Jem's field notes

It’s Karl’s birthday today (happy birthday, you old fart) so I cooked him some stilton sauce to go with his chips (I know, I spoil him rotten). He’s about half way through when Isabel gesture wildly at the sauce and says “dib dib”. So, Karl picks up a chip, dip dips it into the sauce… read full entry »

I’ve been trying to convince Karl that renting is dead money and we should buy a place for … ooh, about as long as we’ve been renting. He is a tight bugger, and cynical about mortgages so resisted. Turns out, his cynicism has served a purpose because we are now at the perfect point to… read full entry »

I know, I know; I can hear you scraping your chairs closer already. When you’re childless (or childfree, depending on your viewpoint) you’re fairly certain you know how to bring up a child, could do better than the frazzled looking mum in the supermarket with her screaming children, have the best ideas on nutrition and… read full entry »

I hate mommy bloggers. There, I said it. I think now I’m a mommy / mummy / mom / mum / mama (delete as appropriate) it’s probably inappropriate for me to comment on the phenomena that is ‘mommy blogging’ (and I use the American term because it’s what most people refer to it as, not… read full entry »

Hahahaha, April Fools! No, seriously :) I am desperate to get out of my bloggers block, so how best to do that than by scraping the bottom of the barrel for 30 days! After all, they do say that writers learn to write by writing, so theoretically bloggers (re-)learn to blog by blogging. My only… read full entry »

I’ve been getting about a bit lately — no sarcastic comments please — so thought I’d share the results of my hard work. More WordPress stuff: Developing bespoke WordPress plugins for a work client — this one was a bit odd to write as I’m not used to such a strict editorial process. Apparently you’re… read full entry »

A few years ago I blogged asking you guys for lunch ideas and you duly supplied. I’ve decided to return the favour by doing a new blog series: “what’s for lunch Wednesdays”. Each Wednesday (or, when I remember) I’ll tell you what I’ve got for lunch. If you want to do the same thing, link… read full entry »

We took Isabel to a local farm on Saturday. She was most entertained by: a) a pigeon b) a cement mixer c) headbutting a sheep (as in, she butted heads with the sheep through the fence … this is her way of greeting animals; obviously I’ve let the cats raise my child) I don’t know… read full entry »

Can y’all do me a favour? If you’re still linking to either tutorialtastic or codegrrl.com on your website(s), can you please update the links to point to GirlsWhoGeek? Hoping to push out a few updates over the next week and I want to maximise the potential traffic to the new stuff. Of course, if you… read full entry »

I downloaded Firefox 4 yesterday (and apparently I’m not alone, Mozilla have already racked up over 7 million downloads at the time of writing) and have been genuinely impressed by a) the speed of opening from a cold start and b) improved page load time. Of course I’ve not done any benchmarks so I’m not… read full entry »