This Week with Taylor & Gordon

Hosted by Taylor and Gordon Drayson

Business Entrepreneurship Marketing NewsInterviews guests

Website RSS feed

Episodes

200

Latest episode

Jul 2026

Language

EN-GB

About the show

A weekly vidcast/podcast for small businesses

Listen to episodes

60 recent

July 31, 2026Episode 25522 min

Season 7 - Episode 255

Unified Calendar When sharing a calendar with people it gets difficult to manage When you have group activities there are duplicate entries Creating a custom calendar that hides duplicate entries Create different custom calendars as required Writing notes in events could still be a challenge Keeping event details in the diary where you would expect to find them Concept is working – control panel coming Home Assistant – Busy Bar Creating notifications on the screen in case I miss the audio announcements Writing apps for the device – not available yet – but will be great when it is Making Instagram followers as an app Dashboard is a real mess in Home Assistant – needs organising Big job ahead of me Decided on the look and style, just need to work out the layout now Dark theme as a test New people sensor to show who is home and who isn’t – added thumbnail images and coloured borders Cards should grow when it is clickable Layout and figuring out the way things are organised Integration to show which bins are due How is Taylor getting on with Home Assistant Lots of decisions to be made to make it autonomous Making it more informational rather than controls Showing information when it is relevant 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.

July 24, 2026Episode 25419 min

Season 7 - Episode 254

Code Workflow Touching the same files with different agents confuses things Using worktrees and separate branches Reviewing code to make sure they are as expected Too many files to check easily 20 issues can be separate and open a new branch for each one, set up an agent and then merge Paid vs Free GitHub Account .env security Busy Bar – https://busy.app/ Pomodoro Timer with a display Developer toolkit Connects to Matter and Wifi Turn on Focus Mode on your mobile when you are busy Have it show you when something has completed using Home Automation If it makes your life better then the high cost may be worth it for you Next meeting shown on the display Mono screen on the back We will report back 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.

July 17, 2026Episode 25320 min

Season 7 - Episode 253

A hot week End of the school year shows Zen Browser – https://zen-browser.app/ A calmer internet – reimagined ways to browse the internet Left sidebar tabs – keeping your browsing area clean Taylor didn’t like Chromium based browsers and this one uses the Firefox framework Three different frameworks available – Chromium, Webkit and Mozilla Browsers adopting newer technologies Build your website based on the browser that your visitors are likely to be using Panto auditions – I will be playing the part of Dame in January 2027 Before that I am in “Murder in the Mine” with ATG Booked Solid OS has a new owner, right after I purchased it Collect, triage and draft replies for emails Non-birthday parties don’t currently have a follow up sequence so Booked Solid OS could deal with those Communicating with regular customers, keep you in their mind for other events If you don’t manage to book one year then they may get someone else and stick with them, losing an annual gig, which isn’t good Make sure AI keeps on top of these Nurturing relationships, check in on them Keeping track of when you last spoke to each of them 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.

July 10, 2026Episode 25213 min

Season 7 - Episode 252

Another Hot Week I created a song about the heat – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f7HVHCe88w&t=13s Historical Data – backdating data for the new personal website Finding data from the past – flights for example Going through emails of the past for flight details Also, Events, theatre shows, football matches, and other trips Way Back Machine is good for some of these things Piecing information together from many sources Booked Solid – a service built on top of Claude for booking shows Purchased so I can use it to find out what other users are charging, checking emails, Facebook and Messenger for enquiries Answering them by creating replies You tell it all about your business and it learns and grows Desktop app taking over from terminal version Early stages, and the price has jumped up from $297 to $2500 for lifetime use AI to assist with bookings is an interesting use case. We will see where it goes 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.

July 3, 2026Episode 25121 min

Season 7 - Episode 251

New Tools purchased Fanttik Slim V8 Apex Car Vacuum – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D8T3LTNN Great for the car to get down the sides of the seats Hose attachment great to get into the 3d printer Can be used for keyboards and electronic devices Fanttik F2 Master Mini Cordless Rotary Tool – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0F3CPRZXW Lots of attachments for drilling, sanding, polishing etc. Perfect for post-processing 3d prints Making what you do even better – improving all the time Video of recent party which came out great Updating promotional photos on a regular basis Personal Website – next version Decided on Laravel and Vue.js Lots of syncing which can break the site very easily Thinking about the structure better Better analysis and stats in real time Data Stories which are specific articles looking at the data Tracking all the fuel costs for the car Making data meaningful Knowing what you want to achieve with the data Seeing the changes over time and why the changes happened Catch problems before they become a problem Making a decision on how the data is presented and how you can search through it Target Audience is Taylor – and no-one else Adding redundancy with the imports to check everything is being brought in 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.

June 26, 2026Episode 25026 min

Season 7 - Episode 250

Very hot week Celebrating 250 episodes of This Week With Statistics for the podcast Episode 1, 24th April 2000 Keeping a record of what we have been up to Total run time Shortest and Longest episode Average length, Average time between episodes Number of episodes per year We outlived the pandemic which was the reason for starting Health Kit for the podcast Transcripts and thanks to the lady behind them – Hayley Backdating the transcripts to episode 1 Guests on the show Planning for the 500th episode New personal website redesign in progress 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.

June 19, 2026Episode 24920 min

Season 7 - Episode 249

News – Apple WWDC happened, which means new software beta’s and an insight on new AI features Learning a New Skill – 3D Modelling Huge subject to learn Personal version of Fusion Metal bathroom holder needing to be modelled and printed in plastic Simple model, but there were lots of measurements to get right Didn’t have the bottles to go in, so had no idea if they were going to fit Took a photo and calibrated it when bringing it into Fusion, scaling correctly Callipers to the rescue It made a block so needed to create an offset and extruding that instead Adding fillets – rounding off Then print and hope Printed perfectly first time – and got sent a nice picture to show me the bottles fitted A success helps to push me forward Small steps at a time when looking at a new skill Finding skills to learn is scary but very worthwhile Building a form Migrating a website to a new framework, and rebuilding a crutial form Standalone app to deal with all forms in the future Setting a foundation and building on it as new requirements come along Passing data into the forms from browsing history Split testing included in the building process Changing things one at a time to increase conversions Testing and then re-testing Vue.js for the frontend to add interactivity 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.

June 12, 2026Episode 24819 min

Season 7 - Episode 248

New location, Gordon’s Office We went to Wordcamp Europe in Poland, Krakow European Wordcamp is the biggest of the conventions Reasons for going – networking with friends and colleagues Theme this year seemed to be AI Connecting WordPress using MCP to Claude Using AI to build pages, perform WordPress operations, correct grammar, create images, pretty much everything AI is good at Need to have a good understanding of what is happening so you can check it Four floors in the convention centre – live transcription and translations this year. Two huge rooms for lectures Food, drinks and snacks always available Evening parties – drinking and socialising WP Umbrella – great way to manage your websites – https://wp-umbrella.com/ Great country – Perogi was a favourite at meal times Lots of things to see Much cheaper than Switzerland last year Salt Mine visit was great – seeing all the salt sculptures Visit to Auschwitz – which was interesting and harrowing A good rounding off from my Anne Frank experience Rooms of shoes, hair, luggage, pots and pans Next year is in Malaga – a week earlier than this year Details at: https://europe.wordcamp.org/2027/ 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.

May 29, 2026Episode 24718 min

Season 7 - Episode 247

News – AI is created by a machine, so is not owned by anyone! Archiving Documents – for personal and business purposes Making searching easy and have it bring up relevant documents MCP server – to work with Evernote using AI on a CLI AI will create a context for the document – notes summarising the content Adding manual tags will work well but adding tags by AI makes things even better ScanSnap scanner is a hardware scanner and creates pdf files and uploads to Evernote Trix – Childrens Entertainer’s Convention 1.5 days convention Keeping up with new trends and ideas for the work I do Seeing whats new to purchase for shows The more experienced you have, the more careful you are with purchases Meeting people I know and those I haven’t yet met is the main reason I go Two hour Parties aren’t a thing overseas Great cabaret by Spencer Jones Next year – 2027 – will be the last convention Numbers have been dropping, which makes it difficult to pay costs and make a profit Loads of time and effort spent on these things What will take the place of Trix??? 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.

May 15, 2026Episode 24615 min

Season 7 - Episode 246

Show week Sorting out collection of props – old and more recent – some valuable, some not Spreadsheeting all the boxes Printing a Book Box with a living hinge for the cast Running out of filament at one point Not a great deal done on a show week Very tiring Waiting for Ikea to send replacement box lids still Noted plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/noted/ Adding notes that will remind you how to do things in the admin on a website you haven’t been to for 6 months Taylor had a framework he wanted to test out and took what Kyle had done and enhanced it Created a new version with a settings panel now Pin notes was a suggestion that was added, along with others Adding note to blocks Role permissions for adding notes Giving back to the community Small plugin that does one job really well Dashboard widget for home screen No show next week as Gordon is away at Trix 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.