Overall I'm sceptical about gen AI, but I have found it really helpful for troubleshooting some specific IT issues this week. As a kind of "have you also thought about this?" engine it has its place. But then I work for myself so don't have an IT team or indeed any colleagues to badger!

Finally got around to adding a Bluesky social media icon to my website! Made use of a guide I wrote just over a year ago... thank you, previous me www.technicallyproduct.co.uk/social-media...

My watchword for 2026 is going to be 'balance'. I had a busy year work-wise in 2025, for which I'm grateful, but it threw everything else off kilter slightly. Time to give my family, friends, health and home a bit more TLC!

The tune to 'Somewhere Only We Know', but with the words 'Eating More Prosciutto'

I've been trying to work out what bugs me about AI-generated content on LinkedIn, and I've finally realised... it's too staccato. It all reads like this to me: Something something X. Not just X, but also Y. No active verb. Not A, not B, but C. Because when you C, D. Noun, noun, adjective noun. X.

For the data folk out there doing all the thankless work that keep companies afloat: - cleaning dirty data - maintaining leaky pipes - building out dashboards so ppl can export to Excel - explaining why reports don't match, etc etc I see you. I appreciate you. You are better than any AI tool.

Every year I listen to my Spotify Wrapped and think "wow, I've got great taste." Somehow it's always a surprise that I like the same music as myself

OK, I've just informed my clients of a rate increase for next year. After five years of freelancing, this is the first time I've done it in an organised way across all my clients - until now it has been rather ad hoc. #freelancelife

Harnham's long-standing 'Data & Analytics' salary guide is now called the 'Data & AI' salary guide. Sign of the times! www.harnham.com/data-ai-sala...

For me, this is low-key horrific. I want to leave a review by writing a review! Probably "Form" is the least bad option but it still forces me to follow their preferred structure, not my own.

Just spent five minutes totally failing to remove a stray right border on a cell in a spreadsheet. Turns out it was a left border on the adjacent cell #genius

Just emailed my local public library gently suggesting that they don't need to stock 59 James Patterson novels and might want to consider a wider variety of authors. The library is literally one room in a sports centre and the Pattersons take up an entire shelf of it. Is the librarian a super fan?

One of my biggest Windows peeves is being unable to rename a folder because a file within that folder is open. Is that fixed in Windows 11? Seems doubtful

I love email personalisation, it makes me feel so valued

Which one is more English?

Just thinking about these lines in Yeats' poem 'The Second Coming': The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Sounds an awful lot like the Dunning–Kruger effect - though preceding it by 80 years! Perhaps we should be talking about the Yeats effect instead

Thanks goodness the jewels were priceless. Imagine if they'd stolen something valuable!

I had high expectations for the Gartner hype cycle, but I soon got disillusioned with it. I suppose it has its uses though

The word 'unpublished' is weird. It usually means 'not yet published' but can also mean 'removed'. I think we should all adopt the word 'depublished' for content that has been removed!

Finishing my week by sending out my 200th invoice as a freelancer. It's nice to celebrate these little landmarks!

Here's one for @graphcrimes.bsky.social. Without a label on the Y axis, it took me way too long to work out that it is showing me 'knife offences in schools per 100,000 people'. And wouldn't 'per 100,000 pupils' be a more useful metric?

Confused myself with the item "trim bear" on my to-do list. Either my beard is too long or I am off into the woods with my trimmer and a jar of honey

Apparently, it's bad luck to mention a "MacBook" in a software company. You have to call it "the Scottish laptop".

'Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP' is a great, if unimaginatively named, WordPress plugin for implementing schema. Here's how to use it to add the 'sameAs' property to your author schema - linking to your profiles elsewhere on the web and helping search engines understand who you are.

I did my first Parkrun today! Apparently "VM" stands for "Veteran Male", not sure how I feel about that

Does adding schema markup have SEO benefits outside of rich results? I mean, is there any SEO benefit to using schema that isn't on this list? developers.google.com/search/docs/...

Sometimes, when a server in a cafe asks me if I have any allergies, I tell them I'm allergic to cats (which is true). Some are flummoxed, others take it in their stride. I just got the best reply yet - a very stern: "We do NOT dunk cats in our milk, sir."

I struggle to write my 'out of office' as a freelancer. I don't actually work in an office, I'm not on leave (as no one has authorised my absence), and I'm not on vacation. I'm just... not working for a few days

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

I made some mint tea from the mint growing wild in my garden. I know it's an invasive weed but now I feel like a witch and I am wondering what other potions I can brew

Last week I had a medical issue and needed to see a GP. I got an appointment the same day. The GP referred me to a physio - who I saw the next day. By the time I got home, my personalised treatment plan was waiting in my email inbox. One of the best experiences with the #NHS I've ever had.

To understand recursion, first one must understand recursion

If you're a blogger or any other type of creator with a website, I'd recommended adding a 'buy me a coffee' widget. It isn't a big money spinner (at least not for me), but when someone takes the time to thank you like this it's an amazing feeling. Kudos to everyone who supports independent creators.

#GA4: It took me a moment to work out why these sessions with source 'Direct' and medium 'Direct' were being placed in the Unassigned channel! And I still have no idea why they are Direct / Direct and not (direct) / (none)

My guide to benchmarking in GA4 is now live on the Wix SEO Hub! With this guide I wanted to go beyond explaining how benchmarking works and focus on how to use it effectively for your business.

I have to say that the Royal Institution is a fantastic venue. And very fitting in a way for an analytics conference! Nice choice, Mixpanel

I'm off to MXP London 2025 (Mixpanel's customer conference) tomorrow. Looking forward to it too! Anyone else I know going? #Mixpanel

Google Ad Manager is threatening me now. "Remove dimension 'Week', or else..."

I've just had a new client accept a proposal I submitted back in February! They had the decency to ask whether the cost had gone up in the meantime, which I thought was considerate

One of my clients is getting a lot of (presumably bot) traffic from Singapore with the resolution 1344x1344. It's even showing up in Google Analytics. Anyone else having the same issue? I wonder why the strange resolution? #GA4

The bed shop near me is having a big spring sale. I won't be buying anything, as I like my beds to have regular sized springs

Only a few hours left to enter the free ticket ballot for #BrightonSEO and MeasureFest UK! Hope to see you in Brighton in October...

I'm already tired of the media calling this a U-turn. Is the government getting rid of means testing for the winter fuel payment and making it a universal benefit again? No! So it's not a U-turn. This is a post about headlines, not politics :)

Today I wrote a small Python program for my daughter to help her practise the spellings on her school spelling list. She was delighted! It's easy to forget that work skills can be useful in everyday life too. And that what we take for granted can seem like magic to the people closest to us.

Just two men? I'd heard there were tree fellers

I really wish it was possible to rename tabs in #GA4 Explorations. Having 'Funnel exploration 1', 'Funnel exploration 2' etc is not very helpful for my clients

If money can expire, it isn't money. I don't know what PayPal has sent me but it isn't £5 GBP

Just working on a GA4 setup where the 'view_search_results' enhanced measurement event triggers whenever a user uses the pagination on the search results. One to watch out for in future as it certainly inflates the event count!

One common piece of advice for freelancers is "raise your rates!" but no one ever talks about how that affects your client mix. I probably could raise my rates, but it would mean replacing my small business clients with more agency and enterprise work. I'm not sure I want that as I enjoy the variety

Analytics folk with WooCommerce experience! What's better, the free WooCommerce Google Analytics plugin or GTM4WP? I've only used the latter and that was a few years ago