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I used to be a long-time moderator and administrator on JavaRanch/CodeRanch, where I got to know Tim and Ron who recently introduced themselves here. Over there I was heavily involved in moving the Ranch from UBB to JForum; I'm a committer to the open source version to this day. The general demise of public forums -which Dani voiced on the Ranch- has tempered the pace of that project, though.

Having worked in numerous industries, these days I freelance in various capacities, almost exclusively on web-based Java projects. I also dabble in Android on the side, but more for fun than profit.

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Member Avatar for John_165

Welcome aboard! Do you build mobile apps with a cross‑platform framework or only stick to native Android/iOS? And where do you usually find your freelance projects?

Edited by John_165
Member Avatar for trcooke

Well hello there Ulf! It certainly has been a minute since we last spoke, in fact I just dug out the last email conversation that we had just over 10 years ago! Nice to be in touch again. I still enjoy reading your one paragraph movie reviews :)

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Hello there and welcome to DaniWeb! Thank you so much for taking the time to join here.

Member Avatar for Ulfson

Welcome aboard! Do you build mobile apps with a cross‑platform framework or only stick to native Android/iOS? And where do you usually find your freelance projects?

I stick to native Android. Way back when I thought Apache Cordova was pretty cool for reaching smaller platforms, but now that there are essentially just two platforms left, I think there are better ways to reach both, if I wanted to.

Member Avatar for Ulfson

Well hello there Ulf! It certainly has been a minute since we last spoke, in fact I just dug out the last email conversation that we had just over 10 years ago! Nice to be in touch again. I still enjoy reading your one paragraph movie reviews :)

Huh, you're the one :-) I use it mostly as a reminder to myself what I saw; there are films on it from less than 10 years ago that I have no recollection of ever watching...

I think I noticed you briefly on Mastodon, but I can no longer find traces of that.

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Mastadon, well there's a blast from the past. I couldn't even tell you which servers I had accounts on.

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A blast from the past? Didn't Mastodon first gain popularity around 2020ish? When I think of a blast from the past, I think of AOL Instant Messenger and MySpace.

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I never really connected with it so just feels like a long time ago. But I share you sentiments in general for things of the past, such as the 8086 processor and SCSI disks.

Member Avatar for Ulfson

Mastodon is pretty much the only social network I'm on these days (except for nebenan.de, which is similar to Nextdoor, but much more popular here in Germany). Simplifying my online presence, I deleted my Facebook and Nextdoor accounts this year.

Member Avatar for trcooke

I've pretty much excluded myself from all social media things because their primary reason for being is to push advertising and propaganda to you, and I don't like it. I frequently remind myself of the mantra:

If you don't pay for the product, you are the product

The only exception is LinkedIn, because despite my mistrust of the platform I do have to make an effort to stay connected and visible to my peers. I have accepted being treated as a product by LinkedIn as the cost of using the platform.

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