pipdig: Your Questions Answered

This blog post is a follow-up to yesterday’s post: Security alert: pipdig insecure, DDoSing competitors. Firstly, to re-iterate, my accusations are as follows… pipdig did knowingly and with malicious intent: used other blogger’s servers to perform a DDoS on a competitor manipulated blogger’s content to change links to competitor WordPress migration services to point to… read full entry »

Instagram isn’t the problem, you are

Forgive the click-baity title for just a minute and hear me out. I responded to Molly Forbes‘ tweet earlier today (which admittedly lacked context, so I was making a massive assumption on its intent)… https://twitter.com/mollyjforbes/status/1107661795261665283 …with the words “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who likes instagram.” Admittedly, my response was actually borne… read full entry »

Low Expectations for Shrewsbury 10k

This weekend saw me diverting from my Edinburgh marathon training plan to run Shrewsbury 10km, a race I’ve run and enjoyed 3 times now. I should have been clocking up around 26km but I didn’t feel like dropping one long run would dramatically affect my prep at this stage. Having made the decision to forego… read full entry »


The jemjabella Top Ten: Best of Jem

After a brief twitter conversation yesterday, I realised that I have over 17 years of blog posts on this site, but no way of distinguishing those actually worth reading from what is mostly a collection of personal old waffle. So, here’s my jemjabella all time top ten, as decided right now on no scientific basis… read full entry »

5 Real-World Benefits to Getting Strong

Although I frickin’ love working out for the physical changes its given me over the past few years (and in particular over the course of 2018 and into 2019, where I’ve been more consistent with my workouts) it is hands-down one of the most beneficial hobbies for day to day life too. Here are five… read full entry »

Plans, Plants and Brexit Prep

After my last post on food storage for potential Brexit shortages, I’m sure I’ve convinced you all that I’ve gone full-on ‘tinfoil hat’ wearing, zombie apocalypse predicting, hippy nutjob. Let me reassure you that, while I’ve always been a bit of a hippy nutjob, I still don’t think there’s going to be a zombie apocalypse…. read full entry »

Review: Reebok CrossFit Nano 8.0 Trainers

I bought a pair of Reebok CrossFit Nano 8.0 trainers back in November 2018 after my old asics gave up the ghost (and took a chunk out of the back of my heel in the process). Although I don’t actually do CrossFit, I do a variety of sports on a regular basis and adaptability is… read full entry »

Edinburgh Marathon: Training with Illness

I am now two months in to my training for Edinburgh Marathon, which is at the end of May this year. I knew when I signed up for the Edinburgh marathon that training would always be the hardest part. Yes, running over 26 miles isn’t exactly going to be a walk in the park, but… read full entry »


Food, Freelancing and Brexit Shortages

One of the things I realised quite rapidly when I first started freelancing — and it’s an obvious one, really — is that you’ll have good weeks and bad weeks. I say weeks, not months, because with the up and down nature of freelance income it really can be that volatile. While everyone else is… read full entry »