psion

I work in a copy-print center where we take orders for business card, posters, flyers, invitations, and all sorts like that. Lately, I have been getting more and more AI generated artwork for these flyers and business cards, and they are not sized correctly. I can tell it's AI generated not from style, layout, or even hallucinations, but just the size. The background are a full color, the customer insists that it's the right size, but I have to tell them that if I print what they gave me, there is going to be large white borders on the sides, tops, or all around. I have had to explain to too many customers that AI doesn't know what an inch really is, as the reference images it has are different sizes. AI flyers could be the best design ever, but it will never be sized properly and will still piss off the print employee.

And I have found that if you are paying for an AI service to get these generic, wrong sized designs, you could have spent just as much going on Fiverr and gotten something that doesn't need to get a full style revision.

Location: Detroit, MI USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Negotiable

Technologies: Web, specifically PHP; Linux support and basic admin

Resume: https://drive.google.com/file/ d/14IAkgr53ezeGKLUa5ay-4hOTQvOGlspq/view?usp=sharing

Email: jasonmarshallselene@gmail.com

Still trying to make my CMS a thing: https://github.com/SeleneSoftware/SeleneCMS https://github.com/SeleneSoftware/SeleneCMSBundle

It's a PHP application running in Symfony. All the CMS heavy lifting is done in the Bundle, and a minimal amount happens in the actual application side. I have worked hard on what is there, and still have a ton of work to go. Always could use the help.

There are some serious attempts at removing the car addiction. The qLine rail goes down Woodward avenue providing a rather nice alternative to the bus systems, and the I have heard recently there are talks to expand the People Mover as it was intended when it was designed. I'm hoping that the bus systems make efforts to bounce back and start serving the suburbs better.

I used to roam that city in my youth some twenty years ago. And if you told me then it would eventually be what it is today, I would have laughed in your face. I'm impressed with how much Detroit has reinvented itself and continues to grow again.

My thought is that this will be taken on by the same people who create low-effort WordPress plugins and charge high dollar amounts for them. Create something super-low-effort, doesn't need to do much except look like it does, and expose an advertisement layer. Publish it as an important mobile app we all need, they make money, we install insecure apps that do nothing for us down the road. Call me a cynic, but I've had to wade through paid plugins and extensions for WordPress and Magento and that is exactly what happens.

I was hired to design and build a loan platform from scratch. The company that hired me was a marketing agency that build WordPress and Magento sites, not scratch built platforms. but they took the bid from a large company and hired me to build it. I came in and started developing various microservices, and asked for more developers to assist. I got freelancers in other countries who usually build WordPress themes. I worked hard to keep these people building the right projects for months. then I was asked to help out with a couple of WordPress tasks for other clients. More and more of these, and finally I was called into the office and told my project was cancled by the client. They got bought out and was told that they were spending too much money on this platform before it even went anywhere. All my work got scrapped. I believe most of my code has been deleted.

I wanted to put together a CMS that would be programmer friendly, so I built https://github.com/SeleneSoftware/SeleneCMSBundle that works with Symfony PHP projects. I have a skeleton app at https://github.com/SeleneSoftware/SeleneCMS

It isn't complete, but I'm using it for my site. It needs some help.

I started a CMS bundle for Symfony projects, and released it. It still needs more work, and people to actually use it. https://github.com/SeleneSoftware/seleneCMSBundle

And a skeleton application that uses the bundle. https://github.com/SeleneSoftware/SeleneCMS

Issues and Pull Requests welcome.

I wrote an amazing feature for a client's website. Saw how awesome it was going to be, wrote it so we could use it on other websites. Even pitched it to my boss on how to pitch it to another client. That code shipped and was never used again.

Putting aside the HP bad discussions, they've had a tank laser printer on the market for a few years now. A few of them, actually. I know because I had to sell this crap. It used a special "plunger" toner refill kit where you set it in the hole and push down. It wasn't that great of a printer, expensive, and a potential mess.

> I believe ageism is real.

I agree, but I would also like to point out a different form of the ageism that I see all the time in my line of work. I'm in tech retail sales. My stores customer base is a bit older, trending more over retired. There is a certain mindset among this age group that goes back a number of years that computers and technology was the playground of the young, so they think because they are older they can get away with not knowing what's going on in technology. I remember the jokes where some older person (in this case around 30-40) would have serious trouble understanding some technology, be it a computer or VCR, and having to call some teenager to their rescue. Too many older people decided that these newfangled toys are just for the kids, and that stuck. So now I have older seniors looking to buy a computer or printer and not understanding how it works because "I'm an older person, I don't know these things like you younger people."

It feels like the old jokes have pervaded our minds and now the younger see the greybeards as some senior citizen who's out of touch on technology. This shouldn't be the case.

I follow a few general learning videos, some of them cover seemingly random, but interesting, topics. But I have my favorites, and here they are.

- Technology Connections - Somebody already mentioned his channel, but it's worth it to find out how the stuff we take for granted works. - Today I Found Out - One of Simon Whistlers channels, he covers a wide range of topics, diving in to where you are just almost over your head. - Answers With Joe - Joe Scott covers many topics with a bend towards science appreciation. I would use his videos in late high school lessons if I were a teacher. - Knowing Better - History. Mostly American History, but it's a really deep dive. I like his delivery and his unapologetic way of discussing the really bad parts of history that people tend to sweep under the rug. - Half as Interesting - It's from Wendover, but short and funny. - Kyle Hill - The Internet's knockoff Thor, he explores deep science and physics in an approachable manner, especially when he is in "The Facility".

Location: Detroit, MI USA Remote: Hybrid Willing To Relocate: Negotiable Technologies: PHP, JavaScript, Linux, Go Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-marshall-9268a8222/ Email: JasonMarshallSelene@gmail.com

Piggyback to this, wasn't it Steve Jobs who said something about how the users don't know what they want or need?

A simple problem with adopting P2P streaming of videos is more in a logistical sphere than a technical. Often in a YouTube video and Twitch stream, there is a sponsor who is paying money for these videos. And these videos need to have some form of analytics or telemetry to see just how many people are watching. If I host the video and you host the video and Bob hosts the video, how am I going to get the view details so that I can calculate the CPM and get paid by my sponsor? The other logistical problem is that these instances just aren't where the viewers are. YouTube is a giant behemoth because they built a place where people can upload their own videos and viewers have a centralized place to watch them. It became so much simplier to tell someone to search a channel on YT than to give them a web address, install a new client (if necessary), and then pray that there are enough seeders so the viewer can watch. And to do that for all twenty (more or less) channels I subscribe to on YT? No thanks. One more logistical problem is more on the technical end of things, but it's still a problem. Let's say that we do make a good go of P2P streaming. By it's own nature, you need to store videos on the device to watch. My FireTV Stick doesn't have that much disk space. And the processor on many streaming devices aren't exactly all that powerful, so running a node in the background isn't in the cards for these devices. One could argue that we could just have a small NAS on our network that could do all the heavy lifting and just send the videos to the streaming device, but have you ever told someone who isn't technically minded that they need to do that to watch your cooking videos? I work in tech sales, and it's a nightmare to tell some people that they need to install software to setup their printers. I'm not going to tell them to set up and additional device for their streaming.

My two cents.

Blockchain technologies are great when few people use them, are dangerous when many people use them, and are utterly dangerous and stop being decentralized when nearly everyone uses them.

I will agree to a point. "Micro" isn't the way we should go, more of a "Macro" approach. Instead of a small service that handles one function, give me a medium service that handles a specific domain, e.g. OAuth, data retention, marketing concerns, etc. And with that said, lumping everything into a single monolith is a bad idea.

The big problem with his argument against PHP being a template engine is that it hasn't been developed with that in mind for quite some time. I think it's just a legacy feature to just echo out anything after a closing php tag and before a new open tag that WordPress still enjoys.

I'm of the opinion that anyone now who calls PHP a "template engine" hasn't actually looked at it since 2001.

I agree with the sentiment. I've been in a Magento and WordPress shop where I had to implement badly written plugins that my boss payed money for. I've seen people come out of code bootcamps calling themselves developers and all they can do is implement a design spec with HTML, SCSS, and jQuery. Yes, I taught myself a few programming languages,but I put in the work and effort to make my skills worth the time to an employer. We shouldn't lower the barrier only to call whomever can get past it with the low-level skills an expert in the field.

I get it. It totally sucks. I live in a mobile home, work a job that doesn't pay nearly enough, and used to work jobs that did. I have a family member who married a doctor and they moved into a house that has a second house attached (a mother-in-law suite as it's called). But I have friends who live in small houses, crappy rentals, mobile homes, and we all visit each other, not our houses. What really matters is what you consider is success, a large bank account or a large group of friends.

IPv6 gets mentioned plenty, and I will take the side that it should have been rolled out WAY sooner than it did, and it should have been rolled out in a way that made it easier to do what I call the Apple Method: Just get it out there and the people will adapt to it.

DNS is a horrid mess that should have been designed with ease of reading in mind. And I know that DNS was designed way before it, but I think a data transit format similar to JSON would have made the system a bit more extendable, and given people a chance to make it a more dynamic system.

E-Mail was brilliant in it's time, but for the love of all things explosive and holy is it bad. Just the fact that in it's base design there is no E2E encryption going on is a problem.

My biggest beef with the current internet is HTTP. Everything is built on it, and it isn't the greatest system. There have been so many systems and protocols implemented that did so many things, FTP/gopher/irc/etc, and most of them have gone the way of the dodo. A few hold-outs in the dedicated tech world will still use irc, but we could have done so much with cloud-based systems with FTP. And if we had a new spec for irc, would we need Slack/Discord/MS Teams/etc? They could then all talk to each other. We shouldn't be trying to reinvent the wheel, we should be using these older services in our platforms.

And don't get me thinking about cloud. The worst term that a marketing team got a hold of. At it's core, it's just somebody else's computer. And again, so much of it is build on HTTP protocols. Not many people know or remember that xWindows and X for *nix systems had a distributed system built in. Log into a server, set one environment variable to your IP address as long as you were running one of these systems yourself, and you could runs programs on the server with the GUI on your computer.

While I don't seem to have all the information here, what I do have is enough to make a really good suggestion. I have some of the same issues with goofing off and such like that. So with this, a couple of questions.

1. Do you find yourself avoiding work you don't want to do outside of the job? 2. Was this a problem in school? 3. Have you talked to a doctor about this?

Number three is the most important. I have ADHD, and it sounds like you might too. Go see your doctor as soon as you can. Once you know what's going on, you can make yourself a plan to improve yourself.

Here's where things get rather stupid. The store I was in doesn't pay on commission.

If you make yourself about the job you do, losing the job doesn't mean you are unworthy. Remember that you are more than the job, and you have no obligation to continue doing it if it upsets you, either.

Here in my corner of the US (Michigan), Unemployment is granted when you can show that you were fired or laid off, not entirely your fault, and then have to continue to answer a series of questions, at specified times, designed to help you fail. One of those questions is proof that you are looking for work, not just sitting around and taking the money. And when you get the money, it's usually less than half of what you were getting when actually working. Making an error usually resolves in not getting any money for that week, and the right error means no more money for the claim. There is a state-backed job search service, MIWorks, that you have to show proof of using, but it isn't as expansive as other job search sites. But they have offices with available computers and people to help search and/or build a resume, which is nice. But the big lesson here is if you lose in Michigan, you lose.

Jason Marshall Location: Detroit, MI Remote: Not first choice Willing to Relocate: With Assistance Technologies: PHP, Symfony, JS, Go, FedoraLinux GitHub https://github.com/psion https://github.com/SeleneSoftware Resume: On request email: JasonMarshall@selenesoftware.us

I'm not going to call it the best SSG out there, but not the worst. I wrote one and released it. It started as something to just spit out some Twig templates wtih content mixed in, and a few features later, I had a Static Site Generator. And anybody who wants to take a look, maybe make some pull requests, it's in my github, https://github.com/SeleneSoftware

SEEKING WORK, PHP and JavaScript web development. Located in Detroit, MI.

Rate is $35/hr. Web hosting available, ask for rates.

https://selenesoftware.us JasonMarshall@selenesoftware.us

In ye olden times, there wasn't Medium. Sites where everybody could write whatever they wanted. And so sites like Medium could run their own feed of sorts, and send me a digest email with what they think I want to read.

The King(s) of Google do have a strong blogging community in Blogger, but it was never supposed to be, nor never will be, a backstop against Facebook. It would be better for Google to work within Facebook on this, as bloggers in WordPRess, or MEdium, or whatever announce on social media, guess whose ads are running on the blogs? And I myself as a dev, I'm still searching for the best articles for development practices and more. They don't see that need for us to subscribe to RSS. It's the King(s) of Facebook, Twitter, etc., that need to listen. Giving us a way to watch our subscribed RSS feeds in their own ecosystem will give them the edge on content aggregation.