does what it says on the tin

  • Trying the Apple Hearing Test with AirPods Pro 2

    Without meaning to, earlier I went through the Apple Hearing Test available on iPhones with my a8c anniversary AirPods Pro 2s just over 6 years after my initial diagnosis. They aren’t identical test so I am not comparing them like for like but on the surface it is comforting to see that whilst I’ve thought…

  • New Woo

    I’m almost two weeks late (aside from sharing on LinkedIn) with this one but we did a thing at work. Introducing the new Woo: A revitalized brand for a new commerce landscape. Tamara goes over it in the post but this one has been a long time coming. It all happened internally, every team at…

  • My 2024 in Viewing

    AKA how much TV/Movies did I watch? Although I’ve had an account for a few years, I really leaned into using Trakt.tv as much as possible this year. I wasn’t consistent with adding episodes after watching them – i.e. I have a massive spike in August when I marked almost all of The Office as…

  • My 2024 in Music

    Last.fm’s year-end reports are detailed and nostalgic for me. I love discovering hidden musical gems and fun stats!

  • ONE MORE TIME…

    blink are “back” and I love it. It’s like being 15 and hearing Enema again. I’m catching a few nice throwbacks to everything in their career. A few BCR and +44 hints at least. (Yes, yes I am tagging this as Music Monday as I first put it on yesterday.)

  • Seven years

    Seven is my favourite number. I wouldn’t say lucky since I can’t tie any luck to it but it is a number I’m fond of. Looking back on my blog posts, as someone who is often fond of anniversaries or milestones, I only found my one and two year anniversary posts of joining Automattic, and…

  • Moving on from Happiness

    Six years to the day that I started my Automattic trial, I’m no longer a Happiness Engineer. The past six months need a fair few posts on their own (sabbatical, rotation, other stuff), and I realise I’m dropping this in here after silence but felt it was a clean start to dust off the old…

  • A Father’s Day.

    A long time coming. I’ll preface this by saying this will make a handful of people unhappy but it has been playing on my mind for the last week or so, distracting me from work and day to day life, as Father’s Day approached. I need to post this. Content warning? I’d add emotional abuse/manipulation…

  • Planning to do nothing

    Today marks four months until my sabbatical starts and 25 days until I hit the qualifying point for that “perk” – 5 years at Automattic. I got the final date in March and got those dates locked down using our home built scheduling tool (Your team can use this same thing – https://happy.tools – we…

  • On Writing

    James Whatley posted this morning and it’s a good one. There’s so much to unpack in it from my perspective, I think I’ll leave it there for now. I know I’m one of the lucky ones. Throughout all this I’ve kept my job, the roof over my head, and – frankly – my life. On…