Quick and only partially coherent review of 2024

Accidentally wrote this while trying to figure things out, so I might as well publish it here. And, no, I didn’t bother to edit it, so expect fluff and rambling. Everywhere I look, it’s becoming more and more clear that a lot of job markets are in very bad shape. The web developer job market is in a sorry state. Software developers in general...

The web, as a platform, ecosystem, industry, and market, is in a very odd place. The platform is genuinely great. Bugs are inevitable – every non-trivial project will encounter an implementation bug in a major browser at some point – but the platform overall is in a good place with capabilities I wouldn’t have even dared to hope for a decade ago....

Incomplete thoughts. Don’t count on any of it making sense. Digital has made the boundaries between various different kinds of time-base media – the different formats of audio and video – much softer. Podcasts are recorded with video. Video essays are distributed as podcasts. Series that are made for domestic broadcast in one country end up on...

Slightly different format from the other interim notes because writing about text requires paragraphs. These interim notes are all unedited and a little bit rough. – Thinking about where text-based media – print, ebooks, websites, newsletters, etc. – are heading led me to start another re-read of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death and,...

A few thoughts on my freelance and ebook business. Random and somewhat incoherent. A deregulated US poses a significant risk to small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Banking, transaction system, or payment disruptions disproportionally harm SMBs. For example, a larger business is likely to be able to weather a month-long disruption to their...