The past few years has been like real life Rainbow Road. I keep thinking I’m doing well, then I fall off the track. I get picked and I keep going, somehow still out in front. 2024 has been like getting hit by a blue shell every single jump. Again and again, blue shell after blue shell. Today I got … read more

I don’t have a deep understanding of code, but I know enough to mess around. That makes it really easy to mess things up.

Today, I was messing things up in a big way, but then I worked out why. I felt good for solving the problem, but bad that I’d made such a basic, basic error.

Last full working week before Xmas, so all the HR teams are closing the loop and sending job application rejection letters today.

My inbox is brutal.

Today as I was pulling together my entries for the ITJourno Awards, I discovered that across TikTok and YouTube I’ve had over 100,000 views.

Obvs the numbers don’t reflect people actually watching my vids, but it was still cool to realise that I’ve passed that milestone.

Since I migrated domains to BTTR.reviews, I haven’t been indexed by Bing. I’ve read the webmaster guidelines, but can’t see anything that would exclude it from Bing aside from (at a stretch) the membership gate. But a lot of stuff isn’t gated at all, and nothing is appearing in Bing results. So, I … read more

I’m looking for a privacy-friendly (no cookies, at the very least) alternative to Adsense that I don’t have to pay for as a publisher.

I can’t find anything that fits the description… Anyone have any ideas?

I am currently testing a robot vacuum that heavily promotes its “AI” features. It has just spent 10 minutes in a carpeted bedroom while on the “mop” setting.

My cheap old entry-level robot vacuum never tried to mop carpeted bedrooms. Is “AI” making robot vacuums stupider? I think it might be.

One of the fallouts from the Google shenanigans this year is that, for me at least, affiliate revenue isn’t really there in any sustainable way.

This means I am putting very little effort into Black Friday this year, and will likely stop covering deals/shopping stuff entirely moving forward.

Today I received two rejection notices for jobs I’d interviewed for last week. The first was a phone call I wasn’t really surprised to receive - I knew it was a bit of a stretch during the interview stage. The second was a heads up from a former colleague who had referred me for the job. … read more

The worst thing about job hunting at the moment is the fact you have to answer the phone, even if you’re 99% sure it’s a scam call… just in case it’s potential work.

I’ve spent a lot of today on calls for work, but not actually achieved much at all, and it’s very frustrating…

So here’s something fun: I took the data I collected from my massive SIM mobile plans comparison table and pivoted the info to look at some different angles.

Factoring in current discounts, this is the average price per day across all plans, by provider.

I really like robot vacuums, but sometimes the mapping software makes me want to go on a rampage.

What do you mean I can’t split the room because it’s “too small”? That’s my ensuite, you bastard, and I want it separate so you don’t go mopping its floor before you clean the rest of my house.

I am 95% confident that my own personal hell would just be the devil forcing me to repack robot vacuum review units.

I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with AI-generated slop recently, but these images produced by the OPPO Reno12 for my review have just pushed me over the edge.

Why does this crap exist? Who wants it? I can’t understand why companies are pushing it.

Here’s the source image:

Does anybody understand Bing?

Since I’ve moved to Ghost, I get no traffic from Bing. Sitemaps are all setup in Webmaster tools and everything seems fine, except that I haven’t figured out a way to setup IndexNow on Ghost (Pro).

I know Bing is rubbish and small, but I would love to solve this.

Wow. This is an entirely unsurprising, yet still depressing read on Google and its search results.

Google is so, so broken.

I have hit the point that I need to start applying for “real” jobs, and for all the technology in the process, recruitment is so broken.

I just uploaded my CV, then had to spend 30 minutes retyping it into the “previous experience” section of a site’s recruitment page because it did such a bad job of automatically pulling out that information.

Like, can’t you just read my CV? Is that so hard, recruiters? Why make me waste my time on something so incredibly stupid.

I don’t like to spend a lot of time looking back wondering “what if?”, but in year 10 my career survey said I was best suited to be a Maths teacher and I often wonder if I didn’t fuck up my life by pursuing a career in the media instead.

I finally bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago and started creating video content for YouTube, TikTok and instagram. I don’t love it - I’m not very good I don’t think. But it’s not as terrible an experience as I thought it would be.