Wow the landscape has shifted

My headline means two things to me today. First, the social media landscape. This was my post on Facebook this week. 

Social media is a mess right now. The new Facebook interface is convinced I want to be one of the groups I support all day long (and not myself) which completely confused a friend this morning. Twitter keeps changing its interface and asking me to give them money (no way, you should be grateful I'm still logging in and seeing any of the ads on the site). Instagram keeps sending me videos of strangers describing knitting hacks in languages I don't understand (and I'm not entirely sure why except for the one "how to crochet a penguin video" I did watch once about six months ago). I'm not job hunting so LinkedIn is not a destination and I prefer to read instead of watching videos so YouTube is not the best place for me either. 

But, I do like to know what you're all doing. Going to try to keep hanging in here to see the people I love doing the things that they love and chuckling about LOTR memes and Mariah Carey on her way.

It's getting worse. And now I see people going to Mastodon, Tumblr, Reddit and Discord. I'm in a few of those places, but I'm not sure that this business needs to reinvent itself again in social. I'll keep this blog going and I'll stay active on LinkedIn, but I think I'll be closing my Twitter account after I get my data. I don't use it enough and he doesn't get to count it. 

And now my second point.

The freelance world has changed since the pandemic. I used to see dozens of options available to connect with potential clients for reasonable rates and now FIVERR is advertising on TV, PhDs are taking editing jobs, and more people have jumped into the remote world. Many of the places where I used to find gig work at night (EST) are already finished by the time I can log in. I'm happy for the companies but sad my routine is broken. I will be honest I was hoping that my business model would last another 20 years, but the world changes constantly. 

I am fortunate to not be desperate enough to write for pennies. I am also fortunate that I am not homebound and can flex in different ways to support myself and my family. After a few months of frustration, I am moving forward again with a new part-time gig and it's exactly the bridge I needed. When it's time for me to leave my full-time job, I'll be able to focus more on Off Peak again.

How are you navigating this changing landscape? 

WCAG 2.0

The web content accessibility guidelines 2.0 are going into effect in January 2018. For those of you not familiar with this change, you can check out the WCAG initiative overview here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines.

If you want to see if your website meets the standards, then check out WAVE (http://wave.webaim.org/).

Working to get my clients covered before the changes go into effect. Accessibility helps everyone on the web! 

Still not a towing company

But the phone calls are lessening and the need to get my name erased is getting better. My guess now is that a description from the Off Peak Towing company in Hawaii got merged with my business somehow. I think I've managed to scrub most references, but there are old cached sites that still have the wrong info. This is proof that anything posted to the internet never goes away. Even when it is wrong.

Day One HeWeb12

WOW, Day one of HeWeb12 is over. I had a blast. Not being a newbie anymore makes a huge difference. I've kind of figured out how to navigate the sessions, find the plugs and locate the people I've followed online. The only negative spot was the loss of wifi for a few hours, but that might have been good cause it got me to focus on the presenters more. I also got published today!

Check out the link at LINK: Cloud Computing Blog on Link 

And I was in the same room as Adam Savage from Mythbusters. His talk was unexpected and thought provoking. He answered every question I had and I managed to capture some thoughts on my camera. Hoping his thoughts about art and engineering actually got captured because I think my daughter would love to hear that word for word.

Empire Avenue

OK, I am annoyed right now. Earlier today I logged into EA, checked my social graph and went about my business. Just tried to go back on my lunch and found my account has been deleted. I'm not sure what I did or what I clicked, but unless someone decided to hack into my account, I must have hit something. I did modify some privacy settings in facebook this AM, but, I was under the impression that EA was a separate entity. Now I am not so sure.

It would appear that my whole account is now gone. And I'm not going to spend the time bringing it back. So, if we connected on EA along the way, I'm sorry for this error. If Empire Avenue can figure out how to salvage my account, then I'll continue, but since my primary peer groups never connected there, this might actually end up being a blessing in disguise.

Oh what a tangled web we are weaving.... this is certainly a wake-up call for what is connected where.

HTML5

I'm learning more and more about HTML 5 and I love it. I'm mostly self-taught with this web coding thing and I like the fact that the W3C and WHATWG decided to maintain the flow of web development rather than try to force changes to the way we do business.

From the sounds of it, HTML5 will be backwards compatible, will integrate video and audio, AND if browsers/gadgets/phones decide to follow these guidelines, we won't have to code in special ways for each device.

The part I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is the length of time it will take to get it recommended.... I've seen the websites like ishtml5readyyet.com where we are "years away." But the world is already moving in that direction. It is confusing to me that there are delays when it is just an evolution of the working methods we already have.