Alrighty, this is something I wanted to get off my chest earlier but didn’t, so here it is—it took me almost six months for this update on what is happening with my website, social media platforms, and my personal life.
Let me start with a quick website update. As you can see from the current design, I have changed it a lot since the last update. This includes many bug fixes in a couple of smaller sections. Plus, if you look at the Projects page or a blog post, you will see that the featured image is clickable so it can be seen in full size, unlike previously with animations.
The reason for this is simple: optimization for speed and accessibility. The old design was kept for almost two years and was out of touch. Also, you might see that the homepage is much simpler. I don’t need a single pager that can break on some devices and screen sizes. I saw some weird situations on some crazy screen resolutions this year.
Now that the design part is out of the way, here’s the truth about the new blog posts I’m writing. There are two still in draft. One is taking longer than expected to finish, especially as it needs more research into LLMs/GPTs/AI models of services I’m testing. And yeah, I’m testing or have tested ChatGPT (models 4 and 4.0 in the Pro version), Microsoft Copilot (Pro and Free versions), Google Gemini AI (Advanced in 1.5 Pro and 2.0 Flash variants for the Advanced model and 1.5 Flash for the Free model), Canva Pro AI for image generation only, and finally Twitter’s (not calling it X, no matter what) Grok AI. I still need to combine all of these tests into one post, and I hope that post will be ready by early next year, as one LLM/GPT is going to be used heavily for my next project, which is still a work in progress (hint: it is/will be a website; more details when the site goes live). Another post in draft for a long time is saving an old post series from Blogger and combining them into one post as a kind of retrospective of my old experimental days in IT.
After a bit of a ramble about the blog and website in general (where I think I forgot to mention that on Projects there is one new project that was finished this year), it’s time to talk about social media updates. Oh boy, where to start? Let me just start with this: I neglected my Facebook page and Instagram profile a bit, but at least I tried to use other socials more, like Threads, Bluesky, and YouTube.
Speaking of YouTube, this year it grew significantly with legitimate promotions using Google solutions to pay for video promotion to a greater audience, which resulted in new viewers and subscriptions. After that, I enabled the option of channel monetization with a Membership program. That was enabled for almost four months until Google contacted me and stopped it because they thought my content was copied from others (even though I’m still moving old videos to the current channel to this day, darn it). But who cares? I have solid view counts and subscriber numbers, so if I ever want to get back, I’ll reapply for it.
The last social media, which is now my most used one, is Twitter (again, not calling it X, no matter what). I have no idea how many posts about football I’ve made in it in the last few months, from comments about Liverpool FC, Barcelona FC, GNK Dinamo Zagreb, and others, plus some random other tweets/posts. I got it back to over 1,000 posts, even though a few years back I cleaned the profile of old posts.
And finally, let’s talk about personal life. Honestly, this year, after ending my contract with Hrvatski Telekom at the end of June/beginning of July (because I was contracted to them through an outside company), I spent just a month and a half doing freelance work and finishing a project that was near completion from my side before teaching the owners how to add content manually (the Art-Blazic Gallery website), plus doing some other work before getting another full-time job. Firstly, I worked as a Sales Manager for Business Customers at Telecommunications for Lider Net Ltd. in early September, which was fine as work, but it seems it wasn’t the best fit for me, as at the end of the contract and their trial period in late November/early December, I got my current job back at Significo as a Customer Support Representative. This seems to fit my workflow a bit easier than doing sales work, especially for business customers who are using one telecommunications company and don’t change it that easily. I heard a lot of things at that old work about the provider I managed, and the sector of small business owners really looks at every cent when it counts.
Future promises from me: In 2025, you will see those two draft posts online, with many more coming. I’m going to get back to more regular posting on Facebook and Instagram, while keeping Twitter/X active as it is now. Other socials will be updated as best as I can.
Now, at the end of this year, 2024, and as this post is going out on Christmas Day, I’m wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2025. See you next year!