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

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.

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.

pen.dev – https://pen.dev

Figma alternative – which connects to agents and MCP

Creating components

Thinking about the UI

Starting with the look of the finished product

AI makes people think less

Keeping control of the project

Speeds up progress

It has access to your codebase and can build factually

Checking accessibility

Building in vector – makes it easier to build the project

BYOK – Bring Your Own Key

Free and Paid options – 5 agent days for free per month

Really clever pricing model

Once the design is done the coding doesn’t need to ask as many questions

Cloud Claude – need to look into it – https://code.claude.com/docs/en/claude-code-on-the-web

Claude Mods is brand new – https://www.claudemod.com/

Create mods that run within Claude

Examples – Progress bar for Claude steps – see how far it is along

What’s Next – suggest 3 things you can do next

Cache Control – 1 hour server side cache

Create context handover, clearing the chat and adding handover

Video with some good Claude Mods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5JSvXig3Ig&t=333s

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.

Murder in the Mine

The audience get to ask questions of the cast to figure out who did it

Recording the lines to then listen to it

ChatGPT was brought into service to fix issues

I needed a personal mp3 with just my cue lines and my lines so I could listen just mine

It suggested a recording with gaps the length of my line to allow me to speak it

I ended up with two versions with the line and without, adding a gap

Tip: Tell AI not to cut off words at the cut

I was surprised that AI was able to do this – however it worked really well

What else can it do that you don’t already know about

Flat cleaning and organisation

Neat workspaces are supposed to give you more productivity – not sure it that is true

Water Softener installed – helps with cleaning, keeps your pipes clear of limescale

Less detergent needed when washing

Drinking water, when you are not used to it ,shouldn’t be softened – leave it as a bypass

Taylor’s soft water has an app which you can bring data into Home Assistant

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.

Waveshare ESP32 -C6 – a small low-cost, low-power system on a chip microcontroller with WiFi and Bluetooth

It has a 1.47″ screen, and needs USB C plugged in for power

Claude was then given access and it flashed the software I designed onto it

Spark Graph to see Solar Generation vs House Load

Also purchased an ESP32 JC243W328C 2.8″ touchscreen

Printed 3D cases for both of them – once again no battery so needs plugging in

Small one was used for Solar Generation details at a glance

Larger one for a Dashboard of sorts that shows me Home Assistant details

Showing main details for the rooms in the house and the family members that are in or out

They can be programmed to show whatever you need or want

YouTube video that started me off – https://youtu.be/Zvb01TRY6UY

ESP32-C6, 1.47″ screen on Amazon – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DS9VSD9W

ESP32 – 2.8″ touch screen – JC2432W328C – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D5H84RDB

ESP32-S3 Round Touch Display – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DMJZPH2R

Reactions, Comments and Web mentions on Taylor’s Website

23 Days work – the scope keep changing and expanding

Adding emoji, likes and mentions to each activity

Pulling in from other apps around the web like Strava etc.

Thinking through mentioning other people or articles, including his own

Scope creep is not normally great for developers

Go take a look to see on his website: https://taylordrayson.com

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.

The jumper is on, it’s getting colder.

Spatie / Bloom – GitHub repository

Worktrees in parallel

Setup and startup scripts

Icons showing the states

Keep an eye on all projects

Open Source – free to use

Limitations – Herd app didn’t work due to hard coding

Devs fixed the issue

Agents able to now view their work and check it

Lots of alternatives, but this is being used by the company developing it so it should continue development

Spatie / Bloom – https://github.com/spatie/bloom

Apple News – September Announcements

iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max announced

I have been upgrading every 2 years, and so am looking at the 18 Pro

Look after the iPhone so you get a better trade in value

Trade in is safer than selling it privately

AirPods 5 and Apple Watch 12 and Ultra 4, plus the big reveal which looks interesting but not something I want to purchase at this time

Making sure you know is available and what they can do

Researching the upgrades to see what benefit I will get

Knowing if the upgrade will do what you want in the future

Software updates that give you new functionality

Checking software compatibility so you don’t have to downgrade

Know the capabilities of your existing and next gen hardware and software

I’ll let you know what I decide

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.

Getting Back To Normal

Christmas, Summer Holiday, Easter – normal schedules change

Everyone is now back and things are going back to normal

Available for Events for adults – https://www.pipkennedy.co.uk

Busy Bar now shows me shows that are happening that day

Lots of backups to make sure I don’t miss a show

Making Tax Digital is taking me more time than expected as I had to move to a new application

Matching transaction between accounts, has caused issues when re-importing

Do you have seasonal times like this?

Life Characters to personal website

Including pets, places and people

Adding tags so you can see interactions with these entities

Framework has been created nothing showing on the website yet

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.