![\"Framed](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/beatles-night-out-tower-ballroom-poster.jpg\")
My gran left me this poster: The Beatles at the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton, Friday 17 August 1962. Tickets 5/-. Licensed bar “applied for”, so a gamble from the start.
\n
It was the night after Pete Best got sacked. The band had no drummer, so a bloke from The Big Three filled in, and Ringo’s first official gig was the next night. “Beatles’ Night Out” was really “Beatles’ Night Without A Drummer”.
\nThen I looked up what these go for.
\nA poster from that autumn’s Tower Ballroom Arts Ball was estimated at £15,000 to £18,000 at Bonhams. A Little Richard night there sold for $14,700 with a corner missing. One dealer says they’d pay £8,000 to £10,000 for the April 1962 gig. A Cavern Club poster made £27,500.
\nMy first thought wasn’t what to spend it on. It was whether my home insurance covered “a Beatles poster that might be worth a small car”.
\nThen I looked closer. It’s a 1997 reprint, worth about a tenner.
\nInsurance enquiry cancelled. It’s still on my wall with a cracking story, and I’m now the proud owner of a 29-year-old reprint of a 64-year-old gig.
\n", "date_published": "2026-11-14T13:18:00Z", "tags": [] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/2026-11-11-1255/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/2026-11-11-1255/", "title": "I’m quite happy with this Claude automation", "summary": "I’m quite happy with this Claude automation I’ve configured on my blog. Every wed morning, it runs an audit of packages, updates and creates a PR for me to approve. I’m not the best at maintaining my...", "content_html": "I’m quite happy with this Claude automation I’ve configured on my blog. Every wed morning, it runs an audit of packages, updates and creates a PR for me to approve. I’m not the best at maintaining my 11ty sites so at least this should be one less (boring) thing to do.
\nhttps://github.com/si/11ty/pull/110
\n", "date_published": "2026-11-11T12:55:00Z", "tags": [] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/arss-app-eight-years-in-a-day/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/arss-app-eight-years-in-a-day/", "title": "aRSS app: an eight-year-old idea, built in a day", "summary": "Back in 2018 I wrote a README for a social-style RSS reader with a cheeky name and never built it. This week, with a nudge from Tim Berners-Lee, some help from Claude and a £1 domain, it went from that README to a working app with its own site in under 24 hours.", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/arss-timeline-desktop.jpg", "content_html": "In August 2018 I wrote a README for an app called aRSS - "a Really Simple Syndication app". Yes, it's pronounced the way you think. That was rather the point.
\nThe idea was a feed reader that felt like a social timeline, pulling in your friends' blogs instead of whatever an algorithm fancied showing you. Twitter was taking one of its turns for the worse, Aral Balkan had just written about reclaiming RSS, and I got as far as a list of ideas, a list of open questions and a "who we need" section asking for designers and engineers.
\nThen nothing. For eight years. The repo had eight commits, all of them to the README.
\nThis week it became a real thing. First line of code on Tuesday night, a working app with its own website by Wednesday afternoon.
\nNot the idea - that's almost word for word what I wrote in 2018. What changed is that I could describe it to Claude and get working software back, instead of needing the free evenings I never had.
\nThe nudge came from a book. I recently finished Tim Berners-Lee's This Is for Everyone, and in it he talks about RSS as a fantastic standard for sharing content - simple, open, and owned by nobody. He also points out that podcasting is built on it. Every podcast you've ever subscribed to is an RSS feed with audio attached, which is why you can listen in any app you like.
\nReading the person who invented the web be that enthusiastic about a format most people think died with Google Reader was all it took. The old ideas came straight back, along with a few new ones.
\nThe first version landed in a single sitting: a small Node server, a SQLite file, and a scheduler that checks each feed as often as you tell it to. No accounts, no build step, nothing to sign up for. It runs on my own machine.
\nIt worked, but it looked like every other feed reader - a sidebar and a list of headlines. So the next morning I described what I'd actually had in my head all along: the good bits of old Twitter, and what Bluesky and Mastodon have been trying to get back to.
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/arss-timeline-desktop.jpg\")
Each post has the site's favicon as a round avatar, the site name where a username would be, a big title, and the first 140 characters of the post. Like the good old days. If the post has a featured image, it sits underneath.
\nThere's no ranking, no "for you", no suggested anything. It's everything you follow, newest first, and when you reach the bottom you've caught up. That's it. That's the whole algorithm.
\nAnything with a feed works, which turns out to be most things: blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, Substack newsletters. Click an avatar and you see just that site's posts, a bit like visiting a profile.
\nIt squeezes down nicely to a phone too:
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/arss-timeline-mobile.jpg\")
\n A few smaller touches got added along the way:
\nIn that 2018 README I'd noted that arss.app would cost about £11.23 a year. Eight years on I finally bought it, and it cost me a quid.
\n\narss.app is now a one-page site explaining what it is and how to run it, which Claude also put together and deployed. The cover image at the top of this post is what you'll find there.
\nI didn't write the code. I'll be straight about that. What I did was say what I wanted, look at what came back, and say what was wrong with it.
\nSome of that was taste - "make it more like a timeline", "put the favicon in a circle". Some of it was real-world mess that only shows up when you point it at real feeds: one with bare ampersands that isn't valid XML, another returning a 404 that took the whole server down with it. Each got fixed, with a test, in minutes.
\nFrom the first line of code to the app, the website, an icon and an MIT licence was about 20 hours, and I slept through a fair chunk of them.
\nI've had this idea since 2018. The thing stopping me was never the idea.
\nThis is an early, minimal version, and deliberately so. I wanted something running that I could use myself every day before deciding what it needs next, instead of guessing.
\nSo there's plenty missing. That 2018 README also wanted posting, resharing and comments, none of which exist yet. The list has only grown since:
\nI'll see which of the rest still feel like good ideas after a few weeks of actually using it.
\nIt's open source and you host it yourself, so your reading list stays yours:
\nYou'll need Node, and about a minute. Paste in a feed URL and you're off.
\nIt's early days, but my friends' blogs are all in one place again, in the order they were written, and it already feels more like the internet I signed up for.
\nIf you've got a blog with a feed, tell me and I'll follow you. Chronologically.
\n", "date_published": "2026-11-11T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["side-projects","rss","ai","open-source"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/2026-11-08-2011/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/2026-11-08-2011/", "title": "Thoroughly enjoyed the George Michael Faith tour", "summary": "Thoroughly enjoyed the George Michael Faith tour movie with Mrs J this afternoon. I'm a life long fan of his music so it was highly indulgent and the footage they managed to pull together was...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/george-michael-faith-tour-cinema-ticket.jpg", "content_html": "Thoroughly enjoyed the George Michael Faith tour movie with Mrs J this afternoon. I'm a life long fan of his music so it was highly indulgent and the footage they managed to pull together was incredible, such high fidelity and so immersive.
\n![\"Cinema](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/george-michael-faith-tour-cinema-ticket.jpg\")
Weirdly rewarding to get feedback from my mum on my YouTube series (playlist). Six points, including 'too quiet on one', 'more humour please' and a suggestion to cover old-school KPI traffic lights. She also subscribed for the first time. Favourite subscriber.
\n![\"Phone](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/mum-youtube-feedback.jpg\")
How can airlines like Ryanair expect older passengers to go digital-only with boarding passes?
\nI've just helped my in-laws check in for their trip to Pisa, shown them how to use the app, and paid a premium so they could check in early. They were worried they'd be unable to check in for the return flight while away.
\nWho's signing off these mandatory paperless experiences? Digital by default is fine; digital only isn't. If a good chunk of your customers can't use it without help, that's a design failure, not a customer failure.
\nIt's something I'll be keeping in mind in my new role at Warner Hotels.
\n", "date_published": "2026-11-01T14:42:00Z", "tags": [] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-44/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-44/", "title": "WeekNotes 2026-44", "summary": "A quieter week on holiday at Disneyland Paris, a date night with Chris Ramsey, HF347 with Sarah Jae, mobile fixes on the PETALS site, a bigger Micro section, and habits week on week.", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/disneyland-halloween-festival.webp", "content_html": "A quieter week, with a holiday at Disneyland Paris, a date night with Chris Ramsey and HF347 going out on Friday.
\nThis was a quieter week, as we went on holiday to Disneyland Paris with friends and family, so all the updates have been around that.
\nIt was a lovely time away, and I really enjoyed seeing the little ones (and the big ones) enjoy themselves. We also managed to hack the system with four rides in the final 40 minutes of the day, while everyone else was getting ready for the (mediocre) fireworks and lights display.
\n![\"A](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/disneyland-halloween-festival.webp\")
\n ![\"Two](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/disneyland-frozen-land.webp\")
\n ![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/disneyland-castle.webp\")
\n On Saturday night we went to see Chris Ramsey live at De Montfort Hall in Leicester. It was 26 years since our first kiss, so it was a date out.
\nHe was very funny. He shared stories he can't share on Shagged Married Annoyed (one of our favourite podcasts), and I can't even share them here, for potential libel. Needless to say, he tapped a nerve with parenting privileged kids, Ofsted and a probable autism condition, with a hat tip to Rightmove and a deep love for his soul mate.
\nHere's a photo of that first kiss, with a little ChatGPT restoration from the original faded print.
\n![\"A](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/first-kiss-restored.webp\")
HF347 with Sarah Jae went out on Friday, a set made up entirely of tunes released this year. Crazy P's "Pawa" vocal dub sets the tone, Rocco Universal's "Space Chakra" and "Mutiny on the Sex Raft" get weird in the best way, and Purple Disco Machine's "Disco Cherry" lands right on time. It runs to 1h 2m. Sarah Jae is playing Fabric in London on 21 November for the Fump 15th anniversary.
\n![\"HF347](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/hf347-cover-art.webp\")
On the site side, I added a Buffer posting script so social posts for each episode can be scheduled straight from Claude, and updated the Buffer channel IDs after a tidy-up of the connected channels on Saturday.
\n\nA quiet week on the PETALS side. The marketing site got some mobile fixes: the cookie banner has no big gap above its buttons any more, and the mobile menu now opens from the right with a readable Get Started button. There was no Dev Time because of the holiday, just async chat on the #dev-team Slack channel.
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/petals-mobile-banner-before.png\")
\n ![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/petals-mobile-banner-after.png\")
\n ![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/petals-mobile-menu-before.png\")
\n ![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/petals-mobile-menu-after.png\")
\n A much quieter week, with just four sessions logged: two short walks, a run and a swim.
\nWalking
\n3.0 km
\n▼ -4.9 km on last week
\nRunning
\n3.8 km
\n▼ -1.1 km on last week
\nSwimming
\n0.75 km
\n▼ -2.7 km on last week
\nTotal time
\n1h 32m
\n▼ -3h 0m on last week
\nTotal distance
\n7.5 km
\n▼ -8.7 km on last week
\nWeek-on-week compares 26 October to 1 November with 19 to 25 October. The Strava log's last entry is Friday 30 October (the sheet was last updated that morning), so anything on Saturday or Sunday isn't in yet and these numbers may be an undercount. Last week's total time includes a 30-minute elliptical session on the Tuesday, which adds time but no distance.
\nMapTap record
\n5-2-0
\n▲ was 3-3-1 last week
\nMapTap avg
\n734
\n▼ -81 on last week (815)
\nSudoku avg
\n3:39
\n▲ was 3:47 last week
\nMapTap: five wins and two losses this week, against three wins, three losses and a draw the week before. The average dropped to 734 from 815, though, and Gary's was 742 (786 last week), so he edged the averages even though I won more days. Tuesday's 913 was the best score of the week, and Sunday's 555 and Monday's 592 were the worst. Thursday's 618 lost to Gary's 897, my heaviest defeat of the week.
\nSudoku: seven days logged against six, averaging 3:39 against 3:47. Monday's 2:50 was the fastest and Wednesday's 4:41 the slowest. Last week's range was 3:09 to 4:58.
\nSolitaire and Duolingo: both logs are behind. The last entry in each is Saturday 17 October, so there's nothing to compare for the past two weeks. I need to tidy these up, and they'll be done before this goes live.
\nWatching: the only thing on the TV box this week was the Celebrity Traitors finale.
\nListening:
\nPlays
\n61
\n● Busiest day was Saturday with 31
\nDifferent artists
\n36
\n● Jamie Cullum on top with 9 plays
\nListening streak
\n18 days
\n● Longest streak too
\n![\"My](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/11/spotify-dashboard-week-44.webp\")
The dashboard has a new "New artists" panel this week, listing the artists I played for the first time, newest first. Jamie Cullum was the most played with 9 plays, and Saturday was the big day with 31.
\nMore soon.
\n", "date_published": "2026-11-01T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["holiday","micro","house-finesse","petals","habits","fitness"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/2026-10-31-1014/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/2026-10-31-1014/", "title": "I was today years old when I realised the “Revival House Project” is the legendary Mousse T", "summary": "I was today years old when I realised the “Revival House Project” is the legendary Mousse T. No wonder I love their music.", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/revival-house-project-spotify.jpg", "content_html": "I was today years old when I realised the “Revival House Project” is the legendary Mousse T. No wonder I love their music.
\n![\"Revival](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/revival-house-project-spotify.jpg\")
Looking forward to Chris Ramsey in Leicester tonight. We love Shagged Married Annoyed so it’ll be weird seeing him without his wonderful other half for once.
\n", "date_published": "2026-10-31T09:44:00Z", "tags": [] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-43/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-43/", "title": "WeekNotes 2026-43", "summary": "56 days to go in the Countdown to Head Of after a chaotic week in tech, HF346 with Andi King, Slack integration testing for PETALS, Ready Player One, and a MapTap draw.", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/hf346-with-andi-king.webp", "content_html": "The Countdown to Head Of reached 56 days to go after a chaotic week in tech. HF346 went out on Friday, the PETALS Slack integration is in testing, and I finally watched Ready Player One.
\nThe Countdown to Head Of series carried on this week and reached 56 days to go, after a chaotic week in tech that I think we all felt one way or another. It was a run of security vulnerabilities: PHP2Shell, then a GCP outage at the London data centre, then the Node.js vulnerabilities, and finally the SSL certificates on Friday. Friday's recording went out late and a bit flustered, so it ended up being real reflection on handling the chaos while still delivering something.
\nThe episodes so far this week:
\nAnd here's the latest, 56 days to go:
\n\nIt's quite rewarding to put something out almost every day. I think I missed one this week, but I've enjoyed quickly recording something off the cuff before downing tools at the end of the day. Any vanity metrics are just a nice to have, and I'm looking forward to analysing all the content at the end too.
\n\nWalking
\n7.8 km
\n▼ -2.5 km on last week
\nRunning
\n4.9 km
\n▲ +0.7 km on last week
\nSwimming
\n3.5 km
\n▼ -1.2 km on last week
\nTotal time
\n4h 32m
\n▼ -1h 15m on last week
\nTotal distance
\n16.2 km
\n▼ -3.0 km on last week
\nWeek-on-week compares 19 to 25 October with 12 to 18 October. This week was three swims, three walks, a run on Sunday and a 30 minute elliptical session on Tuesday. Last week's figures match what's in WeekNotes 2026-42. Elliptical adds time but no distance. Saturday was a quiet day.
\nHF346 with Andi King went out on Friday: disco-soaked vocals and big basslines this #FinesseFriday, from Dave 'Love' Lee to Jonas Blue. It runs to 1h 12m with 14 tracks.
\n![\"HF346](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/hf346-with-andi-king.webp\")
On the HF site side, I removed the leftover Netlify references.
\n\nBlog. Sertan's new article, Why PETALS asks how people feel as AI changes our work, went live on Friday. It looks at what recent research from METR and DORA says about AI and software development, from the gap between how fast work feels and the value it delivers to the burnout and friction that delivery metrics miss, and ties each finding to one of the five petals: Productivity, Enjoyment, Serenity, Learning and Teamwork. It lands on why it's still worth asking how work feels as the tools change, and leaving room at the next retro to talk about the scores.
\n![\"Two](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/petals-blog-ai-feelings-hero.webp\")
Slack integration. The app didn't get much attention this week, but Brian has been working on the Slack integration, and I've been testing it and feeding back to him. This is the happy path journey: connect a Slack workspace to your PETALS organisation, choose the channel each team's notifications post to, and use the nudge button on a snapshot to prompt the team in that channel. It's behind a feature switch, so we can push it to production and work with real world data. Here it is in its current, basic form.
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/petals-slack-connect-desktop.webp\")
\n ![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/petals-slack-connected-desktop.webp\")
\n ![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/petals-slack-channel-settings-mobile.webp\")
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/petals-slack-channel-picker-mobile.webp\")
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/petals-slack-nudge-mobile.webp\")
\nI've also started integrating last week's circle cards, the OKR rings, into the existing data model. On this site, the MapTap page got a scoreboard-style head-to-head with Gary, and the Reading page added the audiobooks I've listened to on Spotify.
\nMapTap record
\n3-3-1
\n● was 3-3-0 last week
\nMapTap avg
\n815
\n▲ +6 on last week
\nSudoku avg
\n3:47
\n▼ was 3:01 last week
\nMapTap: a draw of a week, 3 wins, 3 losses and one tie against Gary. My average edged up to 815 from 809 (Gary's was 786 against 783). The best was 889 on Friday, and Sunday finished level at 750 each.
\nSudoku: slower than last week, averaging 3:47 across six games (3:01 across seven the week before). Fastest was 3:09 on Sunday and the slowest was 4:58 on Friday. I missed Monday. Note the Yudoku redesign no longer shows mistakes, so I'm only tracking time.
\nWatching: the main viewing this week was Ready Player One on Saturday night. I really enjoyed all the nerdy pop culture and techy references, and it's scary to think Wade is born next year! I gave it 4 stars on Letterboxd.
\nListening: I've been experimenting with Claude dashboards built directly on my Spotify data to see what I can come up with. It now updates nightly, so I can see some insights into my listening habits. These are the October figures so far, up to the 24th.
\n![\"Spotify](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/spotify-dashboard-month-stats.webp\")
![\"Spotify](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/spotify-dashboard-plays-per-day.webp\")
![\"Spotify](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/spotify-dashboard-top-artists.webp\")
This week's Spotify log has 118 listens against 145 last week, with plays on all 7 days (6 of 7 last week). Both counts include some double-logged plays.
\nMore soon.
\n", "date_published": "2026-10-25T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["petals","leadership","house-finesse","habits","fitness"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-42/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-42/", "title": "WeekNotes 2026-42", "summary": "Enjoying the daily Countdown recordings, a first look at my OKR rings prototype, MKGN, HF345 with DJ Tai, a quiet recovery week after the 50km walk, and habits week on week.", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/okr-rings-front.png", "content_html": "I'm enjoying the daily recordings, and I started exploring a new way to visualise OKR progress and check-ins. HF345 went out on Friday, and the 50km walk is still being recovered from.
\nThe daily recordings. I'm properly enjoying recording the daily Countdown videos. The days are the ones remaining at Rightmove, but the series is about preparing for the Head Of role: making observations from the daily topics and reflecting on my time as a manager that might be useful in the new job. The latest is 63 days to go, and there are 14 episodes so far.
\nOKR habits prototypes. Something I haven't mentioned yet is all the work I've been doing on the OKR habits prototypes. This week I started exploring a new visualisation for OKRs, to show progress and regular check-ins. Each OKR gets a ring, and each marker around it is a check-in point, coloured by the status I gave at the time (on track, at risk, blocked or complete). Weekly, daily and monthly OKRs all work the same way, so you can see at a glance whether the habit of checking in is holding up. Tapping the centre flips the ring to show the key results, and tapping a marker opens a check-in with a status and a short note. It's a mockup with made-up data for now.
\n![\"Four](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/okr-rings-front.png\")
\n ![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/okr-rings-key-results.png\")
\n ![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/okr-rings-checkin-mobile.png\")
\nOn Wednesday evening I went to MKGN with some fellow Rightmovers, as we sponsored the event. I always love joining the community for the digital creative talks, and Rich hosts a fantastic session.
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/mkgn-october-2026.webp\")
A gentler week after the walk, but a return to the pool and my first run in a while: four swims, a lunch run, four walks, an elliptical session and a five-minute weight training session on Wednesday.
\nWalking
\n10.3 km
\n▼ -44.8 km on last week
\nRunning
\n4.2 km
\n▲ +4.2 km on last week
\nSwimming
\n4.7 km
\n▲ +2.1 km on last week
\nTotal time
\n5h 47m
\n▼ -7h 49m on last week
\nTotal distance
\n19.2 km
\n▼ -38.5 km on last week
\nWeek-on-week compares 12 to 18 October with 5 to 11 October. The Strava log's latest entry is Saturday 17 October and there's nothing for Sunday yet, and a few sessions turned up late (Friday's run and swim, and Saturday's walk), so these numbers may still move. Last week's figures are slightly different from what I published in WeekNotes 2026-41 (57.7 km and 13h 36m rather than 56.6 km and 12h 29m) because a swim and an elliptical session were logged late. The walk is still counted at the 9h 43 moving time rather than the 11h 30m with stops. Total time includes the elliptical and weight training, which add time but no distance.
\n![\"HF345](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/hf345-cover-art.webp\")
HF345 with DJ Tai went out on Friday, a feel-good run of disco-soul reworks and vocal house. Dimitri From Paris puts his Super Disco Blend on Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes to open, and it finishes with Kenny Dope's take on The Brand New Heavies and Bobby & Steve featuring Byron Stingily. It runs to 1h 26m. Cover art and the MP3 enclosure were sorted on Thursday night, ready for Friday.
\nOn the HF site this week, the old /newsletter page, which was still the Mailchimp signup, now redirects to the Patreon VIP Club, and the Mailchimp page is gone. That follows on from last week's footer banner, and carries on the move from the mailing list to the club.
\n\nI've also been picking up my post match day reviews on the SuperRams.com Patreon. There were three games over the past week, so there's loads of content created and shared with the (small) community: the Wrexham draw, the QPR 4-1 battering and Stoke's cheeky 1-0 win at home.
\nBlog. A new post went live on Friday, Common ground first, differences second, and when to flip it. It's a response to Gustavo Razzetti's piece on conversations as a team's operating system, mapping the PETALS heatmap onto his four conversations (Think, Connect, Decide, Collaborate) and arguing for starting with common ground when psychological safety is low. Blog tables also picked up padding and light grey borders.
\n![\"A](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/petals-common-ground-heatmap.webp\")
Dev Time. Thursday's Dev Time was a useful one. Brian and I went through all the Slack requirements in great detail, then used the transcript and Claude to help create all the GitHub sub tasks. I then reviewed them by hand and tidied up the metadata, like projects and milestones.
\nMarketing site. The old /blog/feed.xml now redirects to /blog/rss.xml, so anyone still subscribed to the old feed doesn't hit a 404.
App. Mike raised in our On The Side Slack community that you could no longer rename a snapshot once it had closed, where the functionality had been removed for some reason. Brian quickly fixed it, and it went out on Tuesday.
\nMapTap record
\n3-3-0
\n▲ was 3-4-0 last week
\nMapTap avg
\n809
\n▲ +47 on last week (762)
\nSudoku avg
\n3:02
\n▲ was 3:39 last week
\nSolitaire avg time
\n2:39
\n▲ was 2:50 last week
\nMapTap: a good week, with 3 wins and 3 losses, and my average of 809 beat Gary's 783 (it was 762 against his 767 the week before). The 14th isn't in the log, so that's six games rather than seven. Gary's 959 on Thursday was the best score of the week, against my 883, which was also my best. Saturday was the closest game of the week, 830 to 829, and on Sunday Gary's 16 in round five helped my 757 beat his 658.
\nSudoku: faster again, averaging 3:02 across six days against 3:39. My fastest was 2:30 on Saturday and the slowest was 3:33 on Wednesday. The mistakes count only shows for the first four days (8 in total), because the Yudoku redesign stopped showing it on the 16th. Sunday's will land in next week's numbers.
\nSolitaire: four daily deals logged against three, averaging 5,050 points against 4,990 and 2:39 against 2:50. Wednesday's 5,416 was the top score, and Saturday's 5,408 came in 2:27 with only 108 moves, the fewest of the week. I'm behind on logging solitaire, so Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday aren't in yet.
\nDuolingo: I'm back on a Plus account, and the fresh export brought the log up to date. It's all French at the moment, with 15 lessons over six days against 16 over seven the week before. Total time was 53 minutes against 55, and average accuracy rose from 79% to 83%. A few rows in the export had blank XP or an impossible accuracy, so those are left blank in the log.
\nWatching: Celebrity Traitors has been the main TV event this week, and I caught up on the episodes I'd missed. It's getting juicy and entertaining, if a little OTT, and it's funny how invested all these folks get in the game.
\nWe went to see The Uprising at the Arc cinema on Sunday. It was a brutal but interesting depiction of a classic story from the 14th century, with King Richard II, but the shaky cam production really bothered me.
\nListening:
\nTotal listens
\n145
\n▲ +85 on last week (60)
\nDays listened
\n6 of 7
\n▲ was 5 of 7 last week
\nThe Spotify log has plays on every day except Wednesday. A few plays are double-logged. A few highlights:
\nI'd like to start measuring how many days a month I spend listening to music on Spotify, so I can justify the £22 monthly subscription. The rest of the family use it too, but I want to make sure I'm getting use from it.
\nMore soon.
\n", "date_published": "2026-10-18T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["petals","okr","mkgn","house-finesse","habits","fitness"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/aside/how-to-automate-apple-watch-theatre-mode-at-bedtime-for-better-battery-life/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/aside/how-to-automate-apple-watch-theatre-mode-at-bedtime-for-better-battery-life/", "title": "How to automate Apple Watch Theatre Mode at bedtime for better battery life", "summary": "Micro tip: here's how to switch Theatre Mode on and off automatically so your Apple Watch screen isn't lit up all night. My watch screen was on all night, which was pointless and quite a bright...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/shortcut-bedtime-theatre-mode.png", "content_html": "Micro tip: here's how to switch Theatre Mode on and off automatically so your Apple Watch screen isn't lit up all night.
\nMy watch screen was on all night, which was pointless and quite a bright distraction in a dark room. Two little Shortcuts automations fixed it by toggling Theatre Mode when I go to bed and when I wake up.
\nThe bonus is that my battery is now much healthier in the morning, and gets me through a full day of activity without needing a boost.
\nTo set it up, open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone and create two personal automations:
\n(Shortcuts calls it Cinema Mode, the watch calls it Theatre Mode. Same thing.)
\n![\"Shortcuts](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/shortcut-bedtime-theatre-mode.png\")
\n ![\"Shortcuts](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/shortcut-wake-theatre-mode-off.png\")
\n The 50km walk was the main event this week, with HF344, a new calendar on the HF site and PETALS release notes around it.
\nThe week was all about the Ultra Challenge Kent, 50km for Dementia UK on Saturday. Fitness before it was mostly warming up, with calmer sessions focused on endurance and calves.
\nThe walk itself was exhilarating. There's the camaraderie we've come to expect from the Ultra events now, and the weather was perfect, dry and mild. The first 12km went really fast, then we refreshed at the rest stop and blasted through to halfway for lunch. After recharging on the "meal deal" and a change of socks, we carried on through the harder stretch to the final rest stop, where I topped up on caffeine and sweets and put my new head torch on for the final 11km.
\nThat last section was hard, especially once it went dark and we hit a steep incline for the final 2km. We got together to run over the finishing line though. I'm really happy with our moving time of 9h43. The total including stops was 11h 30m, and that's what the leaderboard goes by, so when we saw it we realised we were in the last 100 of 700. Time to work on our pace.
\nWalking
\n55.1 km
\n▲ +37.2 km on last week
\nRunning
\n0 km
\n▼ -11.8 km on last week
\nSwimming
\n1.5 km
\n▼ -0.2 km on last week
\nTotal time
\n12h 29m
\n▲ +4h 30m on last week
\nTotal distance
\n56.6 km
\n▲ +25.2 km on last week
\nWeek-on-week compares 5 to 11 October with 28 September to 4 October. Strava has the walk as 50.8km, and the Tuesday elliptical session adds time but no distance. Total time uses the 9h43 moving time for the walk rather than the 11h 30m with stops.
\nA HUGE thank you to everyone who donated. We smashed the original £400 goal and raised £650 in the end, which Rightmove will generously match fund, so we've raised £1,300 in total for Dementia UK. Thank you so much.
\n\nHF344 with Taylan went out on Friday, and it's another banger of garage and house. It runs about 30 minutes longer than usual because he was getting into it.
\nOn the HF site this week:
\nThe footer newsletter form is replaced with a Patreon VIP Club banner, in keeping with shifting people across from the mailing list.
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/hf-patreon-banner-desktop.png\")
![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/hf-patreon-banner-mobile.png\")
The calendar page now shows a release schedule grid (Thursday to Sunday for each release weekend), built at deploy time from the House Finesse Google Calendar feed. If the feed can't load, the page falls back to the old embed rather than breaking the build.
\nThe latest app updates went to production this week, alongside the content below.
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/petals-release-member-start-snapshot.webp\")
Release notes. I wrote up the release as Anyone can start a snapshot, plus copyable results and a security tidy-up, which went out on Thursday. It covers team members starting snapshots, the new Copy results button, the sign-in security tidy-up, and a catch-up on Huel.
\nMarketing site. The What page picked up jump links to each factor, with animated scrolling and clean /what/<factor>/ URLs, and the URL updates as you scroll through the sections. The September newsletter roundup is drafted too, with a couple of image fixes so it works in Brevo.
App. On the admin side, the Organization page now shows team, snapshot and last snapshot counts, and a read-only list of teams and employees. I also documented the staging and production deployment process in the README and corrected the production Heroku app name in the billing runbooks. Brian spent Thursday on dependency updates, including some risky cryptography libraries and a PyJWT fix, plus a fix so snapshots send properly for non-members. The staging pytest 9 conflict that followed was sorted on Saturday.
\nCustomer story. I also recorded a pub conversation with Ollie from Huel about the journey they've been on with PETALS, along with his own observations about how it's become a staple habit in their culture.
\nFor the past two weeks I've been recording a daily YouTube series about leadership, using what I observed as an Engineering Manager before moving up to Head of department. Each episode has gone up daily as unlisted while I built it up, and the whole Countdown to Head Of playlist is now public, so here it is.
\n\n\nI started noting down ideas of things I want to take forward into my new role, then realised it could be worth sharing for other tech leaders. I also miss making video content, so it's a chance to fulfil that habit too. Each episode is only 5 minutes long, so it's easy to record on the webcam, do a quick edit in Descript and export to YouTube. Once there's a good dose of content, I'll syndicate it on my Si Cast podcast as well.
\nMapTap record
\n3-4-0
\n● same as last week (3-4-0)
\nMapTap avg
\n762
\n▼ -28 on last week
\nSudoku avg
\n3:41
\n▲ was 4:17 last week
\nMapTap: a see-saw week, with 3 wins to Gary's 4, and he edged the average too, 767 to my 762. My best was 891 on Monday, and On Saturday I scored 707 with a 7 in round two, because I got it completely wrong. Gary's 877 that day was his best.
\nSudoku: a much quicker week, averaging 3:41 across the five days I played, with a fastest of 3:00 on Wednesday. Monday's 5:35 and six mistakes was the only slow one, and Friday's single mistake was the tidiest.
\nWatching: entertainment was minimal. We watched The Substance on BBC on Sunday evening. My review: "It started off quite interesting, almost like a Black Mirror episode and very stylish, but it went wildly absurd and lost my interest. Shame as I liked the idea and Demi showed promise."
\nListening: I was mostly listening to music podcasts on my walk, including a few Glitterbox podcasts, and those don't show up in the Spotify track log. That's probably why it goes quiet from Thursday night until Sunday afternoon. The log has 60 track plays from 5 to 11 October against 175 the week before. A few highlights:
\nTwo tweaks to the WeekNotes task this week. Films now come from my Letterboxd feed, which is the reference point for movies watched, and the steps the task follows are now written down in a weeknotes-draft skill in the repo, so they don't only live in the scheduled prompt. Spotify, Strava, the habit logs and the repos feed it as before. The Netflix export was empty this week, so TV is down to what I tell it.
More soon.
\n", "date_published": "2026-10-11T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["petals","leadership","house-finesse","habits","fitness"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-40/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-40/", "title": "WeekNotes 2026-40", "summary": "HF343 with Disco77, OKR Daily Card getting edit outcomes and add action, some PETALS testing, a lighter week with the 50km Ultra Challenge a few days away, and what I've been watching and listening to.", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/hf343-with-disco77.webp", "content_html": "A quieter build week. HF343 went out, OKR Daily Card picked up a couple of features I'd been missing, and the 50km walk is now just a few days away.
\n![\"HF343](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/hf343-with-disco77.webp\")
HF343 with Disco77 went out on Friday, and it features our very own Taylan's first release. Love seeing one of the crew get a play in another resident's mix, and that's what this whole thing is about for me, appreciating each other's work. I've linked his EP on Bandcamp in the notes so you can go and give it a listen.
\nThe September newsletter covering HF339 to HF343 is drafted too. It's now being syndicated on our Patreon VIP Club alongside the existing Beehiiv mailing list, as I try to shift people across.
\nMostly reviewing and housekeeping this week rather than building.
\nThe Warp changes were the interesting ones. Copyable snapshot results landed, and they'll be available to all users soon, which should make it much easier to take your team's results somewhere else. Warp also cached the report petal averages per instance to cut down on repeat queries. And the cookie consent banner is up as a PR, well overdue. Analytics stays switched off until someone accepts, and you can withdraw consent again from the footer.
\nBrian's "Chart 10" PR also merged. It's part of encouraging more paying customers, one of my goals for the end of the year, so I gave it a quick test and moved on.
\nThe bit of housekeeping I'm most pleased with is writing our PR conventions into the marketing site's CLAUDE.md, so any agent I point at the repo opens PRs the way I like them without being reminded:
## Pull requests\n\nWhen creating a PR for this repo, set the following in GitHub:\n\n- Project: `PETALS 🌺`\n- Milestone: the current season (e.g. `Autumn 2026`)\n- Labels: `Claude`, plus `Content` if the PR is for content or blog posts![\"OKR](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/09/okr-daily-card-desktop.png\")
Two gaps in OKR Daily Card got closed this week. You can now edit an outcome after creating it (title, key results, tasks and completion timeline), and add a daily action to an existing outcome without starting it again from scratch.
\nBoth check you own the objective before changing anything, and both have unit tests. Jules did the build, I reviewed it and merged it.
\n![\"OKR](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/10/okr-add-action-modal.png\")
The site index is now a proper sitemap. The old /site-index/ and /index URLs redirect to it with a 301, and I tidied the footer link and styling while I was in there. Hat tip to Trovster, whose impressive version inspired it.
MapTap record
\n3-4-0
\n▲ was 0-6-1 last week
\nMapTap avg
\n790
\n▲ +22 on last week
\nSudoku avg
\n4:40
\n▼ was 3:48 last week
\nMapTap: Gary took the first four days, then I won the last three. Friday's 952 was the highlight of the week. Gary still edged the week on average, 797 to my 790.
\nSudoku: a slower, messier week, with a 6:42 and seven mistakes on Sunday dragging things down. Fastest was 3:16.
\nNext Sunday I'm walking the Ultra Challenge Kent for Dementia UK, 50km from 7:30am. I'm feeling good and ready, so I've eased off the exercise a little this week. I'm still keeping the daily fitness habit going to stay limbered up, with a few short runs, some swims and walks, and a session on the elliptical.
\nWalking
\n9.5 km
\n▼ -10.9 km on last week
\nRunning
\n11.8 km
\n▼ -0.6 km on last week
\nSwimming
\n1.2 km
\n▼ -2.1 km on last week
\nTotal time
\n4h 53m
\n▼ -2h 54m on last week
\nTotal distance
\n22.5 km
\n▼ -13.6 km on last week
\nIf you fancy chipping in for Dementia UK, the page is here.
\nWatching: I've got into Celebrity Traitors for the first time, and it's the cast that's done it. I'm not bothered who wins, I just love the interactions between the celebrities. Also been enjoying The Gentlemen season 2, Jack Whitehall's Travels with My Father, Colin from Accounts, Would I Lie to You? and a bit of The Fast Show, plus Ocean's Eleven and Wasteman on the film side.
\nListening: Olivia Dean's new album, a lot of Ben Westbeech and disco house, and a big Adele run over the weekend.
\nA couple of new inputs fed this week's post. The Netflix and BBC iPlayer viewing history for the entertainment section comes from Claude scraping both sites, and the listening comes from my Spotify plays logged to a Google Sheet. They sit alongside the Strava log and the habit trackers, so most of the numbers in these notes now come from data I'm already generating rather than me trawling through it.
\nMore soon.
\n", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["site-notes","okr-habits","petals","house-finesse","habits","fitness","music"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-39/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/weeknotes/2026-39/", "title": "WeekNotes 2026-39", "summary": "The OKR Daily Card side project going live, two PETALS blog posts out this week, HF342 with One Phat DJ, Managing Engineers season 3 underway, a habit tracker catch-up, training numbers ahead of a 50km Ultra Challenge for Dementia UK, and a proper new job announcement.", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/09/okr-daily-card-desktop.png", "content_html": "Week 39 of 2026 brings a side project going live, two PETALS posts out the door, One Phat DJ back on the decks, season 3 of Managing Engineers underway, a habit tracker catch-up, some serious mileage ahead of a 50km walk, and a job I can finally talk about properly.
\n
The side project I've been poking at for a few weeks now has a real URL: okr.sijobling.com, running on Railway.
\nIt started as a single-user demo for tracking quarterly OKRs, a mission per objective, a few daily actions to tick off, key results they roll up to. Every tick asks "what did you actually do?" so the history is real evidence rather than a bare streak count. Over the last couple of weeks it's turned into something closer to a proper (if still very personal) app: magic-link sign-in instead of a password, a guided onboarding flow that turns your own answers into your own objectives and daily actions rather than my invented demo data, a weekly view with a "copy week summary" button for pasting into a check-in doc, and an MCP hook-up so Claude can check in on it directly. Ten stories in, all done. Nothing fancy, just useful.
\n![\"OKR](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/09/okr-habit-mobile-dashboard.png\")
\n![\"OKR](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/09/okr-daily-card-mobile-modal.png\")
\nBoth landed on the PETALS blog Thursday evening, back to back.
\nIs AI a friend, a foe, or just a really enthusiastic junior? starts from Atlassian's research that nearly half of knowledge workers say their AI knows about as much about their company as a brand new hire, and asks where that actually leaves AI in a people-first framework like PETALS. Short version: not a sixth petal, not a priority to optimise for its own sake, just an assistant that needs the same onboarding and context you'd give any new hire.
\nConversational debt and the price two teams pay for silence takes Gustavo Razzetti's idea of conversational debt (every avoided crucial conversation compounds like an unpaid loan) and runs it through two hypothetical teams at different sizes to see exactly where psychological safety does and doesn't intervene.
\n\nNo dev-time session this week though, everyone was busy. Still caught up async on a few feature and content updates between us. Fine by me, some weeks go like that on a side project.
\n![\"HF342](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/09/hf342-with-onephatdj.webp\")
House Finesse 342 landed this #FinesseFriday, my first set back after a long summer away from the decks. Fresh cuts to open (Georges & Fleur De Mur, The Sunburst Band's "Reach For My Love") tipping into classics reworked, Kathy Brown, Soul Central's "Strings of Life", CeCe Peniston's "Finally". Soulful house front to back, glad to be back on it.
\n\nAlso quietly finishing off the Q4 schedule behind the scenes. Already filling up nicely, with some more back-to-back fun planned with Andi King and Disco77 around Christmas.
\nNeil and I got the mics out again this week to start on season 3 of Managing Engineers. The warm-up and the first proper episode are both recorded, and we're aiming to get at least one more in the can before we start releasing anything.
\nFitting timing to restart it, we're both mid-transition into Head Of roles right now (mine at Warner Hotels, more on that below), so expect some of that to come up. Still grounding it the way we always have though, in the actual evidence we've built up from our careers to date rather than just opinions.
\nActual week-on-week numbers this time, not just "is it up to date."
\nMapTap avg
\n768
\n▲ +76 on last week
\nMapTap record
\n0-6-1
\n▼ won 5 of 7 last week
\nSudoku fastest
\n3:10
\n▲ 4s faster than last week
\nSudoku mistakes
\n0-5
\n▼ last week's worst was 4
\nDuolingo
\nPaused
\n● reviewing the Super renewal
\nMapTap: my own average score climbed nicely week on week, 768 up from 692. Trouble is Gary's climbed further and faster, so I only won 0 of the 7 head-to-heads this week (one draw, on Thursday's tied 781-781), a sharp reversal from winning 5 of 7 the week before.
\nSudoku: solved every puzzle set this week. Fastest completion dropped to 3:10, four seconds quicker than last week's best. Mistakes were more of a mixed bag though, a clean 0-mistake solve on Wednesday against a messy 5-mistake one on Monday, a wider spread than last week's 0-4.
\nDuolingo: deliberately easing off for the rest of the quarter. The family Super price has gone up to £110/year and I'm questioning whether it's worth it, given I still struggled to actually speak Greek out loud this summer despite months of lessons. Complicated slightly by a France trip next month, so French practice needs picking back up regardless of what I decide on Greek. Also gives me time to sort out that garbled export from a few weeks back before any of it goes near the site.
\nDropping Solitaire from these posts, it's not really happening at the moment and pretending otherwise isn't useful.
\nTwo weeks today I'm walking the Ultra Challenge Kent, 50km from 7:30am with a few checkpoints along the way, raising money for Dementia UK. Both my dad and my gran live with dementia, so this one's personal.
\nPulled my Strava log to see where training actually stands, this week against last:
\nWalking
\n20.4 km
\n▲ +14.1 km on last week
\nRunning
\n12.4 km
\n▲ +2.6 km on last week
\nSwimming
\n3.3 km
\n▲ +0.8 km on last week
\nTotal time
\n7h 47m
\n▲ +4h 03m on last week
\nTotal distance
\n36.1 km
\n▲ +17.5 km on last week
\nBasically doubled last week's total across the board. Year to date I'm at 911.4km, already past all of 2024's total with three months still to go.
\nThe number that actually matters, though, is the longest single session, a 31.1km walk back in May, plus a couple more in the 20-25km range since. The most recent proper long one was 25km around the Peak District in July, and that was tiring, so I'm going in eyes open that Kent will be double that distance. Last time I attempted 50km in one go was London to Brighton back in 2018, and I'm eight years older than I was then. Feeling ready regardless. If you fancy chipping in for Dementia UK, the page is here.
\nI can finally say this properly rather than in hushed tones. I've joined Warner Hotels as Head of Digital and Data, a step up after eight years as an Engineering Manager at Rightmove since 2017.
\nIt's a product I can genuinely get my teeth into, and one that's become a lot more relatable now that weekend breaks without the kids are actually a thing we do. Leaving Rightmove is bittersweet, it's been a huge part of my career, and telling my teams on Friday was one of the harder conversations I've had in a while. But I'm excited about what's next.
\nNew bits of site plumbing worth naming, since they'll keep turning up: statCard, ctaButton and deviceFrame are now proper reusable components, not one-off HTML dropped into this post. Metric cards with an up/down/flat indicator, subscribe buttons, and phone-shaped screenshot frames (including the slow-pan scroll effect on the OKR ones above), all droppable straight into any future post's Markdown.
Also worth being upfront about: this post is co-authored with Claude. Mostly for the unglamorous bit, pulling numbers out of Strava, the habit JSON files, and a few GitHub repos, rather than me trawling through them by hand. Next step is a proper weekly routine, a draft assembled automatically every Sunday, which I then go through line by line myself to get the voice and the details right before it goes out.
\nBusy week all round. More soon.
\n", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["site-notes","okr-habits","petals","house-finesse","managing-engineers","habits","fitness","new-job"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/this-week-on-the-site/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/this-week-on-the-site/", "title": "A New Colour Scheme, a /Friends Page, and a Habit Catch-Up", "summary": "A new sienna colour scheme, a Roman numeral in the footer, a /friends page (with a lovely surprise from Nick Gray), and a proper catch-up on the habit tracker - MapTap vs Gary, Duolingo, and a month of backdated Sudoku.", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/08/site-notes-friends.png", "content_html": "Bits and pieces this week rather than one big thing - a colour change, a new page, and a proper tidy-up of the habit tracker. Here's what's different if you've been around before.
\nThe site has been forest green since I built it, and this week I swapped that out for a warmer sienna and terracotta. Feels a bit more autumnal, even though it's still technically summer. Small change, but it touches every page, so it's the one you'll notice first.
\nWhile I was in there I also fixed something that had been quietly bugging me: the footer copyright year was hardcoded. It now pulls the current year automatically - and, because I can't resist a bit of unnecessary flourish, it's rendered in Roman numerals. So it's © MMXXVI down there now, not 2026. No practical benefit whatsoever. I like it anyway.
\nI added /friends/ this week - a grid of the people I talk to most, mostly from the On The Side Slack. It's modelled on the /friends idea going round, in the same spirit as my /now page follows the Now Page standard.
\nI'll say what the page itself already admits: it's a solid wall of white, middle-aged blokes in tech. Send help, or better friends.
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/08/site-notes-friends.png\")
Nice surprise while I was putting this together: Nick Gray reached out off the back of his own list and added me to his featured friends over on nickgray.net. Exactly the kind of small, human internet moment this whole idea is meant to encourage.
\nThe habits section got proper attention this week too.
\n![\"The](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/08/site-notes-habits.png\")
MapTap is new. It's a daily 5-round geography guessing game I play head-to-head with my mate Gary, comparing scores over WhatsApp every morning. It's now got its own page with Gary's scores plotted alongside mine so you can see who's winning at a glance, not just my side of it. Backdated the rounds so far and it's kept up to date since.
\n![\"MapTap](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/08/site-notes-maptap.png\")
Duolingo got its regular top-up - the Greek streak keeps climbing, now logged through to yesterday.
\nSudoku got the biggest piece of work. I'd been sitting on a folder of Yudoku screenshots and finally fed the whole lot through this week - every session for the month, not just the ones I'd already logged. Turned out a few of those screenshots were duplicates I'd saved twice without realising, and sorting that out surfaced something more useful: the actual days I'd missed. Six of them this month, as it happens. The tracker's only honest if it shows the gaps as well as the streaks.
\n![\"Sudoku](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/08/site-notes-sudoku.png\")
Nothing earth-shattering, just the usual maintenance that makes the place feel a bit more like mine. More soon.
\n", "date_published": "2026-08-30T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["site-notes","habits","design"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/pop-matchday-podcast-feed/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/pop-matchday-podcast-feed/", "title": "POP: Matchday Podcast Feed", "summary": "This month's Product On A Page: what if match commentary showed up in your usual podcast app instead of your club's? I pay DCFC £5 a month for live RamsTV commentary, but I can only get it through...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/08/matchday-feed-poc.png", "content_html": "This month's Product On A Page: what if match commentary showed up in your usual podcast app instead of your club's?
\nI pay DCFC £5 a month for live RamsTV commentary, but I can only get it through their website or the iOS app. Podcasting 2.0 already has most of what's needed to fix that: live episodes, chapter markers, value-for-value tipping. Nobody's pointed it at football yet.
\nI mocked this one up properly rather than scribbling it on paper, a screenshot for now, proper pen-and-paper version to follow. The bit I kept coming back to is the listener experience: same episode, same feed, completely different depending on when you open it. Mid-match it's streaming, sats ticking up as people tip the commentator. By full-time it's quietly become an on-demand replay, no separate archive, no re-upload, the feed item just changes state under you.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/08/matchday-feed-poc.png\")
Matchday Podcast Feed Product On a Page: listener experience, chapter artwork, and the subscription/value-for-value proposal
\nChapter artwork is the part I like most. Episode artwork stays spoiler-free, crests, kick-off time, venue, never a score. But podcast:chapters can carry a second image for every goal, booking or substitution, only swapped in once the playhead actually reaches it. Skip ahead and you've spoiled it for yourself. Nobody spoils it for you.
Subscription and value-for-value is more of a proposal at this point than a finished thought: pay for the private feed, then tip the commentator directly in sats while they're calling the match, split automatically between club, commentator and platform. Feels right, but needs someone who actually understands club finance to poke holes in it before it's anything more than that.
\nNone of this needs inventing, either. Truefans and Fountain already do live items and value-for-value today, properly, in a shipped app. The hard part was never the technology, it's getting a club to actually buy into the idea, and that gets harder the further up the pyramid you go, where broadcasting rights are locked down tight. Realistic proof of concept is grassroots or lower EFL: less rights mess to navigate, and fans loyal enough to give something new a go.
\n", "date_published": "2026-08-22T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["product-on-a-page","podcasting","football","dcfc"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/what-does-international-vlogging-day-mean-in-2026/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/what-does-international-vlogging-day-mean-in-2026/", "title": "What does International Vlogging Day mean in 2026?", "summary": "On International Vlogging Day, I decided to record a single-take, unedited vlog after spotting the day in my calendar, because it reminded me of the early era of regular, raw video blogging.", "content_html": "\nOn International Vlogging Day, I decided to record a single-take, unedited vlog after spotting the day in my calendar, because it reminded me of the early era of regular, raw video blogging.
\n", "date_published": "2026-08-10T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q2-2026/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q2-2026/", "title": "Q2 2026", "summary": "Late to the page but not to the events: Easter in Turkey, co-organising the biggest conference our department has run, a 20km Jurassic Coast walk for the British Heart Foundation, and World Cup 2026 landing on Football Cal. The Q2 catch-up, published a month into Q3.", "content_html": "This one's late. Q2 ended in June and it's now August, but the events were too good not to write up properly, so here they are before they slip further into memory. Easter in Turkey, co-organising the biggest conference our department has ever run, a gruelling 20km walk along the Jurassic Coast, World Cup 2026 landing on Football Cal, and a Duolingo streak that got reset from scratch. Here's how Q2 2026 went.
\nEaster weekend took us to Dalaman for an all-inclusive break. Squeaky clean, good food, everything you'd want on paper. But the culture towards women didn't sit right with either of us, and it took some of the shine off what should have been a straightforward relaxing week.
\nBack home, I joined a volunteering day clearing up the Milton Keynes canal routes - genuinely good fun, not least the bit where we got to catapult wild seed to help the wildlife along. Small thing, satisfying afternoon.
\nMrs J and I had a last-minute dash to London for Avenue Q at the Shaftesbury Theatre, tacked onto one of her work trips. And closer to home, Russell Kane's Chuckl show at Benn Hall - one of our favourite British comedians, and I sat brave in the front row. Dodged the heckling entirely though, thanks to a much more suitable candidate sat next to me.
\nAnother late decision, another good one: the Totally 90s festival in Oxford, a full day of Britpop tribute acts with the kids in tow.
\nAnd a Christmas present redeemed close to my birthday - Becky Hill at Cannock Chase, in the woods. Beautiful setting, entertaining show.
\nThe standout work moment of the quarter. I co-organised the biggest event our department has ever put on - close to 400 people, three streams running 20+ talks, plus keynotes and awards. A genuinely huge amount of coordination to pull off, and it landed well: wonderful feedback from attendees and a real sense of achievement once it was done. The kind of thing that's exhausting in the run-up and worth every bit of it afterwards.
\nTwo days at LDX3, nerding out with fellow tech leaders. Good crowd this year - familiar faces from Rightmove and old friends from ASOS, plus a decent number of new connections from useful sessions. Better than last year, though maybe that's partly about resetting expectations going in rather than the event itself changing much.
\nI also had a follow-up call with Suzan Bond after her workshop on AI agreements in teams, specifically how that works alongside legacy tech and long-running teams. Worth chewing over given where PETALS and the wider engineering org are both headed.
\nThe login experience got a proper redesign this quarter, focused on single sign-on and magic links - a more modern and safer approach to authentication than what was there before.
\nThe more unexpected development: Truefans hosting for both the PETALS podcast and Si Cast, off the back of an exclusive invite from CEO Sam Sethi to explore what's new in podcasting 2.0. Good timing given how much I've been thinking about podcast tooling this year already.
\nFootball Cal's World Cup 2026 edition launched this quarter - 20 years on from the original World Cup Kickoff site I built back in 2006, and comfortably the biggest edition yet: 48 teams, 104 games, three host countries. I wrote up the full story separately in the portfolio post - the short version is an 11ty migration, a messier-than-usual data problem thanks to FIFA publishing the schedule as a PDF, and Claude doing far more of the heavy lifting on data wrangling than ChatGPT and Cursor managed on the last edition. Plenty of updates followed as qualifiers were confirmed and traffic started rolling in.
\nManaging Engineers wrapped its season this quarter with v2.9 and v2.10 released.
\nHouse Finesse had two mixes from One Phat DJ this quarter - HF321 and HF330 - with the second timed deliberately to land on the anniversary.
\nThe HF VIP Club kept building, with an Angie Brown re-release as we try to grow that community further.
\nBehind the scenes, the site had a decent quarter of its own: a "Garden Mint" spring theme, a burger menu for the header nav, a proper blog index page and RSS feed, and a chunk of work on Netlify build times before eventually moving hosting over to Cloudflare Pages. Micro posts also got automated - YouTube uploads now sync straight into the site rather than needing manual write-ups.
\nWWDC 2026 got its own first impressions post back in June - Siri rebuilt on Gemini, the EU/China rollout complications that emerged a couple of days later, and the usual mix of "finally" and "we'll see about that." Worth a read if you missed it rather than repeating it here.
\nTraining properly ramped up this quarter: a 30km walk to Coventry to build up the legs, followed by the main event - a 20km walk along the Jurassic Coast on 23 May, raising money for the British Heart Foundation with the Hazeley Hikers group. Fantastic scenery, genuinely gruelling inclines, and a heatwave that made it harder than expected. Huge sense of satisfaction crossing the line on that one.
\nI don't have Q1-vs-Q2 activity totals to hand for this post - happy to add the comparison table like previous quarters if you want to send over the numbers.
\n| Metric | \nApril | \nMay | \nJune | \n
|---|---|---|---|
| Avg daily XP | \n427 | \n259 | \n299 | \n
| Avg accuracy | \n92% | \n89% | \n92% | \n
The bigger story here is a reset: the long-running French/multi-language streak that got to 973 days by the end of Q1 broke, and a new Greek-only streak started on 10 April - ahead of the annual trip to Greece in August. April's numbers reflect the settling-in period; by June the accuracy was back up to Q1 levels even as daily XP stayed more modest.
\n", "date_published": "2026-08-09T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["quarterly-review","petals","house-finesse","managing-engineers","duolingo","world-cup","ai","life"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/wwdc-2026-first-impressions/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/wwdc-2026-first-impressions/", "title": "WWDC 2026: First Impressions", "summary": "Live from Apple Park. Unfiltered first impressions from the WWDC 2026 keynote. Siri rebuilt with Gemini, Glass gets better, and Apple covers every entry point they can find.", "content_html": "Apple's WWDC 2026 keynote just wrapped from Apple Park, and I watched the whole thing live. As ever, there's a mix of "finally" and "we'll see about that". Here are my unfiltered first impressions while it's still fresh.
\nOne immediate distraction before we get into announcements: what is going on with Craig Federighi's audio? Over-processed, flat, weirdly distant; like he was broadcasting from a different room to everyone else on stage. Sort it out, Apple.
\nImproved Glass has had a proper iteration; you can now control how clear the background is. Better use of the design system, I'll give them that. Still not fully convinced by Glass as a direction, but this is progress.
\nVision Pro immersive spatial photos. The demo looked genuinely impressive. The real test is always how it translates when someone else views your content. That's usually where the magic evaporates.
\nKids profiles. More control for parents, more confusion to configure, and more ammunition for teenage negotiations. Sometimes the best parental control is just turning the thing off. Also: how many devices do these kids have‽
\n3D views are getting better. My question, as always: does any of it work in CarPlay? That's where I'll actually use Maps. If it doesn't hold up at 70mph on the motorway, it doesn't really count for me.
\nThis was the centrepiece, and rightly so. The headline: Siri has been rebuilt from the ground up. Mike Rockwell confirmed it's now powered by Gemini. Which immediately raises a question that's been rattling around since the LLM era began. When do we get to choose our own models?
\nThe experience does feel more conversational. More natural. But the proof will be in the pudding. Siri has promised a lot before.
\nA few specifics:
\nDedicated Siri app. Finally. History, context, and hopefully the ability to repurpose previous threads. This has been a glaring omission for too long.
\nVisual intelligence looks promising. Reserving judgement until I can actually use it.
\nWrite with Siri. Native feels right. Third party, we'll see. The fact it's already live in Slack, Outlook and Teams is a personal win though. That's where I actually work.
\nBrand new voice experience with customisable pace and expressivity. Slow Northern English, please. Take your time.
\nBuilt into keyboard, CarPlay and AirPods. This is where Siri will live in my day-to-day; dog walks, commuting, hands completely full. Not a gimmick. A genuine use case.
\nSwipe down for Siri. Swipe down further for the app. Neat UX. Simple and exactly right.
\nNow in macOS Spotlight by default, plus a Siri field in the context menu. They've covered an impressive number of entry points in one go. That alone feels promising.
\nSiri mode in camera. No more temporary images cluttering the camera roll just because you tried to search for something. I hope.
\nScreenshot straight to Siri on macOS. Is this in iOS too? Would be odd if not.
\nCalendar events from an image. That's my kind of use case. Photo of a gig poster, event in the calendar. Done.
\nVisionOS Siri orb. Looks delightful. Almost Pixar-designed. A rare Apple UI moment that makes you smile before you've even used it.
\nWatchOS Siri is here too. Let's go Knight Rider. The new app grid is welcome; whether the tap hit ratio has actually improved is the perennial question.
\nTab topic management in Safari. Save for later, notify me. Plenty of potential but it's not addressing the root problem. Too much information, not enough hours. Still, I'll use it.
\nCustom browser extensions described in natural language. Pointed security dig at other browsers included. Points for confidence.
\nAutomatic password fixes via agentic background operations. What could possibly go wrong? Cautiously optimistic.
\nMessage action suggestions. Happy wife, happy life.
\nNatural language calendar events. Something for PETALS to think about with scheduling.
\nHome assistant with camera integration. You'd need quite a setup around the house for this to really sing. Possibly a few cameras too many.
\nDescribe to create or tweak a shortcut. I'll believe it when I see it handling the edge cases; there's still core functionality that's been missing for years. But the direction is right.
\nWill anyone actually use this beyond the first play? Possibly not. If it's using on-device compute though, at least the energy cost is lower than cloud-based generation. New API access is an interesting move; it opens it up for third-party apps in a way that might unlock more creative use cases.
\nSpatial reframing closes the show. Technically impressive, ethically murky. Fake news in the making.
\nMore than any WWDC in recent memory, this one felt like Apple both catching up and genuinely pushing forward. Siri as a proper platform. Context-aware, deeply integrated, and available everywhere. Something we've been waiting years for. Whether the execution matches the demo is the question it always is.
\nThe real test starts now.
\nUpdate 2 days later:
\nIt came to light in the press releases after the keynote that Siri AI won't be immediately available to EU and Chinese residents due to ongoing legal pursuits (including interoptability between models). I suppose that's one minor benefit of Brexit.
One of the things that frustrates me about podcasts is discoverability. The big platforms have their own algorithms and editorial picks, but they don't know you — they know what's popular. Your taste is yours, built up over time through your own subscriptions, and there's no real way to share that signal with people who might actually care about it.
\nThat frustration turned into Podnality — a little prototype that lets you upload your podcast subscriptions file (OPML format, which most podcast apps can export) and in return get a shareable link that surfaces the patterns in what you listen to.
\n![\"Podnality](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/podnality-homepage.png\")
The core premise is simple: fight the algorithm with your own data. Rather than letting a platform guess what you might like based on trending shows, Podnality analyses your actual subscription list to find meaningful patterns — genres, themes, listening habits — and wraps it up into a profile you can share.
\nWe also integrated an LLM to take that analysis a step further. Beyond just categorising your shows, it gives you a personality read based on what you listen to. It's a bit of fun, but it's surprisingly accurate — the kinds of shows you subscribe to do say something about how you think.
\nThe shareable link is the key bit. Send it to a friend, post it somewhere, and let people discover new shows through someone else's taste rather than an editorial algorithm.
\n![\"Podnality](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/podnality-example.png\")
This was as much an experiment in how I build things as it was in the idea itself. The whole thing was put together using agentic coding — leaning heavily on AI-assisted development — deployed on Railway for hosting.
\nWhat I enjoyed most about this project was being able to dip in and out of the build through the native iOS app. Commuting, waiting around, half an hour here and there — agentic coding made it possible to keep momentum going without needing to be sat at a desk with a proper setup. That kind of flexibility is genuinely new and I found it changed how I think about what's worth starting on a whim.
\nIt's the sort of project that would previously have stayed as a note in a list somewhere. Too small to justify setting up a proper dev environment for, too niche to feel worth the effort. Agentic coding collapsed that overhead enough that it actually got built.
\nGive it a try at podroll.unstyled.com — export your subscriptions from your podcast app of choice and see what comes back.
\n", "date_published": "2026-06-06T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["podcasts","agentic-coding","ai","side-project"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/day-2-of-ldx3-2026-engineering-leadership-ai-in-hiring-juniors-and-man/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/day-2-of-ldx3-2026-engineering-leadership-ai-in-hiring-juniors-and-man/", "title": "Day 2 of #LDX3 2026: Engineering leadership, AI in hiring & juniors and manager burnout", "summary": "LDX3 2026 Day 2 Recap: After 2 days of LDX3 2026, I shift focus to the people side of engineering leadership and how teams are adopting AI.", "content_html": "\nLDX3 2026 Day 2 Recap:
\nAfter 2 days of LDX3 2026, I shift focus to the people side of engineering leadership and how teams are adopting AI.
\n", "date_published": "2026-06-06T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/day-1-of-ldx3-2026/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/day-1-of-ldx3-2026/", "title": "Day 1 of LDX3 2026", "summary": "End of day one at LDX3 Conference 2026, I head back to the hotel early to unwind after spending the day catching up with fellow Rightmovers, former ASOSers, and other friends, noting that networking...", "content_html": "\nEnd of day one at LDX3 Conference 2026, I head back to the hotel early to unwind after spending the day catching up with fellow Rightmovers, former ASOSers, and other friends, noting that networking is one of the best parts of conferences.
\n", "date_published": "2026-06-05T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/world-cup-2026-calendar/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/world-cup-2026-calendar/", "title": "World Cup 2026 Calendar", "summary": "Football Cal's World Cup edition - 20 years on from the original, 48 teams, three countries, and Claude doing the heavy lifting on the data. Kick Off # This year marks 20 years since the original...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/05/world-cup-kickoff-net-mag-dec-2006.jpg", "content_html": "Football Cal's World Cup edition - 20 years on from the original, 48 teams, three countries, and Claude doing the heavy lifting on the data.
\nThis year marks 20 years since the original World Cup KickOff - a site I cobbled together in PHP ahead of the 2006 tournament in Germany. The clever bit was using Microformats hcalendar markup so Brian Suda's X2V transformation script could convert it into ICS files people could subscribe to directly in their calendar app. It was proper cutting edge web standards stuff at the time, and after coverage from the BBC, The Guardian and Yahoo! it took off way beyond anything I'd anticipated.
\n![\"World](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2026/05/world-cup-kickoff-net-mag-dec-2006.jpg\")
Twenty years and several editions later, Football Cal is where that same idea lives now. It's been running since Euro 2020, originally built on a Gatsby template I'd reused across a few competitions. For this edition I've migrated the whole thing to 11ty, the same stack as this site, with a hat tip to Trovster who helped get the GitHub/11ty setup working a few years back. The code is open source on GitHub and the fixture data is just Markdown files, so it's easy to contribute or fork for another competition.
\nWorld Cup 2026 was always going to get the Football Cal treatment. First 48-team tournament, 104 games spread across the USA, Canada and Mexico. Biggest edition by some distance.
\nGetting the fixtures together was messier than any previous edition.
\nFIFA published the schedule as a PDF rather than anything structured or easy to work with. Kick-off times, venues and match details were spread across it inconsistently, and when I cross-referenced against other sources I found discrepancies straight away - different sites reporting different times for the same game, time zone conversions that were clearly wrong, early matches still showing placeholder team names after the draw had been made.
\nThe late qualifiers added to it. A few intercontinental playoff spots weren't confirmed until recently, so any data gathered early needed another pass once those teams were known.
\nI used Claude a lot more on this one than previous editions.
\nFor Euro 2025, ChatGPT and Cursor handled the data and I had the whole thing done in a couple of hours. This time I used Claude throughout - pulling fixture data from FIFA's PDF, Wikipedia and a handful of other sources, sorting out the discrepancies between them, and generating the individual Markdown files with the right frontmatter for all 104 games. Getting the time zone data right across three countries took a few rounds of checking.
\nOnce the final qualifier spots were confirmed I went back through and updated the relevant files.
\nCore features are the same as previous editions - subscribable ICS feed, individual game pages, timeline view, filtering by group and stage. A few things were added or improved for this one:
\nThere'll be small fixes as real traffic hits during the group stage. I'll keep an eye on the analytics through the competition and chip away at anything that needs attention.
\nThe main thing I've taken from this edition is how much easier the data side gets with AI helping out. 104 games across three countries still came together pretty quickly, which makes it easier to justify doing more of these.
\n🔗 footballcal.com/world-cup-2026 · github.com/sportstimes/footballcal-11ty
\n", "date_published": "2026-05-27T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["calendars","football","world-cup","ai","claude","sports","11ty","open-source","microformats"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/is-ai-video-killing-the-podcast-star/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/is-ai-video-killing-the-podcast-star/", "title": "Is AI video killing the podcast star?", "summary": "We're at a pivotal moment in the podcasting industry as Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music are finally implementing alternate (HLS) video support in their native apps.", "content_html": "\nWe're at a pivotal moment in the podcasting industry as Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music are finally implementing alternate (HLS) video support in their native apps.
\n", "date_published": "2026-05-21T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q1-2026/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q1-2026/", "title": "Q1 2026", "summary": "Fatboy Slim at Alexandra Palace, a gastritis diagnosis, three rooms of William Morris wallpaper, and ditching ChatGPT for Claude. Q1 covered a lot of ground - PETALS Plus plans nearly live, training started for a 35km Jurassic Coast walk, a fitness comeback from ankle injury, and a 973-day Duolingo streak still intact. The quarterly catch-up.", "content_html": "Fatboy Slim at Alexandra Palace. Raye in Manchester. A gastritis diagnosis after years of not knowing. Three rooms of William Morris wallpaper. PETALS Plus plans nearly live. Training underway for a 35km walk along the Jurassic Coast. A switch from ChatGPT to Claude. And a 973-day Duolingo streak still standing. Here's how Q1 2026 went - including how this post itself got made.
\nJanuary kicked off with a trip to see Derby County vs Stoke - a family tradition we've established between the Derby and Stoke fans in the family. I love those visits, even when the performances are disappointing. Which they often are. 🐏
\nAfter years of digestive issues I finally got an answer this quarter: gastritis. It's a relief to know it's nothing more serious, though the trade-off is rethinking my relationship with alcohol, spicy food and caffeine. Adjustments are ongoing.
\nIt was a brilliant week for live music in February. Lizzy got me Fatboy Slim tickets at Alexandra Palace for Christmas - a long time coming as a fan who'd somehow never seen him live. I went with old uni friends and we made a weekend of it. Genuinely special. That same week, we took our daughter to see Raye in Manchester as her main Christmas present. Phenomenal show, Raye completely outshone her sisters as support acts. We also got time with our son at uni, and watching the siblings connect in that older, more grown-up way was one of those moments you tuck away.
\nMrs J and I also had a cheeky weekend at Brownsover Hall, fresh from a renovation. Beautiful decor, great food, friendly staff and the indulgence package was very much worth it. Minor gripe: some of the younger staff needed a few prompts to keep the drinks coming, but nothing that dented the overall experience.
\nTraining has started for a 35km walk along the Jurassic Coast at the end of May. We attempted London to Brighton years ago (100km) and made it to 58km before calling it. This one feels a lot more achievable.
\nThree rooms in the house have had a William Morris wallpaper makeover this quarter. Cloakroom, downstairs bathroom and stairs. Looks brilliant. Highly recommend going a bit bold with wallpaper if you've been sitting on the fence.
\nPETALS has had a productive quarter. The monthly newsletter is now a proper fixture, mixing product updates, industry opinions and prompts to try. Open and click-through rates are solid, though engagement is still something to work on.
\nI made the call to revert the PETALS Slack space to the free plan. A handful of external members were using it actively but it wasn't returning enough on the paid tier, so the mailing list is now the focus. We've also moved our weekly huddles from Slack to Google Meet, which gives us recordings, Gemini-powered analysis and shareable archives. A proper upgrade.
\nThe Plus plans are nearly ready to go live after a lot of detailed work this quarter with Sertan and Brian. One of the more interesting things has been watching prompt engineering and spec-driven development play out in practice. We'll be writing that process up once the plans are live.
\nManaging Engineers has kept its roughly fortnightly rhythm with topics covering quality engineering, remote working, metrics, communities and AI.
\nHouse Finesse has had a bit of a reset for 2026. Seasons are now aligned to calendar years with week numbers, which feels tidier. Taylan has joined with a monthly residency slot, and we've reorganised the schedule with quarterly residencies from Sarah, Taiwo and Disco77. The rest of us fill in around that structure.
\nThe HF VIP Club has had its own journey. I started on Substack but moved to Patreon after some concerns about company ethics. Engagement is still finding its feet and Patreon's newsletter setup is more complex than I'd like. The more exciting development is that Stu (aka LYP) and I have started recording monthly conversations about the house music scene, leaning into the expertise we've both built up over the years. It's a proper podcast format and it's on Spotify, currently exclusive to VIP Club members.
\n6nationscalendar.com got its annual refresh this quarter, plus some new social posts. Still ticking along nicely as a personal project that means I never miss a game. This year I finally added the Women's 6 Nations fixtures too. Only took me long enough.
\nI've paused the SuperRams.com Substack for now to focus energy on PETALS and House Finesse. The Bluesky community around Derby County is more active and engaged anyway, so that's where the attention will go when I pick it back up.
\nThis quarter I made the switch from ChatGPT to Claude as my primary LLM. The US military situation was a nudge, but the results have generally been better too, especially for coding. I've also been trying Gemini for certain tasks, and Google Jules has been genuinely useful for some lower-risk project work.
\nI've set up OpenClaw on my M4 Mac Mini (always on, always ready) and I'm exploring personal automation from chat prompts. Direct access via WhatsApp is already working and I've started experimenting with safe, read-only services like Spotify. Lots of potential here.
\nOh, and these blog posts themselves. I've started brain dumping raw moments into Claude and letting it curate and shape them into something coherent. You're reading the results. It feels like a good use of the technology - my thoughts, my voice, just a bit more organised.
\nI switched to Castro for podcast consumption this quarter. The chapters UX is excellent, though I'm still finding my way between the inbox and queue interface. Recent updates have made it more manageable though.
\nI also tried AutoMemo, an iOS app for quick audio notes on the go. The CarPlay version is genuinely handy for recording thoughts on the commute, but the audio quality isn't good enough to repurpose for podcast use, which was the dream.
\nJournaling on iOS has become a regular habit too. This is less "blog mode" and more personal reflection, checking in on how I'm feeling rather than just logging facts. One thing I really like is how it automatically detects and pulls in exercise activity, which makes it easier to spot the connection between movement and mood. It's helping me find my voice a bit more and be more considered about my wellbeing. Recommend it.
\nI gave the Comet browser a try and came away unimpressed. Not worth the data trade-off. Brave remains my default, Safari as backup. Chrome stays off the table.
\nAnd finally, the iOS app development rabbit hole - I started looking into building something custom for listening to my legal MP3 collection during workouts. It's definitely possible with AI assistance but life got in the way. One for the backlog.
\nTwo books keeping me company in the quieter moments this quarter.
\nI Love You, Byeee by Adam Buxton - a delightful autobiography from one of my podcasting heroes. Warm, funny, full of great anecdotes from a genuinely interesting career. Highly recommend if you're a fan.
\nThe Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman - a much weightier read, but thoroughly gripping. Suleyman co-founded DeepMind, sold it to Google, and is now CEO of Microsoft AI, so when he writes about the implications of AI and biotech convergence it carries real authority. Scary in places, essential in others.
\nI've been getting more deliberate about tracking my Greek language learning this quarter. What started as a Google Sheet evolved into a Numbers spreadsheet with some Apple Intelligence shortcuts bolted on. I swapped out a ChatGPT call (which was parsing screenshots) for a local model instead, which feels cleaner. The payoff is being able to see granular accuracy trends that Duolingo only shows you after a long session - genuinely useful for spotting where you're slipping.
\nOn the content creation front, I'm deep into a #Threads100 challenge, using Blacktwist to schedule daily posts. I'm on the home stretch now. It's less about the engagement numbers and more about rebuilding the habit, getting back into the rhythm I had on Twitter. I've also been syndicating selectively to Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn via Buffer. Worth a special mention for Blacktwist itself - it's a great example of vibe coding a real-world app in public, and it's been genuinely inspiring to watch it take shape whilst using it as part of my daily routine. Exactly the kind of thing that makes the current AI development moment so exciting.
\n| Metric | \nQ4 2025 | \nQ1 2026 | \nChange | \n
|---|---|---|---|
| Total activities | \n66 | \n60 | \n-6 | \n
| Total distance | \n222.3km | \n229.9km | \n+7.6km | \n
| Total time | \n36.1hrs | \n44.9hrs | \n+8.8hrs | \n
| Walking sessions | \n25 | \n40 | \n+15 | \n
| Walking distance | \n59.9km | \n130.6km | \n+70.7km | \n
| Elliptical sessions | \n25 | \n15 | \n-10 | \n
| Elliptical distance | \n149.7km | \n96.3km | \n-53.4km | \n
| Swim sessions | \n9 | \n2 | \n-7 | \n
| Weight training | \n5 | \n2 | \n-3 | \n
| Longest single activity | \n7.9km walk | \n11.6km walk | \n+3.7km | \n
| Month | \nActivities | \nDistance | \nTime | \n
|---|---|---|---|
| October | \n45 | \n145.0km | \n23.4hrs | \n
| November | \n16 | \n62.0km | \n8.9hrs | \n
| December | \n2 | \n4.2km | \n2.2hrs | \n
December was almost a complete write-off due to an ankle injury - Q1 was essentially recovery and rebuild, with walking taking over from the elliptical as the primary activity. The Jurassic Coast challenge in May is providing good motivation to keep the momentum going.
\n| Metric | \nFebruary | \nMarch | \n
|---|---|---|
| Avg daily XP | \n425 | \n545 | \n
| Avg accuracy | \n80% | \n90% | \n
| Streak (end of month) | \n934 days | \n973 days | \n
Tracking started mid-February. Greek picked up in March ahead of the annual trip to Greece in August - and a potential side mission rebuilding a hotel website. March was a perfect month - zero days missed.
\n| Metric | \nFebruary | \nMarch | \nChange | \n
|---|---|---|---|
| Total listening time | \n27h 33m | \n42h 43m | \n+15h 10m | \n
| Episodes listened | \n38 | \n57 | \n+19 | \n
| Podcasts | \n15 | \n15 | \n- | \n
Combined: 70h 16m, 95 episodes. Switched to Castro in February from Fountain - January data unavailable.
\nOn the subject of podcasting, I also posted a YouTube Short in February on Apple going all in with video podcasting and what it could mean for the space. Worth a watch if you're interested in where podcasting is heading: https://youtube.com/shorts/llAQiOn4xoA
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-06T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["quarterly-review","petals","house-finesse","managing-engineers","duolingo","fitness","ai","life"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/apple-are-going-all-in-with-video-podcasting-and-it-could-be-a-game-ch/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/apple-are-going-all-in-with-video-podcasting-and-it-could-be-a-game-ch/", "title": "Apple are going all in with video podcasting - and it could be a game changer", "summary": "Apple Podcasts is bringing HLS video to their platform by partnering with some heavyweight hosts - here are my thoughts on how this could be a pivotal moment for the industry.", "content_html": "\nApple Podcasts is bringing HLS video to their platform by partnering with some heavyweight hosts - here are my thoughts on how this could be a pivotal moment for the industry.
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-23T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/petals-advent-2025/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/petals-advent-2025/", "title": "PETALS Advent", "summary": "Last month I ran a PETALS Advent : a daily video drop with short, practical prompts to help teams build healthier habits. Think of it as a 24-day nudge for psychological safety, feedback loops, and...", "content_html": "Last month I ran a PETALS Advent: a daily video drop with short, practical prompts to help teams build healthier habits. Think of it as a 24-day nudge for psychological safety, feedback loops, and better ways of working. Each day delivered one micro-lesson.
\nI wanted the series to feel light and doable. Each episode was designed to be under a couple of minutes, with just one idea per day. It was also a small personal experiment: could I outline, record, edit, publish, and promote a video every day without burning out?
\nPETALS already covers a broad range of team health topics, so I used the Advent format to explore safety and trust, feedback and candour, clarity and alignment, rhythm and rituals, plus celebration and reflection. It wasn’t about deep dives. It was about small prompts that are easy to try in the next stand-up, retro, or 1:1.
\nA few things made the daily cadence possible. I sketched the full 24-day outline early so I wasn’t scrambling for topics. Each video kept the same arc; context, a single prompt, and one action to try. I recorded quickly, used Descript for edits, and scheduled via Buffer.
\nEven with that rhythm, some days still felt like a sprint. But the process held up better than expected and taught me a lot about shipping fast without losing quality.
\nSmall prompts travel far. The shortest episodes often sparked the most comments because they were easy to try immediately. Consistency builds trust. Showing up daily reminded me (and the audience) that trust grows through repetition. Systems beat motivation. A simple, repeatable workflow was the only reason I could keep it up.
\nIf you missed the series, the full playlist is here: PETALS Advent 2025. Let me know which episode resonated most, and I’ll consider expanding the top themes into longer articles later in the year.
\n", "date_published": "2026-01-23T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["petals","advent","team-health","video"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/6-nations-calendar-2026/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/6-nations-calendar-2026/", "title": "6 Nations Calendar 2026 refresh", "summary": "I’ve updated my 6 Nations Calendar for 2026, and the biggest change this year is where it lives. I’ve moved hosting from Netlify to GitHub so the CI pipeline is closer to the codebase, easier to test...", "content_html": "I’ve updated my 6 Nations Calendar for 2026, and the biggest change this year is where it lives. I’ve moved hosting from Netlify to GitHub so the CI pipeline is closer to the codebase, easier to test locally, and simpler to maintain. Nothing wrong with Netlify at all, it’s just another service to keep tabs on and I want to keep the moving parts small.
\nAs part of the migration, I’ve been leaning on tools like Google Jules to prepare content, optimise the framework implementation, and refine parts of the UI. I’ve not pushed it too hard, but the recommendations have been genuinely useful for spotting code smells and bad practices early.
\nOn the visual side, I’ve made a few refinements too:
\nI’ll keep tweaking things as I notice them through personal use and any feedback that comes in. I also want to keep a better record of changes going forward, possibly by using GitHub commit automation to help.
\n", "date_published": "2026-01-09T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["6-nations","calendar","github","ui"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q4-2025/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q4-2025/", "title": "Q4 2025", "summary": "October # Chatted with some students at Binghamton University in New York about the PETALS framework and how it has helped teams with improving psychological safety through real-world case studies...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/12/Oreilly-talking-PETALS-on-Lead-Dev-panel.jpg", "content_html": "Chatted with some students at Binghamton University in New York about the PETALS framework and how it has helped teams with improving psychological safety through real-world case studies (annoyingly, the recording didn’t work very well, only capturing my audio). What a fantastic milestone to know the framework is now influencing academics in business schools.
\nTest print of Lizzie’s first book using Amazon KDP and Canva for designs. Lots of lessons learned, but quite happy with the first-ever attempt with printing books.
\nI started using an AddToCal tag on my TickTick items that automatically sync with my “Personal” Google Calendar. It’s been really useful to see how I spend my time and handy for looking back for posts like this.
Had an idea: Can we feed all the House Finesse mix tracks and DJs into an LLM for easier discoverability? Not much work on this, but noted down and shared here for visibility.
\nSaw The Bodyguard at Oxford’s New Theatre - surprise birthday present for wifey. Impressive performances but as a Whitney fanboy, my expectations weren’t quite met by the main singer.
\nHosted our first Lean Coffee Leaders MK on 15 October - a casual space for local tech leaders to meet up over a lunchtime coffee, discuss their own work focus and challenges, and share the knowledge with fellow peers. I’m starting it off as an organic word of mouth invite first but we will open it up later in 2026 when we've established the right cadence.
\nSpent some time with apprenticeship students through Working Options, sharing some personal insights on working in tech for the past 30 years(!)
\nOrganised the Multipack 20th anniversary curry in Birmingham but couldn’t make it due to a clashing family birthday. We need to organise another one for Q1 that I have to attend.
\nSpent a bit of time on unstyled.com - my studio brand - showcasing some of the projects I’ve worked on over the past few years.
\nDiscovered O'Reilly (the book publishers) highlighted PETALS as a useful framework for measuring team health on a Lead Dev panel discussion - further evidence this is organically spreading around the industry as a thing.
\n![\"O'Reilly](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/12/Oreilly-talking-PETALS-on-Lead-Dev-panel.jpg\")
Tried some “hotpod yoga” on a free trial in the iconic Weedon Bec site. Safe to say it’s not for me yet, way too intense and difficult for a beginner who needs some more practice in a smaller space where I can be corrected.
\nRest of the family had a week in Disneyland Paris whilst I looked after the dogs. Gave me a chance to spend some much-needed time with my best mate over a few games of pool.
\nIntroduced the 4th member to our PETALS dev team, Sertan - a good friend who also witnessed the birth and evolution of the framework, regularly advocating in his roles, and is also super passionate about building cool stuff.
\nThe Boy returned home from uni for a week to study (and feed properly). Still nice to have him back with us.
\nContinued refining the PETALS app paid plans, how best to provide value for money while scaling features for end users but also sustainably supporting it's growth fairly.
\nReleased the first few episodes of Managing Engineers podcast Season 2, which I’ve revived with Neil Younger, a fellow Engineering Manager at the Cooperative. We’re committing to 10 episodes and wanted to record at least three episodes before releasing for peer review feedback from our close trusted circles.
\n![\"Managing](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/12/Managing-Engineers-Season-2.jpg\")
Spoke at the Tech Mids conference in Birmingham, my first appearance at a full-day event after doing evening meet-ups for a few years. Huge milestone personally and really satisfying feedback from those who attended (plus a handful of new app registrations).
\n![\"Talking](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/12/TechMids25-enjoyment-slide.jpeg\")
Moved SuperRams.com over to Substack (derbycounty.substack.com) where we could try to rebuild our old DCFC community away from the toxicity of X.com. Interestingly, our BlueSky sister account continues to engage with loyal Rams.
\nRandom coffee pairing with Sandeep and Paul S from the Agile in the Ether community. Always fun to spend time chatting with more tech leaders from across the industry. Many of these folks are from government services which is completely alien to me.
\nTried to raise awareness and cash for Movember with my first ever full face fresh shave of my life. It really was a shock to the family, Mrs J tempted to leave me, daughter actually crying at the sight of me, but it worked as we raised over £1,000 as a team at Rightmove. Needless to say it’s a one-off but I am glad it was worth the effort.
\n![\"What,](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/12/What-no-beard.jpeg\")
Fell off a roof ladder and seriously sprained the soft tissue in my right ankle. At first, I thought it was a broken bone but A&E assessments decided it was muscle. Either way, I was laid up in bed for a few weeks, then stuck working from home until mid December.
\n![\"Right](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/12/Broken-right-foot.jpeg\")
Interesting chat with a huge international enterprise interested in licensing their own instance of the PETALS app for all the companies they consult. It's a model we've never considered before but it's certainly feasible and evidence our framework really needs to consider data ownership seriously.
\nI committed to a daily video release with a PETALS Advent on the main (video) socials. This was quite an intense project but a chance to provide micro posts (2-3 minutes long) on all sorts of team health topics, some with a festive twist, but some quite generic. It was initially planned to be made in batches but that wasn’t always feasible. I still found quite a slick process outlining, recording, editing, releasing and promoting with the kit I have, mostly thanks to Descript and Buffer. Archives are available on Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube.
\nWe also hit the healthy milestone of House Finesse’s 300th episode which I naturally hosted with a selection of some resident requests.
\nAnother Working Options session with students at Sharnbrook Academy interested in the tech community. Always rewarding to engage with a younger audience intrigued by software careers and quite reassuring feedback from them all on how it went. Always happy to do this, so reach out if interested.
\nSpoke to Paul I and Adrian H from Agile in the Ether community. Big thanks to Emily Weber for keeping this community going.
\nReally enjoyed seeing a performance of The Nutcracker at our local Macready Theatre - part of the original Rugby School. First time I've seen ballet live and now seriously impressed by the talented people.
\nSpent a lot of time during my Christmas break migrating my WordPress blog of about 15 years to this new 11ty build. The main bulk of content was quite straightforward but there were also some custom post types that weren't as straightforward until I loaded the full MySQL dump into ChatGPT and asked the right questions. Try it!
\nFor the inbetwixmas week, we managed to get a break to the Cornwall coast for the whole family plus doggies. Lovely time enjoying all the local towns including Par, Looe, Charlestown and many of the pubs & cafes.
\n![\"Beautiful](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/12/Par-beach.jpeg\")
Following the Metaverse team's push to 5x output from their engineering teams using AI, it got me thinking about how we could actually recognise and reward the humans with 4 day weeks to balance it all out.
\n", "date_published": "2025-10-13T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/", "title": "Q3 2025", "summary": "Summer 2025 turned out to be a bit of a mix for me; major milestones, unfortunate mishaps and a few big life moments. Between broken bones, pool time, and brainstorming MORE ideas, it felt like a...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/Broken-finger-xray.jpeg", "content_html": "Summer 2025 turned out to be a bit of a mix for me; major milestones, unfortunate mishaps and a few big life moments. Between broken bones, pool time, and brainstorming MORE ideas, it felt like a season that somehow balanced chaos and calm. Plenty of learning, a bit of laughing, and a lot of reflection.
\nAs mentioned back in Q2, the House Finesse podcast feed turned 20 years old this summer. I wanted to mark it with something momentous. The original plan was a big party, but, as always, calendars didn’t line up, especially with most our resident DJ's gigging most weekends. Add in the small matter of my broken finger (more on that later) and inability to travel down to see the rest of the gang in Colchester, it wasn’t exactly easy.
\nSo instead, we celebrated in the way we know best, plenty good music. We had a variety of guest DJs, including some younger talent like Charlie Price and Taylan, I couldn’t resist indulging in a couple of classics mixes, and the highlight for me was LYP delivering an amazing live set with The Unknowns.
\n‹ ›
\n[![\"HF275](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF275_with_Andi_King.jpg\")
13 Jun 2025 - HF275
\n[![\"HF276](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF276_with_Disco77.jpg\")
20 Jun 2025 - HF276
\n[![\"HF277](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF277_with_LYP.jpg\")
27 Jun 2025 - HF277
\n[![\"HF278](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF278_with_One_Phat_DJ.jpg\")
4 Jul 2025 - HF278
\n[![\"HF279](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF279_with_Andi_King.jpg\")
11 Jul 2025 - HF279
\n[![\"HF281](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF281_with_DJ_Programma.jpg\")
18 Jul 2025 - HF281
\n[![\"HF282](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF282_with_LYP.jpg\")
25 Jul 2025 - HF282
\n[![\"HF283](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF283_with_Taylan.jpg\")
1 Aug 2025 - HF283
\n[![\"HF284](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF284_with_DJ_Tai.jpg\")
15 Aug 2025 - HF284
\n[![\"HF285](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF285_with_Disco77.jpg\")
22 Aug 2025 - HF285
\n[![\"HF286](\"https://sijobling.com/blog/q3-2025/images/HF286_Love_Sensation_Live_with_Andi_King.jpg\")
29 Aug 2025 - HF286
\n](https://housefinesse.com/shows/hf286-love-sensation-live-with-andi-king/)
\nAnother thing I’ve been working on this year is an “open office hours” slot with our On The Side community. It’s a Slack group where we share and support each other’s (mostly techy) side projects, and every Monday we commit to our weekly goals. I thought it would be a nice excuse to run a lunchtime office hours session, totally optional, just whoever fancies dropping in. Most weeks it’s me and Brian catching up on fun projects, which usually ends up drifting into PETALS ideas. Either way, it’s a good reset for the week and keeps me connected with that community.
\nOne thing that definitely threw a spanner in our summer plans was an accidental (old man) fall in the dark which left me with a very awkwardly broken little finger. I assumed it was just bruised, but three days later an X-ray confirmed otherwise, complicated enough that I was referred to a hand surgeon, who promptly fitted me with a Giddens frame.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/Broken-finger-xray.jpeg\")
Giddens frame x-ray
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/08/IMG_1517.jpeg\")
Nursing a broken finger in the heat
\nThe timing couldn’t have been worse, the surgery landed on day one of our three-week Rhodes holiday (for our 20th wedding anniversary no less), which naturally upset the family. It meant no swimming, bathing or driving for me, but it did force me to properly slow down and relax. After five weeks the frame was removed, and since then it’s been a weekly physio routine, trying to coax the finger tip back into some flexibility after the bone healed slightly the wrong way.
\nA surprise bonus in July was a trip to the Ministry of Sound Classical show; my sister-in-law won tickets and kindly offered me the spare as the obvious dance music nut in the family. The timing was a bit sketchy (the day after my fall), so it was definitely a case of careful raving in a field. Still, totally worth it. I got to see one of my musical heroes David Morales alongside 90s icons Judge Jules and Paul Oakenfold.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/Paul-Oakenfold-and-David-Morale.jpeg\")
The start of August was all about down time with the family as we enjoyed a good two-week break in Rhodes, more details in the dedicated travel blog. Naturally though, when my mind is winding down, it starts sparking all sorts of new ideas #neurospicy.
\nI kept touching base with Adrian and Brian on our weekly PETALS Dev Time (actually a bit of respite from the peak heat sitting in the share 2-3pm EEST) and I ended up designing some new PETALS merch to pimp our product on all my video calls and hand out to some folks who are championing the framework.
\n![\"PETALS](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/PETALS-Dev-Time-from-Rhodes.png\")
![\"Modelling](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/New-PETALS-merch.jpeg\" "\\"Get")
Whilst we were there, I had the annual reminder to renew SuperRams.com, a domain I’ve owned since 2003(!), which got me thinking about how we might revive that old community. It’s had several variations over the years, but the one I miss most is the era when we had over 13,000 followers on Twitter and a buzzing community of Derby County fans. Could we bring it back in a new way?
\nThat’s when I started digging into Substack and its power for email newsletters. It felt like the right medium to reconnect. Alongside that, I realised our House Finesse newsletter was still on Mailchimp, which doesn’t have the brightest future, so I moved it over to Substack and rebranded it as the VIP Club. It ties neatly into the house music ecosystem and gives listeners more ways to get involved. It’s already been great seeing long-time listeners engaging again, and I’m hoping it grows as we keep building that community. (One other unexpected highlight from August was bumping into my House Finesse co-founder Stu, aka LYP, on a family trip to Woburn Safari Park - completely unplanned but wonderful to finally meet in person after nearly 15 years.)
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/House-Finesse-VIP-Club-on-Substack.png\")
![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/LYP-and-Si-meetup-in-a-zoo.jpg\")
Another project hitting 20 years this year is my old Midlands tech community, The Multipack. Back in the day, we met once a month in a pub around Birmingham to chat all things web, and some amazing relationships grew out of it - many of us are still in contact now. To mark the milestone, I emailed the gang (again, classic "social media" that still works), synced up calendars, and booked a Saturday curry on 18 October back in Birmingham, our home city. We won’t get everyone together, but hopefully it sparks more meet-ups in the future.
\nPETALS wrapped up its summer promo with strong momentum, locking in several new teams and cleaning up the mailing list in the process. I ran a “Free Forever” offer to encourage more sign-ups, a success that also helped identify who’s genuinely active and engaged. Using our Brevo platform and appropriate social media campaigns, the promo pulled in a mix of new users and familiar faces now on a grandfathered plan with unlimited user accounts.
\nFrom there, the focus shifted to Autumn plans to build and release our initial paid plans, along with the next big thing, a PETALS Conference. The idea is to bring organisations together next spring or summer to talk team health, psychological safety, and effective practices, not just PETALS itself. It’ll be hosted in the West Midlands, probably Birmingham, to keep it accessible, and I’m hoping to attract a mix of case studies, workshops, and fireside chats. More details in my video…
\n\nAway from work, I’ve been experimenting with Fitness Pomos, using Pomodoro-style 25-minute bursts to fit in exercise between meetings. It’s hit-and-miss, but it’s helping me make movement part of the day instead of an afterthought.
\nWe also added a new member to the family, our puppy, Lady, who’s turned the house upside down in the best way. We’re back in bleary-eyed parent mode with late-night garden trips, but she’s absolutely adorable.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/Puppy-Lady.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/10/Manchester-Uni.jpeg\")
And of course, the biggest moment of the month, our son heading to university. He’s studying Modern History and Politics at Manchester, settling in well after a long summer of travel and time with friends. It’s been a huge change for us, but we couldn’t be prouder.
\nSome other geeky projects I've been dabbling in…
\nI continued tinkering with automation through IFTTT, connecting my Spotify, Monzo, Strava and other habit activity tracking.
\nStarted experimenting with a new "Add To Cal" system to log Spotify plays, YouTube likes, and TickTick tasks into Google Calendar for a clearer look at how I spend time. I even tried to spin up an app with Cursor and Replit for the project, but neither delivered enough to keep going, so I binned those as useful experiments. Lesson learned; spend more time crafting the actual PRD properly and give some suitable contextual baselines. AI builds tend to perform much better with that foundation.
\nOver the summer, I leaned heavily on Cursor (especially when one-handed) to work on PETALS, House Finesse, and SuperRams, before switching to try ChatGPT Codex for future dev work as I was already paying for that monthly subscription.
\nSome movie highlights…
\nRecently watched The Roses starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, incredible performances and a brilliant dark comedy twist on the original.
\nThe Long Walk also stood out, a brilliant cast delivering an intense, emotional performance that’s stuck with me.
\nOn the flip side, Thursday Murder Club had a great cast but, for me, pretty lacklustre performances.
\nAnd for pure nostalgia, I indulged in Team America: World Police from 2004, definitely dated and contentious, but still hilariously dark.
\nOn the personal side, I’ve been building better habits and actually sticking to them:
\nDaily Yudoku & Solitaire challenges and at least 15-minutes Duolingo session (which now include music lessons).
\nDaily exercise, usually a 25-minute Pomodoro-style run or swim every work day, weekends off.
\nWeekday journalling after work, often chatting with ChatGPT to capture my ramblings and shape them into something useful.
\nReading twice a week, sometimes audiobooks, currently alternating between Tim Berners-Lee’s autobiography (narrated by Stephen Fry, very strange hearing him verbalise code) and Ready Player Two on Spotify, something I read in dead-tree a few years back but still find quite cathartic to relax.
\nI gave daily Elevate challenges a go through August, but they didn’t quite stick, a bit too demanding without the same sense of reward.
\nMy new Eufy smart scales (a birthday gift) have made it easier to track progress on Mondays and Fridays, spotting the difference between a week of workouts and a weekend of overindulging.
\nHeading into Q4, I’m gearing up to launch and promote PETALS Plus and Premium plans, with new marketing campaigns to match. I’ll also on the bench to speak at TechMids in November and have another possible meetup lined up soon after. Lots more ideas brewing, and, hopefully, a bit more sleep now Lady’s settling in.
\n", "date_published": "2025-10-10T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["neurospicy"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/fitness-pomodoros/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/fitness-pomodoros/", "title": "Fitness Pomodoros", "summary": "This idea hit me in the gym, then got shaped in the pool. That’s how most of my stuff comes together; push myself physically, then let my head wander until it clicks. In the gym, I noticed something...", "content_html": "This idea hit me in the gym, then got shaped in the pool. That’s how most of my stuff comes together; push myself physically, then let my head wander until it clicks.
\nIn the gym, I noticed something simple. My sets, rests and the clock on the wall lined up perfectly with Pomodoro timers. Twenty-five minutes of focus, five minutes of recovery. That’s how I work – why not train the same way?
\nLater, in the pool, I broke it down further.
\nWhat if you split 25 minutes of exercise into five 5-minute chunks, each with a one-minute cooldown?
\nSuddenly it wasn’t “finding a spare hour for the gym.” It was just one Pomodoro. That small shift made the whole thing feel more doable.
\nThe more I thought about it, the more it made sense:
\nResearch shows even five minutes of daily exercise can boost strength, endurance and mental wellbeing, especially in people who are otherwise sedentary (Tom’s Guide, 2024).
\nShort bursts of moderate movement have been linked to lower blood pressure and reduced risk of heart disease (Business Insider, 2024).
\nLike Pomodoros at work, structured intervals build consistency and reduce decision fatigue – a key factor in making habits stick (Lally et al., 2010).
\nAnd the overlap with mental health is huge. Swimming especially is rhythmic and meditative, shown to reduce stress and anxiety (Swim England, 2018).
\nIt’s not a brand new thought, either. Others have played with the idea of “fitness Pomodoros” before; from early blogs like End of Three Fitness (2014) to more recent Medium posts about structuring workouts in 25-minute chunks.
\nWhat I’m playing with here is an iteration: weaving in cool-downs, mental health, and the way it integrates into a Pomodoro-shaped calendar.
\nWhat I like most is the flexibility. You can skip a Pomodoro when the day’s stacked, double up if you’ve got the energy, or fit them around meetings. I’ve even started setting all my work meetings as 25 or 50 min Pomos. It means when I’m planning my day, I can see exactly where fitness or wellness can fit in.
\nAnd once you stick with it, you find a natural rhythm. It stops feeling like a system and just becomes habit. Consistent cues, after a call, before lunch, between emails, help it embed and soon you’re not relying on willpower.
\nYou’re just following the rhythm, like laps in a pool or steps on a treadmill.
\nOf course, it’s not perfect. Five-minute bursts won’t replace every fitness goal, and staying consistent takes effort. Some people might find it interrupts their flow, or feels too easy at times. But for anyone juggling work, health and headspace who are slaves to their calendars, Fitness Pomodoros offer a way to balance it all without overthinking.
\nBorn in the gym, refined in the pool, applied in my calendar. That’s Fitness Pomodoros.
\nI’m now up on my gym Pomodoro, drafting this out, and need to get ready for work.
\n", "date_published": "2025-09-09T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["calendar","exercise","fitness","pomodoro"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/product-on-a-page-done-app/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/product-on-a-page-done-app/", "title": "Product on a Page - Done app", "summary": "Why are we so obsessed about getting the next thing done when we rarely reflect on what we have already done?", "content_html": "\nWhy are we so obsessed about getting the next thing done when we rarely reflect on what we have already done?
\n", "date_published": "2025-07-14T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/finding-creativity-in-the-pool/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/finding-creativity-in-the-pool/", "title": "Finding creativity in the pool", "summary": "Like many folks in tech, my head’s usually full of noise; podcasts, playlists, Slack messages, meeting notes. But I’ve found an unlikely place where my brain slows down just enough for creativity to...", "content_html": "Like many folks in tech, my head’s usually full of noise; podcasts, playlists, Slack messages, meeting notes. But I’ve found an unlikely place where my brain slows down just enough for creativity to catch up: the swimming pool.
\nThree mornings a week, I hit the gym before work. I start with a 30-minute run, usually fuelled by a podcast or a mix from Glitterbox, Defected, or even my own House Finesse show. It’s productive, energising and full-on.
\nThen I swim.
\nNo headphones, no music, no podcasts. Just me, four tiled walls, and water. It’s not inspiring on the surface, but it’s where the best ideas tend to bubble up.
\nThere’s something about the repetition and stillness that opens up space in my brain. Without distractions, I find myself drifting into ideas; not just for ALL THE side projects but also family stuff and work.
\nIt reminded me: creativity often needs silence, not stimulation.
\nNo browsers. No doom-scrolling. Just stillness.
\nThe ideas come but the problem is I can’t easily do anything with them.
\nMy Apple Watch isn’t very helpful with wet fingers (I even struggle to end or pause my workouts).
\nI can’t exactly start shouting notes into my phone around the pool either - the strangers would be worried.
\nSo, at the moment, I try to brain dump as soon as I get back to the locker room. But inevitably, some of them slip away.
\nI’m still figuring it out, but I’ve started experimenting:
\nTaking more tech-free time outside the pool (quiet walks and screen-free lunch breaks
\nBouncing ideas around with ChatGPT hands-free whilst driving - remarkably convenient when you're stuck in the car for up to an hour
\nFinding faster ways to get notes down straight after a workout, possibly using some AI to structure them thoughts
\nLetting go of the need to capture everything and trusting the best ideas will come back
\nIf you’re feeling creatively blocked, maybe try doing less. Let yourself be bored. Go for a swim. Or a quiet walk. See what comes up.
\nJust don’t expect your tech to help while you’re dripping wet.
\n", "date_published": "2025-07-11T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["creativity","fitness"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q2-2025/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/q2-2025/", "title": "Q2 2025", "summary": "It’s been a full-on few months. Between building products, running teams, raising money, and squeezing in the odd tattoo, here’s a look back at what’s been going on from April to June 2025. A...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/IMG_0836.jpeg", "content_html": "It’s been a full-on few months. Between building products, running teams, raising money, and squeezing in the odd tattoo, here’s a look back at what’s been going on from April to June 2025.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/IMG_0836.jpeg\")
After a pretty intense first half of the year, I finally took some time out for the late-May Bank Holiday. We headed down to Falmouth, Cornwall, staying in a family holiday home right on the coast. Stunning views, sea air, and plenty of places to unwind.
\nCaught up with family, tried all the local food & coffee places, and on the final day… got tattoos. Mine is a quote by Salvador Dali:
\n\n\n“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.”
\n
Felt like quite a powerful and relevant message considering my mindset and career.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/6139649C-56A6-46A0-BEDC-A5FE552BA994.jpeg\")
Pro tip: Spread your holidays out across the year. It helps you reset more often and keeps the burnout at bay.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/IMG_1273.png\")
After years of prototypes and plenty of late-night building sessions, we finally launched the PETALS app in May. A proper working product, now in the hands of real teams.
\nSimple, lightweight team health check-in tool
\nCharts, visuals, and rapid feedback mechanisms to streamline team reflections
\nDesigned to spark meaningful conversations in minutes
\nMassive shout-out to Brian and Adrian who helped to make it happen. They've built features, squashed some bugs, and sanity-checked everything I was second-guessing. More than anything, they were brilliant accountability partners, proving how much a healthy team attitude matters when trying to ship something great. Our weekly Friday lunch checkpoints to talk through progress and challenges have been a huge help, as has the async Slack chats to keep ideas flowing in between.
\nWe’ve got a handful of companies actively using it now which is a promising start, but we really want to scale things up in Q3 and Q4. The more teams we reach, the better the feedback and more useful data for shaping what comes next.
\nI also took some (new) stickers and promo codes to LDX3 hoping to build buzz with the ideal target audience, and while they looked the part, not much came from it. The old saying “Build it and they’ll come” really isn’t true as it used to be.
\nSo the next focus is on creating awareness. We’re experimenting with fresh ways to demo PETALS through all our social channels, showing off its simplicity and potential in a way that actually sticks. Watch this space.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/IMG_1056.jpeg\")
In mid-June, I headed to one of the biggest conferences in the tech leadership industry, LDX3 in London (formerly known as LeadDev) to see what the rest of the industry is talking about.
\nTL;DR: We’re mostly aligned with modern leadership and engineering practices in my experience, both present and past. But there’s still a long way to go to reach the high performance or some of the biggest international organisations.
\nFor a fuller picture of key takeaways, I wrote up my 10 lessons learned from LDX3 with plenty in there about tech leadership, neurodiversity and AI.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/dd4d1dcc-92d7-4ba7-b6d5-215c777957ee.jpeg\")
![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/cb19a454-8b80-418f-9d5c-688bd4398e96.jpeg\")
![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/7349fbe1-fcb2-4411-a18d-cccac7bc5d83.jpeg\")
This year marks 20 years of my house music podcast, now known as House Finesse.
\nBack in July 2005, I uploaded a recently recorded mix called Funky Pants to my blog and tried submitting the RSS feed to Apple iTunes podcast directory to see what happens. After numerous featured moments on their homepage and charts, it's continued to grow a loyal audience, changing shape over the years from the One Phat DJ Podcast to the Funky House Finesse radio show and now the House Finesse podcast which I run with an amazing group of DJ's from Colchester UK.
\nWe've now kicked off celebrations with a lush guest mix from Charlie Price, and we've got plenty more lined up through the summer.
\nIn the mean time, I've also been exploring other ways to keep the community engaged with a brand new WhatsApp community for our listeners to interact with each other and the DJs and created some branded 20th anniversary merch (caps, tees, mugs… mostly just adorned by me so far).
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/07/E90A92C3-5AD3-4814-B6D9-7573FCF1E70C.jpeg\")
20 years on and we're still keeping it fresh with the latest and greatest house music on the scene #housemusicalldaylong
\n21km for Dementia UK – I ran my first ever half marathon distance (on a cross-trainer, don’t judge) and raised £2,272 for Dementia UK
\nLeading 4 teams at once – I was responsible for looking after all four engineering teams in our Milton Keynes office while we backfilled another Engineering Manager position. Nearly 20 people, each with their own challenges and projects; a big stretch but loads learned.
\nWelcome back, old friend – We brought in Neil Crosby, an old Yahoo mate from 2006-2007, to take over the two teams I was managing temporarily. Great to reconnect and see how much things have changed since the early dev days.
\nAgent mode with GitHub Copilot – We ran a one-hour workshop in the MK office exploring GitHub Copilot Agent Mode. Not much was built, but the insight was gold; cynics found value, optimists were underwhelmed.
\nPETALS has been published twice – old ASOS colleague Nic Brown and good old friend Paul D have recently included (decent) references to PETALS in their respective books, Real World Agility and Beyond The Wireframe, both published this quarter. It’s an honour to be referenced alongside other industry leading frameworks but also an amazing achievement from humble beginnings.
\nEURO 2025 calendar was built in 2 hours thanks to AI – I created the full EURO 2025 fixture calendar from scratch in under two hours. It was the first time I've properly used AI to build software; ChatGPT cleaned and verified the data, then Cursor generated the Markdown files. It's a fun little side project I continue to keep dabbling in as it scratches a personal itch and nice to see others benefit as well.
\nJobling MP in the making – The Boy ran as a paper candidate for the Green Party in our local elections this May, only to give people an alternative beyond the typical parties, but actually came out stronger than Labour.
\nJohnny Ball has still got it – It was totally surreal to meet Johnny Ball (yes, that Johnny Ball – aka Zoe Ball’s dad) at my wife’s school. At the impressive age of 85 years old, he gave a truly inspiring keynote to Year 8 Baccalaureate students but also kept all the parents and carers engaged too. Total legend.
\nKatherine Ryan at Utilita Arena – We saw Katherine Ryan live in Birmingham, a Christmas present for Mrs J last year. She was hilarious, sharp, and absolutely nailed the second half with top-tier audience improv.
\nLion, Witch and the Wardrobe at The Alex – We also caught the stage version in Birmingham. It was sadly underwhelming though; decent concept but the delivery didn’t quite land.
\nLone Wolf Comedy Festival Fail – We tried to celebrate the boy finishing his A-Levels in May with a comedy festival in Bicester… but we never found it. Disappointing signage and terrible mobile searching didn't help but we ended up having a pint at "nearby" Diddly Squat Farm instead.
\nGreat British Food Festival at Holdenby House – Great day out with some friendly neighbours; delicious food, great music and entertainment, more sun than expected and maybe one drink too many. Definitely worth checking out if the tour swings by near you.
\nHere's some of my own goals I'll be working through the Summer months to keep me accountable and maybe get some help or ideas from anyone following along:
\nTaking a well-earned summer break; 3 weeks in Greece with the family to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, soak up some sun, and enjoy quality time before the boy heads off to uni in September
\nPushing more PETALS publicity across our social and community spaces with creative demos, clearer messaging, and a few fun surprises that might engage better than so far
\nBuild out the PETALS Premium plan with Brian and Adrian; extra functionality, deeper insights and richer multi-team support which add extra value to organisations who
\nStart some lightweight habit tracking looking into my screen time, fitness activity, entertainment habits (Spotify, Plex and YouTube) and Duolingo progress. I’ve been gathering this data for years through some IFTTT / Zapier integrations to Google Sheets and now the plan is to build a simple tool (maybe with some AI agents) to visualise, review and share regular progress. I'm also thinking of basing it on Mike Streety’s brilliant Statman app which he built last year and shared in our On The Side community. It could be the perfect springboard.
\nThis week I had the chance to attend LDX3 (formerly known as LeadDev London), a buzzing two-day conference packed with bite-sized engineering leadership talks, practical insights, and a refreshing mix of inspiration and pragmatism.
\nHere are 10 takeaways that stood out for me…
\n1. Strong delivery doesn’t mean a healthy team
\nMetrics alone don’t tell the full story. Without context and action, they’re just noise. Consider asking your teams what metrics actually help them improve—not just what gets reported. (Oge Opara-Nadi, Hey Savi)
2. Weekly quality reviews can prevent a crisis
\nQuality is speed. Skipping it for short-term gains leads to breakdowns later. What lightweight rhythm could help you keep an eye on code health before problems appear? (Christine Pinto)
3. Repo health dashboards are back in style
\nTrainline built one to auto-lock repos under 40% health. It’s visual, objective, and promotes ownership. Could your team benefit from a visual dashboard to track repo or project health? (Simon McManus, Trainline)
4. Most devs still don’t get structured onboarding
\nFirst PR. First Jira ticket. First production impact. These onboarding quests create early wins and clarity plus the sense of satisfaction for the individuals. What would your team's "onboarding quest" look like? (Amtul Haq Ayesha)
5. Don’t assume, do challenge
\nWhen leading diverse or neurodiverse teams, challenge sweeping generalisations and co-create solutions. Your leadership style matters; is it permissive, authoritative, or something else? (Stacey Nutbrown, Capital One)
6. Confidence isn’t binary
\nAsk for a percentage. “How confident are you (%) that we’ll deliver this on time?” This opens up new conversations and surfaces hidden risk. Could this shift how you handle roadmap conversations? (Sean Bolton, Monzo)
7. Every output is an input
\nEvery change feeds the next. Don’t wait for perfection; log it, learn from it, iterate. What small loop could you tighten in your team’s workflow today? (Matt Collier, Vercel)
![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/06/Audit-one-metric.jpeg\")
![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/06/It-could-all-be-so-simple.jpeg\")
8. Not all OKRs should stretch you
\nSome goals need ambition. Others need focus. Know which is which to avoid burnout. Take a moment to sanity-check your current OKRs; are they all pushing or balancing? (Neil Vass, Co-op)
9. Your job shifts as you grow
\nPresence, perception and patience are key when you lead other leaders. You’re not just managing people, you shape the system around them. Where do you need to show up more intentionally? (Gisela Rossi, Trustpilot)
10. Pair with AI, don’t rely on it blindly
\nUse tools like Claude and Copilot to reduce toil, but keep your critical eye sharp. What’s your team’s shared understanding of how to use AI responsibly? (Birgitta Böeckeler, Thoughtworks & Farhan Thawar, Shopify)
Some of the common themes across the 2 days…
\nGreat teams don’t just hit numbers; they understand what those numbers mean. Many talks reinforced the idea that data needs interpretation, intention, and follow-up to drive actual improvement. This strongly aligns with the PETALS approach: numbers should be conversation starters, not performance scores. When misused, metrics can create fear or false confidence; when used well, they unlock trust, reflection and action.
\nRushed work, flaky tests, and poor documentation always cost more in the long run. Time invested in quality, whether through code reviews, retros, or weekly health checks, is time well spent. Tools like Trainline’s repo health dashboard show how automated checks and visual indicators can flag risks early, but they only work if they're reviewed and considered as part of your wider service health conversations.
\nAI tools are changing how we work, but human judgment, ethical thinking, and communication remain irreplaceable. Use AI to enhance your workflow, not replace your responsibility. Speed is great – but only when paired with scrutiny. There’s a wave of tooling that accelerates time-to-live, but with it comes risk. The idea of engineers simply reviewing AI-generated PRs sounds efficient, but without rigour, it can compromise code quality. It loops back to the quality thread: if you’re not checking thoroughly, you’re just moving faster towards tech debt.
\nYou’re not the hero – you’re the enabler. Modern engineering leadership is about building psychological safety, amplifying others, and navigating ambiguity with clarity and care.
\nAll in all, it was an interesting few days surrounded by amazingly talented and knowledgeable people, understanding how others work in tech and what we could explore next.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/06/Pragmatic-Engineer-podcast.jpeg\")
As an avid podcaster, I was also fascinated to be part of the Pragmatic Engineer podcast recording on the first evening when Farhan was interviewed by Gergely and opened up about some really interesting ideas around embracing AI in the workplace.
\nWhich of these sparks something for you and your team?
\n", "date_published": "2025-06-20T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["conference","ldx3","leadership","tech"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/find-your-own-pace/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/find-your-own-pace/", "title": "Find your own pace", "summary": "I write this off the back of a new routine I’ve got into this week. Every weekday morning, I typically take the dog for a walk around the canal and fields so he can have a run and I can enjoy the...", "content_html": "I write this off the back of a new routine I’ve got into this week.
\nEvery weekday morning, I typically take the dog for a walk around the canal and fields so he can have a run and I can enjoy the great outdoors with a podcast that suits my mood. (This week, that’s been a mix of Jordan B Peterson audiobooks and podcasts about WWDC.)
\nAfter that, I’ve been hitting the gym to get back into some proper fitness. Typically 30 minutes on the elliptical followed by 30 minutes swimming, occasionally mixed up with weight training and rowing.
\nOne thing I’ve observed in the gym is the variety of personas and routines others are doing. There’s a mixture of strength, cardio and core work.
\nIn the pool, there’s a mix of elderly swimmers, friends catching up, and youngsters thrashing out laps — all moving at their own speed. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle; not super fit like the youngsters, but picking up the pace next to the gentler swimmers.
\nIt got me thinking about team health and how it all connects.
\nTeams tend to have a goal — usually shared, though sometimes formed from individual goals that align toward a common outcome.
\nWith fitness, it’s similar. We all broadly share one goal:
\nTo be healthier and fitter.
\nThat breaks down into individual versions of that goal, contributing to the greater good of a healthier society.
\nNaturally, governments try to encourage this — it reduces strain on healthcare. But we know that’s the dream, not the everyday reality. This often comes down to personal circumstances, personalities, abilities – ultimately, everyone is different.
\nWhen we talk about team health, we often focus on high performance and fixing weaknesses. But why?
\nAs a team, it’s easier to support each other through challenges, learn together (PETALS!), and work out how to move forward.
\nWe identify our own gaps and ask for help.
\nWe might get useful feedback from peers that points us in the right direction.
\nBut we do this together — with a shared goal and pace.
\nOne thing I’ve been asked a few times about PETALS is how to use it from a leadership perspective – dare I say, comparing teams.
\nBut you really can’t fixate on the metrics, especially with the arbitrary scores teams use.
\nPETALS is an introspection framework. It encourages conversation, rooted in personalised scores. Teams can benchmark and find their own language, but that doesn’t always translate across teams.
\nThat’s where I come back to pace setting.
\nI might regularly score myself between 2 and 4, saving 1s and 5s for the extremes. My team might be similar, or there might be more variation. Another team could look completely different.
\nWhen it comes to improvement, what matters are the shifts.
\nFor one person, that might be a nudge in productivity. For another, more learning. For someone else, a bit of serenity.
\nIf you’ve had no learning time for months, then carving out an hour next week is a huge win.
\nIf you already learn regularly, then something like a course or conference might be the step change.
\nThis is pace setting in action. Everyone is different — but we should all strive for the same ultimate goal:
\nTo make improvements to the way we work.
\nJust like with fitness, we all want to be healthier or fitter — but in completely different ways.
\nIf we find a common language and a shared goal, we can support each other in the process. It’s easier in team sports; trickier with solo routines. But still possible.
\nThe trick isn’t to obsess over the pace of others — it’s to understand your own rhythm, and keep an eye on your team’s.
\nLeadership isn’t about pushing everyone to sprint. It’s about creating the conditions for people to find their stride.
\nThe most effective teams aren’t always the fastest or the loudest.
\nThey’re the ones who know where they’re going, why they’re going there, and how they’re going to support each other on the journey.
\nSo whether you’re swimming, coding, strategising, or just learning to ask better questions — give yourself and your team the permission to go at the pace that works for you.
\nThat’s what PETALS is really about: not comparing, but connecting.
\n", "date_published": "2025-06-14T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["fitness","petals"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/vulnerability-safety-but-it-can-be/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/vulnerability-safety-but-it-can-be/", "title": "Vulnerability ≠ Safety (But It Can Be)", "summary": "This week, I saw two very different sides of psychological safety play out, and both left a mark. First up, a team meeting. It started off well; people were being honest, surfacing tough stuff that...", "content_html": "This week, I saw two very different sides of psychological safety play out, and both left a mark.
\nFirst up, a team meeting.
\nIt started off well; people were being honest, surfacing tough stuff that clearly needed to be aired. You could feel the bravery. But it didn’t stay safe for long.
\nEmotions bubbled up, a few defensive reactions crept in, and the mood shifted fast. One minute we were leaning into discomfort, the next we were skirting around it. That tipping point is delicate, and once it goes, it’s hard to pull things back without making it worse. Definitely one to watch closely and navigate carefully if you ever find yourself in that space.
\nThen there’s the flip side.
\nThis week also happens to be Mental Health Awareness Week, and across the wider company, we’ve organised a handful of people to share deeply personal stories in public Slack and Teams channels to help raise awareness. Stories about anxiety, grief, burnout, endometriosis, and more. These weren’t easy reads.
\nBut the response? Honest, heartfelt, and overwhelmingly supportive. People replied with love, related experiences, and a whole lot of respect.
\nI even reached out to someone who shared their journey with endometriosis, something I’ve only really started to understand after supporting my wife through her own experience in the past few years. That one message turned into a really valuable and unexpected connection that will probably last. Just from showing a bit of humanity.
\nIt reminded me of something important:
\n\n\nVulnerability doesn’t guarantee safety. But it can create it if we handle it right.
\n
There’s a real difference between being open and being supported.
\nIn smaller team spaces, emotions run closer to the surface, and without the right care or facilitation, brave honesty can quickly feel exposed.
\nIn bigger spaces, especially when there’s no immediate expectation for a reaction, people can sit with the words, reflect, and respond with more empathy.
\nHere are a few things I’m taking away from all this:
\nVulnerability is a gift, not a guarantee. You can’t force it, and when someone offers it, you’ve got a responsibility to hold it well.
\nPsychological safety isn’t created in one meeting. It’s a rhythm, a culture, a series of responses that say “you’re safe here” over and over again. Nurture it.
\nBravery isn’t just speaking up, it’s how we respond when others do. That’s the bit that really matters.
\nWe talk a lot about psychological safety like it’s a checkbox. But it’s more like a muscle: always being used, and only stronger with practice.
\nLet’s keep practising.
\n", "date_published": "2025-05-16T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["culture","endometriosis","mental-health","psychologicalsafety"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/building-tools-for-healthier-teams/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/building-tools-for-healthier-teams/", "title": "Building Tools for Healthier Teams", "summary": "There’s a lot of talk about team health these days: retros, wellbeing check-ins, pulse surveys, the works. But in reality, many teams still struggle to see what’s going on until it’s too late. Or...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/05/PETALS-flower-example.png", "content_html": "There’s a lot of talk about team health these days: retros, wellbeing check-ins, pulse surveys, the works. But in reality, many teams still struggle to see what’s going on until it’s too late. Or worse, they see it but don’t know what to do about it.
\nThis post isn’t just a product update. It’s a reflection on what I’ve been building recently — tools that aim to make team health feel more visible, usable, and actionable. It’s also a bit of a love letter to side projects, collaboration, and the joy of making things that actually help people work better together.
\nOver the past few months, I’ve been focusing on two key projects:
\nA complete rebuild of our PETALS app, my lightweight framework for measuring and talking about team health
\nA new internal app, co-built with one of my engineers, that helps turn raw feedback into something constructive using generative AI
\nHere’s how those projects have come together — the thinking, the tech, and what I’ve learnt along the way.
\nPETALS has been my go-to framework for checking in on how teams are really doing. It’s light-touch and people-first, asking teams to score five areas regularly:
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/05/PETALS-flower-example.png\")
Rate your flower on productivity, enjoyment, teamwork, learning and serenity to get an average
\nThe original version was held together with Google Forms, hand-crafted charts, and a spreadsheet full of fragile formulas. It did the job (just) but wasn’t something I could confidently roll out across multiple teams or organisations.
\nSo we rebuilt it from the ground up, with two key goals:
\nMake it easier for teams to submit and view their scores
\nTurn those scores into something teams can actually use to reflect and adapt
\nThe very first prototype we threw together last year used a clunky UI framework that didn’t scale well and wasn’t easy to work with — but it let us move fast, test ideas, and iterate on a super simple foundation. It served its purpose, but I was always hesitant to promote it more widely. I wasn’t happy with the aesthetics (it definitely wasn’t my finest), and I’m always conscious of how important first impressions are, especially when you’re building something that’s meant to feel supportive and thoughtful for professional teams in businesses.
\nSo this time, we kept things lean but focused. The new app runs on Python/Django, hosted on Heroku, with a PostgreSQL backend. The UI is built with UIkit, chosen for its simplicity and speed. GitHub handles pull requests, a Heroku pipeline to automatically deploy from our staging and main branches safely and accordingly.
It’s been great fun getting properly back into web development after mostly being a tech leader for the past eight years. I’ve always chipped away at side projects (like all my sports calendars), but those were usually based on old frameworks with minimal interactivity.
\nThis build has been a lot more detailed. I’ve learnt loads with Python and Django, and dusted off my front-end skills to make the UI clean and usable, while still keeping an eye on the important “-ilities” like accessibility, reusability, and maintainability.
\nI’ve also really enjoyed collaborating with other techies again. It’s been a genuine highlight getting back into regular Dev Time with Brian Suda, who I’ve worked with on and off since the noughties and still rate as one of the best engineers I know. And it’s been brilliant having Adrian Lansdown on the project too - an old friend and recent colleague who’s brought fresh ideas, skills, and energy to the mix.
\nThe result? The app is now live, with a couple of teams actively using it in the real world, and we’re already getting positive and useful feedback. It’s not just a nicer form anymore; it’s a tool that encourages better conversations and helps teams see patterns in how they’re working and feeling over time.
\n![\"\"](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2025/05/PETALS-app-snapshot-preview.png\")
More recently, I’ve started working on a small AI bot with one of my engineers for providing constructive feedback to your peers.
\nWe all know feedback can be tough. Especially when it’s constructive, emotional, or poorly timed. People often hold back or water it down, or it lands wrong and makes things worse. So we wanted to explore whether AI could help reframe difficult feedback into something more useful and respectful.
\nThe tool is simple:
\nYou write what you really think
\nIt rewrites the message using an LLM prompt to make it more thoughtful, constructive and respectful of your environment
\nYou choose to share directly, send it via message, tweak or even bin it entirely
\nFor example, if you write:
\n\n\n“They always take over meetings.”
\n
…it might suggest:
\n\n\n“You have a strong presence in meetings — could you help create more space for others to contribute?”
\n
The aim isn’t to sugar-coat the message, just to help people express themselves more clearly, especially when emotions are high. We’re testing it ourselves first, both as team members and leaders, and it’s already helping us pause, reflect, and phrase things with a bit more care.
\nWe’ve kept it intentionally small for now. But it’s an interesting experiment in how internal tools (even simple ones) can support better communication and psychological safety.
\nThese projects aren’t perfect, and they’re not done. But they’ve already reminded me of a few important things:
\nSide projects are culture tools. Especially when you’re building with your own team, for your own team.
\nDesign still matters. Taking time to make things usable and enjoyable is worth the extra effort.
\nFeedback needs help. Tools can’t fix culture, but they can lower the friction just enough to spark better habits.
\nCollaboration energises. Working with people like Brian and Adrian has brought fresh momentum and ideas I wouldn’t have come up with alone, the same goes for our internal AI bot.
\nWe work in tech: we should use our skills to make our jobs better. There’s a lot of talk about team culture, feedback loops, and ways of working, but it’s even more powerful when we build tools that support those conversations. We should practise what we preach and use our own craft to shape how we work.
\nThere’s also a lot of noise (and fear) around AI taking over our jobs. I don’t see it that way. I’ve been embracing AI to assist me, not replace me. It helps me write, reflect, and generate ideas faster (I even used ChatGPT to draft up this blog post which gave me a great skeleton straight away that I spent about an hour making my own).
\nBut the core ideas? The intent, the shape, the human edge: that still comes from me. AI can support the work, but it’s our human creativity and care that drives it. I can’t see AI replacing that any time soon. Mr Altman even admitted this in a recent TED conversation:
\n\nWe’ll keep shaping our PETALS app based on user feedback and explore ways to integrate the feedback tool into other flows, ideally a Slack bot!
\nAnd as always, we’ll keep experimenting with small tools that nudge better behaviours in our teams.
\nIf you’re working on something similar, or want to borrow some of this thinking for your own team, reach out. I’d love to chat.
\n", "date_published": "2025-05-09T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["adrian-lansdown","ai","brian-suda","chatgpt","petals","sam-altman","team-health"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/micro/how-can-milton-keynes-become-a-tech-hub/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/micro/how-can-milton-keynes-become-a-tech-hub/", "title": "How can Milton Keynes become a tech hub?", "summary": "Today, I was invited to a Protospace Roundtable discussion with fellow tech leaders from around Milton Keynes to discuss how the city can become a tech hub.", "content_html": "\nToday, I was invited to a Protospace Roundtable discussion with fellow tech leaders from around Milton Keynes to discuss how the city can become a tech hub.
\n", "date_published": "2025-01-16T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/how-can-mk-become-a-tech-hub/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/how-can-mk-become-a-tech-hub/", "title": "How can MK become a tech hub?", "summary": "Today, I was invited to a Protospace Roundtable discussion with fellow tech leaders from around Milton Keynes to discuss how the city can become a tech hub. Chapters # 01:33 Inspiring the next...", "content_html": "Today, I was invited to a Protospace Roundtable discussion with fellow tech leaders from around Milton Keynes to discuss how the city can become a tech hub.
\n\n01:33 Inspiring the next generation with STEMx
\n02:27 How many people are looking for new jobs?
\n03:34 All those MK roundabouts
\n04:46 Tech week across MK
\n05:27 Advertising beyond social media
\n06:31 Hang out with the MK peeps
\nMassive thanks to Richard Wiggins and his Protospace team for organising this event at Santander's X+WHY Unity Place and inviting me along. Some amazing people in the room with plenty great ideas to bounce off.
\n", "date_published": "2025-01-16T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["milton-keynes","protospace","recruitment","round-table","stemx","youtube"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/product-on-a-podcast-agile-therapy-workshops/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/product-on-a-podcast-agile-therapy-workshops/", "title": "Product on a Podcast - Agile Therapy Workshops", "summary": "Kicking off a new season of podcast episodes, reviving an old Product On A Page format I used to blog on a regularly basis. This time, it's about mental health therapy and how it correlates with...", "content_html": "Kicking off a new season of podcast episodes, reviving an old Product On A Page format I used to blog on a regularly basis.
\nThis time, it's about mental health therapy and how it correlates with agile software delivery to make it more accessible, trying to shake the stigma often associated with mental health.
\nWhat are your thoughts?
\n", "date_published": "2024-11-21T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["product-on-a-page"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/how-to-measure-team-health-and-culture/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/how-to-measure-team-health-and-culture/", "title": "How to measure team health and culture", "summary": "Back in July, I was invited up to Auto Trader's headquarters in Manchester to talk to Pete on their Roadmap Product & Tech podcast about team health and how PETALS has grown over the past few years....", "content_html": "Back in July, I was invited up to Auto Trader's headquarters in Manchester to talk to Pete on their Roadmap Product & Tech podcast about team health and how PETALS has grown over the past few years.
\nHow to measure team health and culture on Youtube
\nI was honoured to be asked on their podcast as I've been very impressed with what they've done over the past year (we even compared notes last year based on what we did on the ASOS Tech Podcast). It was a great opportunity to meet Pete and the team in person but also share my story to a wider community, even diving into some of the roots and challenges faced with the idea of a framework for measuring team health.
\n", "date_published": "2024-08-05T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["autotrader","interview","petals","podcast"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/house-finesse-2024/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/house-finesse-2024/", "title": "House Finesse 2024", "summary": "This year, I decided to refresh my house music podcast House Finesse with an updated format, website and sound to recognise all the different flavours we're bringing as a community now. I also wanted...", "content_html": "This year, I decided to refresh my house music podcast House Finesse with an updated format, website and sound to recognise all the different flavours we're bringing as a community now.
\nI also wanted to shift the website from the original Wordpress setup to a more sustainable 11ty build for costs and performance improvements. As a hobby side project, I was keen to focus on the core purpose but also explore ways of learning new tools and techniques along with practising some beliefs I've developed over my years.
\nThe priority was to adapt the format to our audience and residents. New DJs were bringing fresh new styles and we had a variety of sub genres that we liked to present. This needed some consistency though and a brand style that we could all follow. I used the existing rainbow colour scheme and powerful typography for consistency and shifted the focus to the individual DJs styles with their own preferred structure, voice, sound and visuals along with appropriate photos on artwork. We've also started proving more commentary through the episodes along with shout outs for each other and some of our more engaged listeners to encourage the community purpose of the podcast.
\nThe website was also due some serious love. Continuing the brand guidelines, emphasis is on the colours, typography and individual music styles. I created a standard template that extended the existing artwork format playing into the rainbow colours, bold typography and black labels harking back to our origins of music records along with prominent use of photography to highlight the featured DJ.
\nTechnically, I decided to use the popular static website framework 11ty which provides a simple but performant platform that can be deployed anywhere. It's current configured on Netlify but this is easily migrated to other static site hosts if required. Being more comfortable with JavaScript but lacking some of the modern techniques, it was a great opportunity to learn with a personal passion.
\nThe podcast is still managed on Pinecast, with the RSS feed now being delivered directly rather than via the Wordpress site. This means content can be delivered independently of website updates. Most activity are followers through the podcast apps so most people won't be affected by any website delays - it's a compliment to the main audio content.
\nI've been iterating on the process for publishing episodes, using GitHub PR's per episode and introducing features as required. Most updates are tracked on the GitHub project as issues (synchronised with my local TickTick app), and all releases are pushed to a Google Sheet with IFTTT for further syndication and backups.
\n(More to come)
\n", "date_published": "2024-06-30T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["house-finesse","podcasting","redesign","web-design"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/evo-inspires/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/evo-inspires/", "title": "Evo Inspires", "summary": "I was recently asked by David Dowdall to talk to him for their Evo Inspires video series, a platform for leaders in tech to share some personal stories that could inspires others. It was an honour to...", "content_html": "I was recently asked by David Dowdall to talk to him for their Evo Inspires video series, a platform for leaders in tech to share some personal stories that could inspires others.
\nIt was an honour to be featured alongside such successful and reputable names from across the industry so I tried to share thoughts on failing fast, encouraging line managers and how to support teams in a hybrid/remote world.
\nWatch the video on David's Linkedin and let us know your thoughts.
\n", "date_published": "2024-03-15T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["evo-inspires","interview","linkedin","video-2"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/6-nations-calendar/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/6-nations-calendar/", "title": "6 Nations Calendar", "summary": "Following the series of sports calendar projects, 6 Nations Calendar provides all the kick off times for the annual 6 Nations competition directly on your own mobile or computer. Built in just two...", "image": "https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2024/02/6-Nations-Calendar.png", "content_html": "Following the series of sports calendar projects, 6 Nations Calendar provides all the kick off times for the annual 6 Nations competition directly on your own mobile or computer.
\n![\"6](\"https://sijobling.com/img/assets/2024/02/6-Nations-Calendar.png\")
Built in just two evenings using frameworks I've developed in the past, this was a great example to demonstrate the value of reusing tech to get a simple idea live in a short time frame.
\nIt's using the Sports Times Gatsby framework I created back in 2019 for other competitions and is still in use on footballcal.com (which has been neglected since the Euro 2020 tournament). Due to the neglect, some of the code was outdated and required some updates, specifically on dependent Node packages.
\nI also realised the Moment.js library used to generate the ICS file introduced some breaking changes in that the date elements were now treated as integers instead of strings, plus the month value in the ICS library was offset by -1, which was identified in the user testing.
\nVisually, it's very simple - it's not my finest work but it's clean and useable so at least people can start using it. I changed the heading font to Michroma which is more modern than the previous Google Font used. The colour scheme has been lightened as well, plus the main call to action was made more evident with the full width solid background.
\nBeing a very quick project, there's plenty enhancements I'd like to introduce but I can chip away at these through February and March as the competition continues. I've already received some suggestions and requests which will be implemented.
\n", "date_published": "2024-02-01T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["6-nations","calendars","sports"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/apps-experimentation-asos/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/apps-experimentation-asos/", "title": "Apps Experimentation @ ASOS", "summary": "Before I left ASOS in 2023, I recorded a discussion with Callum and Elizabeth about the experimentation approach in tech for the ASOS Tech Podcast. It was an opportunity for me to reflect on my...", "content_html": "Before I left ASOS in 2023, I recorded a discussion with Callum and Elizabeth about the experimentation approach in tech for the ASOS Tech Podcast.
\nIt was an opportunity for me to reflect on my personal time working in the old experimentation team back in 2015-2017, revisiting how things have evolved since then and explore some recent examples on how ASOS and their customers have benefited from it. I selfishly wanted to host this episode as well after producing the podcast for the best part of 2 years, mostly due to the topic being something quite close to me.
\nDue to scheduling, this was actually released after I left ASOS but it's wonderful to hear how the episode turned out (once Adrian had worked his production magic) and leave something behind for my old colleagues.
\nHave a listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
\n\n\n", "date_published": "2024-01-26T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["asos","experimentation","podcasting"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/blog/public-bookmarks/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/blog/public-bookmarks/", "title": "Public Bookmarks", "summary": "Taking inspiration from Trovster's links feed , I've decided to setup my own directory of links found from around the web with my own personal stance on them in a new Bookmarks section . It harks...", "content_html": "Taking inspiration from Trovster's links feed, I've decided to setup my own directory of links found from around the web with my own personal stance on them in a new Bookmarks section.
\nIt harks back to the days of Web 2.0 apps like del.icio.us where people publicly shared their bookmarks, organising with suitable taxonomy (and machine tags) and I often reshared on my Twitter account which helped grow my audience.
\nOnce I've got a workflow in place that helps me curate these in an efficient and suitable approach, I'll be sure to post something too. For now, I'm experimenting with a Ticktick x IFTTT recipe.
\n", "date_published": "2024-01-22T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["sharing","website"] }, { "id": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/petals-snapshot-9-petals-coaching-google-sheet-filter-fixes/", "url": "https://sijobling.com/portfolio/petals-snapshot-9-petals-coaching-google-sheet-filter-fixes/", "title": "PETALS Snapshot 9 - PETALS coaching & Google Sheet filter fixes", "summary": "This is the 9th PETALS Snapshot talking about booking PETALS time, Google Toolkit filter fixes with Mike Street and the first app user story demo. 00:33 Scores 00:48 Homepage refresh 01:20 Cal.com...", "content_html": "\nThis is the 9th PETALS Snapshot talking about booking PETALS time, Google Toolkit filter fixes with Mike Street and the first app user story demo.
\n00:33 Scores 00:48 Homepage refresh 01:20 Cal.com with NextJS fail 04:02 Mike @ Liquid Light 07:38 Google Toolkit date range filter fix 09:12 User onboarding app demo 10:06 Design system spike 10:45 DevOps Notts in 2 weeks 11:57 Get in touch
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-15T00:00:00Z", "tags": ["petals"] } ] }