James Clark | Technically Product

I've just issued my 250th invoice as a #freelancer. It would be quite something to make it to 1,000 - but at the current rate I'll be well into my 60s by the time I get there, so it's definitely not a given! Strange to think so far ahead.

Hiscox has put the price of my business insurance up a very reasonable 3% this year. It's so nice (and rare) for an insurance company not to gouge you at every opportunity! #freelance

MeasureCamp London going with a somewhat brave 'we're all a bunch of cowboys' theme this year

I feel personally attacked by this age group selector

Why do schools love sending information to parents as PDF attachments? Just put it in a plain text email so I can search it and read it on my mobile! I don't care how it looks, I just want to know when my daughter needs to bring her PE kit in

Call me cynical but this feels like a marketing play. It positions the tech as extremely powerful while also pricing in any future lack of progress

I've been here - not with images but with technical SEO. Client followed ChatGPT advice and ended up getting in a tangle. Doubt started to creep in so they turned to a human (me) to unpick it all

Great example of misheard song lyrics: my daughter thinks the song Shallow Grave by @themountaingoats.bsky.social is about (the actor Timothee) Chalamet Chalamet, out in the middle of things Chalamet, go get a bucket of chicken wings

Pootling through the East Mids on a train. I like how Long Eaton has a short platform

Use Slack for your business and want to save a bit of money? Go to cancel your paid plan and chances are you'll be offered a 50% discount instead. You're welcome.

I'm quite enjoying Schroedinger's Burnham. His cost of living policies apparently involve a) so little money that they will make no difference and b) so much money that they will bankrupt us all

I don't get why everyone is talking about watching The Odyssey in 70mm. That's a really tiny screen

Officially changing my name to Name

Never mind Celsius vs Fahrenheit. I want a temperature scale where 0 is equal to 0C but 100 is equal to 100F. Best of both!

During my first *decade* of life, the town where I currently live had one single day where the temperature hit 30°C. This year, it has already had 10 days at 30° or more - and we're only in June.

Maybe it's just the hot weather, but this Meta setup option seems confusing. Have I toggled automatic advanced matching on or off? Don't show me an 'on' toggle with the word 'off' alongside!

I was going to buy a tub of olives, but on the side it said "for expiration date see film" and I'm not a fan of video content

Every time I have a good run of freelance work, something goes wrong with the house that I need to pay to get fixed. I don't know if this is really bad luck (my money always goes on repairs) or really good luck (I always have money for repairs) #freelancelife

Strange headline from the Guardian here. Undershooting a target is generally bad, whereas borrowing less is actually good

Facebook moderation is an absolute joke. This comment (in blue) didn't qualify as "calling for violence". Preparations are underway that require baseball bats and stun guns but it's not calling for violence, oh no

Sadly the pens were all normal size

Hey Search Console, slow down, you're putting the rest of us to shame

I paste a link into a Jira ticket - it turns it into a big 'smart link' box and asks me if I want to connect to Google. I click on it in an attempt to disable this - Jira then asks me if I want to use Rovo. No, Jira! I just want to paste a flipping link! 'Helpful' tools are the bane of my existence

The Cheesecake Factory is a real chain of restaurants? My mind is blown! I thought it was just something made up for the Big Bang Theory

Considering becoming a Minister of Religion in order to get an exemption from Making Tax Digital

Hands up, I misunderstood how modeling works in #GA4. I thought event data got modeled but that's not the case. "Enabling modeling will make unconsented events reportable, however these events will remain unaffected by modeling." It's just metrics like users, sessions, and new users that get modeled

One of the oddities of freelancing is that the more work you do, the more new work you get coming in. I guess it's the opposite phenomenon to "out of sight, out of mind". But the quickest way to end up with too much work is to try to clear your workload #freelancing

When it comes to making life changes, I believe that only tiny changes and humongous changes are effective. Tiny changes are easy to maintain, whereas humongous changes are impossible to undo. Middle-sized changes are both difficult to maintain and possible to undo, so they never stick.

Watching MasterChef Junior (USA) with my daughter - we're shocked that the winner takes home $100K! I can't think of a single TV competition in the UK that has a cash prize for kids. Even the adult UK MasterChef doesn't have a cash prize - the career opportunities are presumably reward enough

Maybe I'll join a cell group

If you're looking for a new band name, you could do worse than turning to an HP Lovecraft story for inspiration. The Twilight Abysses, The Kaleidoscopic Polyhedrons, The Tonal Patterns, Walpurgis Rhythm, The Bubble Congeries, Spacetime Seethings... And this is all from a single paragraph!

I bought some delicious cured ham from the deli today. It is made from a breed of pig that has a really big nose! Apparently it's called cyrano ham

Last night I had a dream that I'd joined a psychic police force in Exeter whose members could teleport anywhere just by visualizing that place. The only problem was, I had aphantasia (in the dream) so I couldn't visualise mental images or teleport anywhere! Might make for an interesting novel?

One of my clients is absolutely smashing organic search! I'm supporting them on ad ops mostly so can't take credit for this, but still good to see

Yesterday I used the HTML <picture> tag for the first time. When I learned this stuff originally, XHTML was the big thing and the <picture> tag didn't even exist. So it's good to update my dinosaur knowledge!

Do any of my mutuals use Ko-fi? This is me - give me a follow and I'll happily reciprocate ko-fi.com/technicallyp... Oh, I should update my profile pic

Folks, you’re not going to believe this, but

My 'Complete guide to Google Search Console' over on the Wix SEO Hub has been updated and expanded for 2026! It now covers the Insights report, the granularity selector, annotations and much more new goodness www.wix.com/seo/learn/re...

Why do we say 24/7/365 and not 24/7/52? Or just 24/365?

My 11-year-old daughter arranged a "phone-free family day" yesterday. Everyone's phones went into a box for the entire day. We all found ourselves being not only more sociable but also more active - we even found time to hang some curtains, a job we'd been meaning to do for ages. Would recommend.

Today I learned that analytics tools sometimes report iPads as OS X devices rather than iOS devices. Here's Mixpanel reporting on a device that I'm 99% sure is an iPad - note the portrait aspect ratio #analytics

Them: "Would you like an email receipt?" Me: "Sure, where's the harm"

This year I'm tracking the time I spend working for all my clients, even the ones I charge per project rather than per hour. Just for my own insight I mean. I suspect that some of my projects are not as worthwhile as I think they are once I take into account all the time involved! #freelancing

It troubles me that the US has time zones called Eastern and Pacific. Why not Atlantic and Pacific? Or Eastern and Western?!

I'm really not a fan of report builders that automatically save your changes (like GA4's Explorations). I tend to forget this is a thing, make a bunch of changes while I'm exploring the data, then struggle to get back to my original useful report! It's even worse when it's a report you've shared

Politics aside, I'm not sure that giving *everyone* in Greenland $100,000 would do much good. Want to use it to help buy a house? Guess what, there are no more houses than before and all the other potential buyers are $100k richer too

Overall I'm sceptical about gen AI, but I have found it really helpful for troubleshooting some specific IT issues this week. As a kind of "have you also thought about this?" engine it has its place. But then I work for myself so don't have an IT team or indeed any colleagues to badger!