contradicting each other

Why Gordon does amateur dramatics – a group creative outlet compared to performing magic alone

Drama as a way to build public speaking confidence and improvisation skills for everyday life

An escape room challenge (phone call, song, interpretive dance) as an example of needing to just go for it

Taylor’s early public speaking struggles at BNI, from a silent first introduction to years of practice

Learning to pause instead of filling silence with ums and ahs, which builds authority

Why self-employed people especially need public speaking skills since there’s no PR team to rely on

Taylor has been tweaking his smart home automations after a year of living with the system

Motion-triggered warm lighting at night instead of a bright main light

Auto shut-off of lights and devices, door locking, and alarm arming when leaving the flat

A desk dashboard showing calendar, tasks and smart home status

Live traffic data calculating when to leave, with extra buffers for cold weather and iced windscreens

Returning to the gym three times a week with accountability partners for motivation

Finding that his home office, not David Lloyd’s, is still the most productive place to work

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

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com
The Creative Tinker Website – https://www.thecreativetinker.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook
Youtube: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/youtube

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Opening night of Gordon’s play – Taylor has been helping backstage, with a full update next week

Taylor has been sorting out his smart home with Home Assistant

Making the home feel smart – automations that work without needing to open a dashboard

Motion-controlled lighting, with guest and sleep modes to stop lights coming on when they shouldn’t

Using pen.dev to design a custom Home Assistant interface

Working out which controls need to be one tap away by noticing what you use most often

Local voice control, with commands that understand which room you’re in

A rotating desk display showing calendar events, tasks, door and window status, and the alarm

Countdowns for when to leave – traffic-aware travel times are still to be added

Automatically switching on a meeting light when Taylor is home, and turning everything off when he leaves

Gordon has been 3D printing good luck presents for his fellow cast members

Old, brittle filament breaking in the feed tubes and causing failed prints

Keeping filament dry – checking humidity and refreshing the silica gel beads in the AMS

Finding a way to reactivate the silica gel rather than throwing it away

Using ChatGPT to turn the successful process into a visual guide, saved in Evernote for next time

Documenting jobs you don’t do often so you don’t have to work them out again

SOPs – standard operating procedures – help you follow each step and avoid forgetting anything

Making processes available to the team so you aren’t the only person who knows how to do a task

Taylor recommends Layla at ProcessDriven for advice on documenting business processes – https://processdriven.co/

Keeping instructions visual, easy to find and updated when things change

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

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com
The Creative Tinker Website – https://www.thecreativetinker.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook
Youtube: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/youtube

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.