What I done did in July 2024
I’m back writing a weekly blog which means these monthly wrap ups are coming back too.
I made it back from New Zealand (eventually)
I was meant to land in the UK on the 1st of July but due to a flight cancellation that became the 2nd. I had a great time out in New Zealand and wrote a blog about my trip and it’s impact if you’re interested.
I caught up with WWDC 2024
As I was away on holiday when Apple’s WWDC happened this year so I had to wait until I was back to catch up with the latest from Apple. I really enjoyed the keynote, with its ridiculous stunts breaking up the various sections.
Apple Intelligence was the biggest announcement for me, as someone who doesn’t like how Machine Learning is being rebranded as a Artificial Intelligence the use of onboard models to work with contextual information on device to for generative and LAM stuff feels like a good way of adding this kind of thing without over-hyping it.
I got a wah-wah pedal
As part of the Hard Driving Dad Rock work band that I’m in it was suggested that we do a song that used a wah-wah pedal so I took this as an opportunity to get a new toy. So far I’ve managed to butcher Jimi Hendrix but at some point I’ll get round to trying Shaft.
I decided I’m kinda into Pokemon Go again
While I was out in New Zealand I started playing Pokemon Go again after a good 3-year break. This resurgence was mostly fuelled by a need to collect Relicanth for friends back home but I started clearing all the special research that had accumulated and that made things feel more manageable.
I think the FOMO which drove me away will be a bit more manageable now that I’ve been away for so long and seen all the stuff that was advertised as going away still available.
I’m also looking to get a Pokémon Go living dex in Pokémon Home so that would also be helping me get back into things.
LeedsJS and Ministry of Testing Leeds
This month I had LeedsJS and MoT Leeds on. My colleague Steven Milne spoke at LeedsJS about the work his doing on retro-fitting a design system and Rich McIntyre complimented this with a talk on Atomic Design. I care a lot about design systems so it was great to have two perspectives on starting from scratch & scaling up and having scaled and reeling the variations in.
MoT Leeds had a great talk by Bryan Elder on how teams should view the customer as not the end point but the starting point of their journey to building a quality product.
Leeds Pride
I went to my first pride since I’ve lived in Leeds this month. I always seem to be away when it happens but this month I was about so I was able to go. My work had a spot in the parade so I got to walk in that, waving a bubble gun about and causing havoc.
It was a really fun day and I’ll def be going again.
I iterated on my JiffyCV ideas
When I got back from holiday and got the life I put on pause back under control I started looking at JiffyCV again. I’ve been revisiting some of the concepts in the app and how the old data model while flexible overcomplicated things and influenced the UX in a negative way.
Instead of having completely separate representations of an experience I’m now looking at how to balance static and dynamic parts of what users would put in their CV when job hunting.
