June 2024
And we're back!
June arrived, and with it its lower temperatures. I spent a good chunk of the month head down working on several things. The other was in my books. I finished a third audiobook this month and got deep into a new series.
i have been honing my skills and acquiring new ones. All the while watching the chaos ensuing in the the tech world. I did see that sanity is returning to the world. Even though it's one part, it's a start.
~ Dante
📋 The Failure of the Book Summary
I had an article that I had wanted to write for the longest. I finally got the spark on how to do it. It was a retrospective on a series of books I read a while back. The only issue was I couldn't reread them, regardless how much I wanted to.
So I turned to book summary apps to maybe, possibly get a brief recap so I could accurately structure the article. And on endless rabbit hole I went of app after app with no luck getting summaries for the books in question.
On this occasion book summary apps failed. They failed because they only stock pile "self help" and popular books and what I wanted was obscure and not what the general public reads. They also failed because they did not have any of the books I read or would read.
I did finish and publish the article no thanks to the apps; here it is if you're interested in reading it: The Giver Quartet: A Retrospective
👨🏾🎓 Behold! I, Artisan
On my tech blog I talked about how I was removing all the complexity from my day to day. I want to have a clear path to where and why things work they way they do. I won' t rehash what I talked about there; if you're curious here is that article.
Anyway, one of the largish projects I am in charge of need something more refined than SvelteKit. As I wasn't going back, I keyed in on my PHP knowledge and decided to actually understand how Laravel works. I have been adding that skill to my toolbox and what a lovely journey that has been.
In short, I really like Laravel. I like that I don't have to go around looking for a third party package to do things. It's all included in the framework which for me is such a breath of fresh air
I can now confidently say; I, Artisan. All thanks goes to Laracasts and Jefferey Wey for guiding me through my introduction.
I shall report back when I have deployed a couple of apps.
✒Adobe's Not Very Good, Bad Month
I thought this was the year of learning from mistakes; both ours and others. Oh how mistaken I was...
In the wake of the Unity debacle and their runtime fee, Adobe decided, "Nah b, I can do one better"
Here's what I know....
Adobe updated their terms. Sure companies always do that. However, this time they were pushing really hard for people to accept them. This then lead to some patient individuals to read through the terms and what they found has caused an uproar.
The gist is twofold. First Adobe wants carte blanche access to any and all work you do while using their product - including, presumably, NDA work. The second, and this is where they messed up, a royalty free licence to use your work to 'make things better'? This second part has wording so vague it implied they could use your work to train their AI. Even though they said this wasn't the case, the damage was already done and the mass exodus soon followed.
Now if this wasn't enough, users trying to cancel their subscription were ran around the ringer, and also made to accept said terms before cancelling.
And like clockwork, The U.S. has proceeded to sue the company over their termination fees that are, as they say, harming consumers.
It has been interesting watching another company make changes that end up biting them in the back.
As for me? As I said, I am watching. I stopped using Adobe products a long time ago.
Then there was Microsoft and their Recall 'feature', but that's whole other can of worms
P.S. Word is they updated the terms again.
🎉 Over To You
And you?
What did you get up to this chilly month? How are you handling this cold that decides to hit early in the morning and late at night?
Did you do anything fun?