I have successfully rendered myself a liar this week. After calling myself “basically unemployable” back in 2018, I started a new part-time position with Source Design this week. Super stressed Jem who couldn’t possibly contemplate a 9-5 way back in 2018 is now super chilled out handling a senior dev position for one firm, managing director for another, and freelancing between the two. Source ..read more

One of my fitness goals for 2023 basically entails me getting my shit together and nailing a consistent gym routine, and as such I’ve given up alcohol for the year (again). My journey to (and from) sobriety is a funny one, with a balance more or less found over the last couple of years, but Christmas and work stress pushed it towards the higher end of what I like to consume these days and a total... Source ..read more

I recently found out about ‘Now’ pages via Mastodon (@jemjabella@mastodon.social and @jemjabella@wptoots.social in case you’re wondering) and found the concept intriguing – especially someone who 3 months ago lamented my failure to update regularly. The gist of the idea is that you have a page which gives visitors an update into your life right now instead of say, an about page... Source ..read more

I realised today that it’s been nearly a year since my last blog post of note. Teenage Jem would be ashamed, adult Jem is wondering how the fuck a year passed in the blink of an eye. Get up, walk the dog, breakfast, school run, work work work, school run, cook, clean, walk the dog, bedtime – and then do it all over again the next day. The routine I know and love for its predictability... Source ..read more

It’s hard to know where to start this post. Do I start it as a child where I knew I wasn’t quite the same as my peers? Do I start it as a new parent where things suddenly started to become apparent that I’d not noticed before? Do I start it at the point where hilarious internet memes stopped becoming funny and relatable and started becoming spookily, almost offensively relevant? Or do I start it... Source ..read more

If you’re a long time reader / follower of my antics on social media, you’ll know that the jemjabella household is a bit of a zoo. OK, a lot of a zoo. Well, we finally added another head to that this year when – after ~3 years of research, putting it off, saving, more research, putting it off – we finally got a dog. A Labrador Retriever puppy, to be precise. He’s purebred (i.e. bloody expensive)... Source ..read more

I’ve been talking to a lot of clients lately about migrating their websites to Gutenberg. If you saw my last post on Gutenberg development, you’ll know I’ve been building more and more sites with it recently. Still sticking, stubbornly, to classic editor for my own site(s) though. Eating your own dog food – or dogfooding – is the practice of using your own products or services. Strictly speaking... Source ..read more

I was a relatively late adopter to Gutenberg, stubbornly sticking to Classic Editor and a combination of template files and tried & tested tricks to build themes for clients. However, as Gutenberg improved and the demand for more power over builds increased, it made sense to bite the bullet and get stuck in. I’ve now built several Gutenberg-powered sites, and despite its quirks... Source ..read more

I know it’s customary to write up ‘year in review’ style posts at the end of the actual year in question, but I think I’m only just getting over 2020 enough to write about it. How do you put into perspective a year that has simultaneously seen the lows of a loss of a parent, but the highs of a business earning nearly double the gross profit of the year before? A year that put me right back to... Source ..read more

It doesn’t feel right to title the next post in this ‘series’ as Tales from Lockdown, but it doesn’t exactly feel like normality is restored, so Tales from Limbo it is. In the last post from waaaay back in May (er, how did we get to October?) I was a little bit worried that more projects than I originally realised seemed to be freezing up or being dropped, and that I’d need to rely on the self... Source ..read more