Jem's field notes

Where do I begin? For starters, it turns out that kids are all different. You’d think this wouldn’t be much of a revelation being 1 of 6 myself but I certainly underestimated how much Isabel and Oliver would differ even at this stage. Little things like how they bring their wind up (Isabel didn’t, and… read full entry »

I guess things started with the twinges in my pelvic region on Tuesday night but as I’d had worse last week I’d thought nothing of it; I had actually become accustomed to the idea of having another late baby and had a long list of things to do this week. I went to bed Tues… read full entry »

I have a habit of deleting a post in WordPress and then 3 days later re-writing it from scratch. I consider this part of my strange but effective editorial process. However, when the WordPress gurus introduced the trash can feature I suddenly started getting posts with URLs like “permalink-2”, “permalink-3”. D’oh — my posts were… read full entry »

In August last year, we bought 21 rolls of turf on a whim to replace a large patch of gravel out the back without a) measuring the garden or b) making preparations beforehand. It took 3 days to de-gravel, de-concrete and then lay the turf which, having been sat outside a local Homebase, was already… read full entry »

I can’t decide if Crumble is one of the stupidest cats I’ve ever owned, or one of the smartest… acting like an idiot to gain sympathy for being so simple.

What is WordPress? WordPress is described as “web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog”, but I don’t think that does this snappy little content management system justice. WordPress, which started as a simple blogging script, is a full-featured CMS used to create more websites than any other CMS in the… read full entry »

Sunshine, cuddles, laughter (“cow poo!”), unsupervised paint creativity (multi-coloured toddler), shared ice cream, good food, gardening, splashing in the puddle bath (paddling pool), and a voluntary bed time at 6:45 that took less than 15 minutes. I especially liked that last part.

A few folks seem to have missed my waffling about it on twitter, snark etc so consider this the ‘official’ announcement that my simple PHP mail form has moved to jem’s mail form .com

I am now officially off work until err… roughly this time next year. Thank you, UK government, for giving us generous paid maternity leave.

This afternoon, I ended up on ‘Bloggers didn’t Come Down in the Last Shower‘, a post by blogger Sally deriding SEOs for their approach to bloggers, PR and paid links. Sally has a problem with PR/SEO types who disguise their intentions or outright lie about the potential damage to blogger’s search engine rankings caused by… read full entry »