[00:00:09.12] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:10.04] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:10.27] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:13.12] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:15.17] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last 7 days. And thank you so much for joining us. It's been a busy week. It's been a hot week. How's your— how have you coped with the heat, Taylor?

[00:00:35.11] - Taylor
Yeah, it's been difficult because you're just very hot and bothered all the time.

[00:00:40.29] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:00:41.14] - Taylor
It doesn't— feeling doesn't really go away.

[00:00:43.29] - Gordon
Yeah, it's true. And today is a very special episode in the fact that this is our 250th episode. So, Taylor, did you ever think we were going to get to 250 episodes?

[00:01:03.09] - Taylor
Quarter of a thousand. I didn't, no.

[00:01:06.28] - Gordon
So, for those who don't know, we're going to go over a few statistics. We've got various screens up. The reason we're doing it on Zoom is because it's way too hot to travel, and both of us have had very hot weeks and we thought we would, we're not going to the, we're not going to be doing anything after this so I've got no reason to go out whereas quite often we do something afterwards. So on this occasion we decided we would do it over Zoom just to give you another different view of our episodes if you're watching it. If you're listening to us then it won't make any difference at all. But let's go back over a few statistics from the last 250 episodes. So, shall we take it in turns? Just coming out with some stats here, Taylor. So these have been generated by our website, thisweekwith.co.uk. We did say a while ago that we were going to do a stats page, and we're sort of getting there because we've got stats available to us now. We just don't have them available to viewers of the website. But let's just have a look.

[00:02:20.08] - Gordon
So we started all of this on the 24th of April, 2020. So 6 years ago, and we did it as something to do during lockdown, really, didn't we?

[00:02:35.10] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:02:37.10] - Gordon
Do you remember the reason why you wanted to start doing it?

[00:02:41.27] - Taylor
I wanted just to have a way to look back, you know, I mean, 24th of April, so I would have been, I don't know, about almost a year into running my business, starting my business. And I wanted a way to look back and see what's changed, how are things different now, and yeah, just kind of keep a log of what I got up to. Both professionally but also personally, you know, how things have changed. Obviously, I live by myself now, and that was, you know, always one of the things I wanted to do, and I probably mentioned it throughout the years. So it's nice being able to look back and see what's happened.

[00:03:23.29] - Gordon
Yeah, and it's nice to have a record of what we were working on, what we were doing. Sometimes, like the reasons behind decisions that we made, because we did talk about that, you know, any challenges we had, things that happened that were outside our control and what we did about them, things that we were getting interested in. You know, one of the big things over the years has been 3D printing and home automation. Both of those have been featured quite heavily on this channel, haven't they?

[00:04:00.05] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:04:01.19] - Gordon
And, you know, more recently we've got networking and AI, which again, we are sort of discovering and looking into, and they're things that interest us and things that we're sort of keeping on top of to make sure that we, you know, we're keeping up with what's going on in the world to make sure we're current all the time. So that's when we started. Right, you give a stat. What stat do you want to tell us about?

[00:04:34.10] - Taylor
So we have had a total runtime of 83 hours and 40 minutes over the past 249 episodes.

[00:04:44.13] - Gordon
Yeah, so that doesn't include this episode because we haven't finished it yet. So yeah, 249 episodes, 83 hours and 40 minutes. Now this breaks down to an average of 20 minutes and 10 seconds for each episode, which is an average. We have a shortest and a longest as well. So the shortest episode we ever had was 1 minute and 16 seconds, which was episode 78 in season 2, and I think that was an episode at Christmas time where we normally sort of don't have a full episode during the sort of the week between Christmas and New Year. We just have a, wishing you a happy Christmas and a good New Year. So they're quite short episodes. We sort of take a bit of time off work for spending with family, really, don't we? So that's why the episode was so short. And then the longest one was season 1, episode 21, which was 35 minutes and 32 minutes. Now, I haven't looked it up, but I am guessing that was an episode where, I don't know actually, season 1, episode 21. It's not what I was thinking. I was thinking it might be one with guests, but I don't think it is.

[00:06:00.12] - Gordon
I'm not sure. There we go. Go and have a look at episode 21, season 1. See what we were talking about that we went on and on about for 35 minutes.

[00:06:11.13] - Taylor
Let's have a look. I'm just having a quick look here. Oh, we had Paul Longhurst.

[00:06:15.16] - Gordon
Oh, we did have a guest. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Cause I was thinking 2020 was when we started. So yes, I guess 21 episodes in was 21 weeks later. And I think that's possibly when we were able to see each other again. And then he came down and visited. And I think that was, was that the episode where we talked about our favourite plug-ins for WordPress? I haven't looked, but I think it might be.

[00:06:41.00] - Taylor
The, was it season, season 1, episode 21?

[00:06:45.10] - Gordon
Yes.

[00:06:45.17] - Taylor
Our favourite browser extensions, yeah.

[00:06:47.27] - Gordon
Browser extensions, okay. Yeah, I knew it was something like that. And there was 3 of us, so we were talking at length. That's why it was so long. So that was our longest episode. The length of time, 83 hours and 40 minutes, is enough time for you to listen to our content all the way to Sydney and back again, and probably do that again, so you do it twice, because it's like, yeah, that's a long old time, isn't it? I think I read a stat. Where is it? Is it on here? No, it's not on here. If you were to listen to us every— one episode every day, then it would take something like, well, we know exactly, 249 days, one episode a day, which is, you know, coming up to, well, it's not quite a year, but it's getting very close to like two-thirds of a year, isn't it?

[00:07:56.11] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:07:57.02] - Gordon
So that's one episode a day. Gosh, that's a long time, isn't it? Right, your turn.

[00:08:03.11] - Taylor
We have averaged 3.4 episodes a month, with our longest gap being 49 days between.

[00:08:11.11] - Gordon
49 days. I think, yeah, go on, keep going.

[00:08:15.23] - Taylor
Between 10th of June 2022 to the 29th of July 2022.

[00:08:22.26] - Gordon
Now I haven't looked this up, but I think you were ill at the time.

[00:08:26.25] - Taylor
That could have been.

[00:08:28.02] - Gordon
I think that's the only reason that I can think of why we didn't do an episode for 49 days, because you weren't well, you were in hospital.

[00:08:37.08] - Taylor
I think so, yeah I vaguely remember that now.

[00:08:38.13] - Gordon
I think that's likely to be the case. So yeah, whatever the episode is after 29th of July, or sorry, on 29th of July, 2022, that's probably where we explained what it was. So. —very interesting. So we have 7 seasons. So we decided to change the season number when we got to January 1st. So we're on season 7, which means we're in our 7th year. So it's very interesting actually looking at the numbers of episodes per year. So, we've done 34 episodes in 2020. That's bearing in mind we didn't start till April, so that's already a quarter of the way through the year. Then we did 44 in '21, 32 in '22. That's the— where we had the longest gap as well, so that's— that would explain why the numbers are down on that one. 36 in 2023, 43 in 2024. You were obviously feeling a lot better then. 41 in 2025. And then so far this year, we've done 19 episodes. So we are on track to get sort of into the late 30s if we continue at the speed that we're going at for this year.

[00:10:06.12] - Taylor
We have 27 weeks left. So...

[00:10:09.12] - Gordon
27. So yes, that would make 46 episodes if we did one every week. So that we are, we could potentially beat our record, which is currently 44 in 2021. So apparently we have, on average, put out an episode every 9 days. So if you were to sort of take all of the gaps and everything else, the episodes that we didn't do because we were busy working or illness or whatever, away. So that's one every 9 days on average, which is quite impressive, I think, for two professionals who work for themselves. That's quite impressive. I'm quite pleased with that. Did you find out what the gap was?

[00:10:59.12] - Taylor
No, I mean, the 29th of July, 2022 was catch up since last episode, America trip, Chicago and Texas. Tax payments, reactive glasses.

[00:11:14.01] - Gordon
So it was our trips away then, because we had a long trip away to America, didn't we?

[00:11:19.14] - Taylor
Yeah, so it would have been that.

[00:11:22.18] - Gordon
Yeah. In fact, that might have been your trip away, and I don't think— Oh no, it wouldn't have been. No, I would have been on that one. Yeah. Okay, so it was our trip away to America. Okay. Yeah. It's always difficult when you're away for, I think that was 2.5 weeks or so. So that sort of, once you add in time before and time after to get back to normal, that would explain the length of time really. So that's very interesting.

[00:11:53.07] - Taylor
And here's a couple of, if you were to listen to us nonstop, it's 3.5 days of nonstop talking or about 42 films worth.

[00:12:05.19] - Gordon
Gosh, that's quite cool, isn't it?

[00:12:08.05] - Taylor
And if you binged one a day, it would take you 8.2 months to go from episode 1 to episode 250.

[00:12:17.20] - Gordon
If you binged one a day, yeah, okay. Wow. That's very impressive. And we have just over 5,000 minutes. So, 83 hours and 40 minutes is something like 5,020 minutes, something like that, which is, you know, quite a lot, I would say. Quite a lot of speaking and talking and potentially contradicting ourselves, because we would have changed our opinions on various things over the years, wouldn't we?

[00:12:57.02] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:12:57.21] - Gordon
Yeah. So, interesting little fact here is that by doing this for 6.2 years now, so we're in our 7th year, 6.2 years, it's a pandemic baby, something we started during the pandemic that's outlived the thing that started it, so the pandemic. So we've lasted longer than the pandemic, which at one point I didn't think we were going to. I thought right at the beginning we were not going to last very long, maybe do a few episodes and then get fed up or life will get in the way. But no, here we are, episode 250. So that's very interesting. Go on then, you go again.

[00:13:43.24] - Taylor
I'm running out here. I mean, there was one thing that I did want to touch on was that, we kind of, we built a kind of those, what do you call it? A health kit for our podcast, which...

[00:14:00.16] - Gordon
We did

[00:14:01.19] - Taylor
...Allowed us to basically keep an eye on if we've missed any areas when we're doing our podcast or live stream. And I've done a health check just now. We have zero critical issues, a couple of warnings, but for the most part, everything is done, including 238 of the 249 uploaded transcripts. Now I wanted to give a massive shout out to Hayley for that because we wouldn't be able to do it. We wouldn't be able to have a transcript if it wasn't for that. For her.

[00:14:40.15] - Gordon
Yeah, I completely agree. So, for those who don't know, Hayley is a friend of mine. She is ever so good at grammar, spelling checks. I run everything that's important by her because she picks up all of the little mistakes. And when I spoke to her a while back, when we decided we were going to do transcripts, I'm not sure when we started doing transcripts, But we basically have a system where it will go through the episode and transcribe it using computer AI, and then Hayley will go in and she will basically listen to the whole episode and watch and read the transcript as it goes, and she will fix all of the little mistakes that AI has put in there and make sure that they're all correct. Quite often she'll send me little screenshots where The Creative Tinker has become The Creative Pinker or something where it's changed it completely. There's been some very funny ones over the years. And the same with Drayson Design. And then any, you know, specific words that we say that are industry-related, so, you know, maybe company names or things that aren't in the dictionary, she'll go through and she'll check those as well.

[00:16:20.17] - Gordon
And she does this, you know, as a favour to us. You know, we do sort of thank her every now and then on this podcast, and we do, you know, send her little gifts every now and then. But she doesn't have to do it, and we are ever so grateful to her for doing it. And let's hope that what I've just said required no changes, so she could have sat back and just listened to what we said about her. So yeah, thank you so much. We are the two people who make the podcast. We're the two that come up with the content. We record it, we edit it, we put the show notes in, but the transcripts are what allows it to be useful because then you can search through and find episodes that talk about whatever it is we've been talking about, and we just could not do that without Hayley. So thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts, Hayley. We're very, very grateful to you. And of course, when we started doing the transcripts, we backdated them. And so there was—

[00:17:25.15] - Taylor
Yes, right. So I actually have—

[00:17:27.01] - Gordon
Oh, go on.

[00:17:27.26] - Taylor
So Season 2, Episode 52 was the first time we added transcripts.

[00:17:34.18] - Gordon
So there were 51 episodes prior to that that didn't have transcripts. And so when I said to Hayley, "would you do the transcripts?" And she said, "yes." I said, "Right, so just to let you know, there's one a week from now on-ish," one every 9 days average, it turned out. "But there's also 51 back episodes that we'd also like to do so that we've got all of the transcripts for all the episodes."

[00:18:01.12] - Taylor
Yeah, and also translating them as well.

[00:18:05.15] - Gordon
Yes, the translations are done by me. They're done from the transcripts. Once she's finished them, I translate them using computer AI again into German, French, and Spanish. So on all the YouTube videos, you can listen to our podcast or our vidcast in English, but you can have the transcripts or the subtitles showing in those 3 languages. And they're all timed with the episodes so that what we're saying is then the transcript. So it's very good, but they are taken from her checked and confirmed transcripts to make sure we get everything as accurate as we can. So, talking about other people that have sort of helped us with this podcast, we've had a few guests over the years. So, let's see if we can give a shout out to those people and thank them again for coming on and being a guest. So let's do one each. You go first.

[00:19:16.09] - Taylor
Paul Longhurst.

[00:19:18.08] - Gordon
Paul Longhurst, yes. Friend of the podcast. I think he's been on twice at least. He has come on and given us the benefit of his knowledge and wisdom, and he's another self-employed person. And it's very important that we have other people's views on here, otherwise It's just us talking.

[00:19:42.15] - Gordon
That was my alarm going off. Right, you can stay there. We're not doing it just yet. Good boy. That's my dog. So yes, Paul Longhurst is a good one. Another person who's been on at least 2 is Marc Summers, Marc P. Summers. So thank you for that, Marc. That's been lovely. Thank you for joining us on those episodes. Taylor?

[00:20:04.23] - Taylor
We've had Leo as well.

[00:20:06.14] - Gordon
Leo, yes, Marc's son, has been on an episode as well. That was very good. We've also had Caroline Ainslie, Bubbles the Clown. She's been on an episode, although I don't— if I remember rightly, she was a little bit— oh, 2 episodes in fact, because we did 2 back to back, didn't we? And so she was a little bit confused as to how the format worked at one point, but it's a fun episode. If you haven't listened to it, go listen to that. Next one?

[00:20:34.26] - Taylor
Jake Woods.

[00:20:36.09] - Gordon
Jake Woods. Yes. Very talented web developer and friend of yours, and mine, but yours more than me. Yeah, very, very, very interesting guy. He's got some really good graphic design ideas and he's really good at interfaces as well, isn't he? Anything else you want to say about Jake?

[00:21:00.23] - Taylor
No, just absolutely lovely guy, has a great band.

[00:21:03.21] - Gordon
Yeah. Very good. We have also had Nim, who is an artist. She came on to one of our episodes. She, in fact, drew the DeLorean that I've got on my wall here, which was a present from Taylor. And he commissioned Nim to draw it for me. It's a Back to the Future DeLorean. It's a time machine, which is fantastic. Anyone else that we've forgotten, Taylor?

[00:21:37.25] - Taylor
Not that I can think of.

[00:21:39.08] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:21:39.16] - Taylor
If there is, I sincerely apologise.

[00:21:42.05] - Gordon
Yeah, I think we've got everyone in there. So, two more things. One is that if we continue at the rate that we are recording over the last 6 years, then we will get to episode 500 in 2031, which is interesting. So, yeah, we'll start planning for that. November 2031, so that will coincide with your birthday. You will be... Oh, how old will you be? You'll be 31 that day. Yeah, because you're born in 2000, obviously. So 31 years old in November for the 500th episode, if we carry on that long. Be nice, wouldn't it?

[00:22:34.10] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:22:34.29] - Gordon
We'll see if we've got enough to say. We only really want to do this as long as we've got something interesting to say. So if we find that we don't have anything to say anymore, we'll stop doing them, I guess. The other thing is, one of the reasons that we've got those health checks in place is because you are working on a little project, aren't you? Something that you have been meaning to do for a long time. Do you want to give us a brief overview without giving too much away?

[00:23:02.19] - Taylor
Yeah, I mean, I've spoken about it before, my personal website that I track all my data, and I have been wanting to redo it. I didn't like the design, a lot of the things broke. It was very kind of cobbled together. So I wanted to redo it in a much better format, much better system. And yeah, one of the things that I was doing was importing, all of the episodes that we've done for "This Week With" into my personal website. And because it was displayed in a timeline, it showed you all the dates that each episode was published because I'm using the API directly from the "This Week With" website to basically download a local copy.

[00:23:47.29] - Gordon
Yeah. So there we go. I'm sure once that goes live, you'll let everyone know and they can go and have a look, but it's looking really good at the moment. We did some work on it this week. And you've been working on it for a while as well. So it's the first time I saw it and I was very impressed. I thought it looked really good. You know who's going to be coming to you after you've released it though, to have their one updated, don't you?

[00:24:11.00] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:24:11.25] - Gordon
Friend of the podcast, Marc P. Summers. Yeah. We shall see. I think that's pretty much it. I'm quite sort of quite emotional really about having 250 episodes. I thought this would just be something we did during lockdown and that would be it, but we've sort of stuck with it. And I think that's really good for both of us because it gives us a bit of focus to think about what we've achieved and what we can talk about that maybe we haven't spoken about before or something that we've sort of got changed views or updated information on. So yeah, I'm quite pleased. Any final words from you?

[00:24:53.28] - Taylor
No, just, yeah, just happy, been having fun.

[00:24:58.02] - Gordon
Well, for those of you who are listening, thank you so much for joining us in our last 249 episodes. If you have been a long-term listener or if you've been just a recent listener that's just found us, then thank you. There's a lot of content for you to go back and listen to or watch. I like the fact that we've been doing the vidcasts as well, because it sort of shows how we've changed as well. I mean, you look very different now to how you looked 6 years ago.

[00:25:33.22] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:25:35.20] - Gordon
And I've got less hair. And I've started wearing glasses when I'm on a computer, so that's the difference for me. But yeah, it's interesting to have that sort of comparison, isn't it?

[00:25:49.07] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:25:49.17] - Gordon
Well, That's it. Thank you for joining us for this special edition of "This Week With." As always, if you're on YouTube, please like, share, and subscribe. You can also go to our website, thisweekwith.co.uk, to find all of our past episodes. And if you would prefer to listen to us, then we're on all the major podcast platforms, just search for "This Week with Taylor and Gordon." And we can also be listened to on your smart speaker, again, just "This Week with Taylor and Gordon," and it will play the latest episode. We will be back with you for the 251st episode next week on Friday at 1pm. Please join us then. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:26:37.05] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:26:40.09] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:26:41.11] - Taylor
Bye.

This Week's Topics

Show Notes