Hey! 👋 It’s been a couple of months. As usual, life has been an endless series of ups and downs. I’ll spare you all of the downs and focus on the ups.
As you know, my expertise is in mobile development. However, I’ve spent the past few months diving into the complex world of caching on the Web. Initially, I was apprehensive about doing this work. Caching is one of those "hard things" in software development. But I love a good challenge, so I took the job. The end result was an actionable cache strategy for the company. I’m proud of myself for taking it on and delivering something valuable to the business. 💪🏼
Now for the side hustle. I wrapped my latest course with LinkedIn Learning. Due to COVID, I filmed remotely from home. It was loads of fun and I continue to be impressed with the quality of the team there. I sent them my address and then within days boxes and boxes of gear were delivered. They followed it up with videos to explain how to unbox and get set up. AND even more impressive an entire day was dedicated to ensuring I had everything set up properly.
You can see my portable teleprompter in the picture below. It’s powered by an iPad. This was one of the coolest aspects of the setup. I can’t wait for post-production to complete so I can share my new baby with the world. 😜
Now on to the books, podcasts, and cool tech.
Books I’m Reading
The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy
The Internet is a scary place. That’s the number one takeaway from reading this book. The type of creepy, illegal behavior that goes on is frightening. But once you can accept that it happens the next step is to protect yourself. And no, there isn’t just one thing you can do. You’ll have to take lots of proactive actions to ensure a measure of safety.
Things I did immediately:
Set up Google alerts for my name, address, email, etc.
Bought camera covers for all devices in my home
Installed anti-tracker plugins: AdBlock Plus and Ghostery
You’ll want to read this one. It’s highly actionable. It also features real-life stories of people who were victimized online. I shared some details with my daughters because I want them to be aware and stay safe online as well.
Let’s Talk Podcasts
The Developers’ Bakery - Dependency Analysis Android Gradle Plugin
Tony Robalik is featured in this episode. He discusses his Gradle plugin that helps you find unused and misused dependencies in your Android applications. This was an informative discussion around the internals of Gradle and the inner workings of how he performs the dependency analysis in his plugin.
I added his plugin to the Meetup Android app to give it a try. I was surprised by the number of unused dependencies. I figured we’d have some but there were several in every module of the app. Glad I stumbled across this episode.
Additionally, I learned about a new program, The Gradle Fellowship. It’s a small group of recognized Gradle community experts. I’m happy to see Gradle introducing more efforts to support the millions of developers who rely on their technology every day.
Online Marketing Made Easy - Consumer Habits That Will Affect Your Business...
In this episode, Amy talks to Phillip Stutts about three types of consumer personality types and why businesses should be paying attention to them. The three types were the Overwhelmed, the Activist, and the Influenced consumer. I definitely fall into the “overwhelmed" bucket. I feel like a hamster on a wheel. Always running, but getting nowhere. So this portion specifically spoke to me about how the Overwhelmed consumer is making their buying choices.
One key takeaway for me was that brand loyalty is being eroded. Phillip mentioned that due to inflation and economic uncertainty, people are looking to cut costs. They feel like they can get the same thing for cheaper elsewhere. This shift demands that businesses focus on how they can distinguish themselves and be truly authentic.
Current Tech Fave
My current tech fave is Excalidraw. It’s a virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams. I’ve been using it to create some simple diagrams for presentations at work. For example, I presented our caching solution for Next.js. I wanted something that was lightweight and easy to grasp.
With Excalidraw I quickly downloaded a library that contained software architecture components. Then I was able to create diagrams with ease. There was little to no learning curve. I haven’t used the collaboration features yet, but I’m eager to try that next. If you try it out, share your diagrams with me.
Until next time, thanks for reading!
"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
- Maya Angelou
Blog: http://www.adavis.info
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annycedavis/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brwngrldev