Hi, Spring fans! Can you believe it's nearly December 2021? I'm still getting used to the idea that we're already in 2021 and now the year's nearly behind us! Stop the world, I want off! Time's flying.

I've been up to my eyeballs in Spring Tips video production. I can't wait for you to see tomorrow's installment (@SpringTipsLive)!

We've also got some great podcast interviews lined up. As always, new episodes drop on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc., every Thursday night (California time)/Friday (for most of the world). Don't miss it (@BootifulPodcast)!

You could also just check out my blog (joshlong.com) for the upcoming appearances, podcasts, Spring Tips videos, etc. The trouble is that the blog is otherwise pretty boring. My boring content notwithstanding, it's a plain l'il page on the internet, and I've been wanting to mix it up for a long time. So I am. It's currently a generated, static site powered by a Github Action and Github Pages (thank you, Github!)

It's no longer enough, I think. So, I'm updating it. It'll be a well-designed Vue.js SPA that talks to an API henceforth. This means somebody needs to design it; turn the design into valid, mobile-and-desktop friendly markup; turn that markup into a Vue.js application; and then connect that Vue.js application to the backend API, which somebody also needs to build. So I've been working on all of that. I enjoy the process of building something with my hands. I enjoy the end-to-end work. I love this kind of stuff. There's nothing cooler than being able to slap together services or a system and then share it with the world. This time around, however, I've really enjoyed one particular aspect of it: CSS. Yes, that CSS. Cascading Style Sheets.

For me, CSS has been this satisfying, albeit brainless, indulgence. Look at the design, convert it. Look at the design, convert. And on and on. It's painstaking. I've spent more than a week of my free time getting just the front page working in CSS. The new front page is an incredibly dynamic design, with lots of zones. It was no small feat to get this all working in the new world, but I've done it, and I love it. I wonder if this is what it feels like to do crossword puzzles, play Tetris, knit, or crochet for others? It's mindless. I get into this wonderful zone where I'll focus on one section of the design and then come up for air a few hours later with like one little zone, or panel, of the page working as it should. But it's infinitely satisfying! And when you get it to also do the right thing when the page resizes, e.g., for mobile users? Priceless!

I'm just glad my kid's learning CSS and was able to help me a little. She's awfully skilled.

Anyway, thanks for indulging my little story. Now, let's get back to the main story: the wide, wonderful and wacky world of Springdom. We've got a ton for this week!

• In last week's installment of A Bootiful Podcast, I talked to JMS and Messaging legend, HornetQ and Artemis co-founder, Clebert Suconic
• Not strictly speaking related to Spring, but the far-and-wide removal of Docker from production and local developer desktops is a trend I see gaining strength and it can't hurt to be well prepared for it. This blog - Dockershim removal is coming. Are you ready? - may help.
• I liked this post on Piotr's TechBlog post: Kafka Streams with Spring Cloud Stream
• R2DBC and Spring for Non-Blocking Database Access
• Release 1.8.0 · micrometer-metrics/micrometer
• Spring Cloud Stream with Apache Kafka and Rabbitmq binder | Spring Boot
• Spring Data 2021.0.7 and 2020.0.15 released
• Spring Data 2021.1.0 goes GA
• Spring Framework 5.3.13 available now
• Spring Tips: My Reactive Summit 2021 Day 2 Keynote with James Ward
• hantsy has been adding samples demonstrating reactive concepts to this repository since Spring Framework 5 development began. There are always new and interesting examples
• Join us, and some of our favorite software developers for the next installment of SpringOne Tour!