Q3 2025

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.

July #

As 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.

So 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.

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Another 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.

One 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.

The 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.

A 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.

August #

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.

I 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.

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?

That’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.)

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.

September #

PETALS 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.

From 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…

Away 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.

We 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.

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.

Other Stuff #

Some other geeky projects I've been dabbling in…

• I continued tinkering with automation through IFTTT, connecting my Spotify, Monzo, Strava and other habit activity tracking.

• Started 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.

• Over 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.

Some movie highlights…

• Recently watched The Roses starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, incredible performances and a brilliant dark comedy twist on the original.

• The Long Walk also stood out, a brilliant cast delivering an intense, emotional performance that’s stuck with me.

• On the flip side, Thursday Murder Club had a great cast but, for me, pretty lacklustre performances.

• And for pure nostalgia, I indulged in Team America: World Police from 2004, definitely dated and contentious, but still hilariously dark.

On the personal side, I’ve been building better habits and actually sticking to them:

• Daily Yudoku & Solitaire challenges and at least 15-minutes Duolingo session (which now include music lessons).

• Daily exercise, usually a 25-minute Pomodoro-style run or swim every work day, weekends off.

• Weekday journalling after work, often chatting with ChatGPT to capture my ramblings and shape them into something useful.

• Reading 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.

• I gave daily Elevate challenges a go through August, but they didn’t quite stick, a bit too demanding without the same sense of reward.

• My 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.

What’s Next #

Heading 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.