theDevNovice

        It’s been two months since my last blog post, and finding time to write has been challenging. I’ve started a few posts, and saved them as drafts, but never managed to finish. I also took a break from coding and job hunting, as my day job has been especially demanding and has led to a tough bout of burnout. I work in inventory, and with our yearly audit just days away, there’s a major push to clear up any outstanding issues. This season is always stressful, compounded by an ongoing labor shortage. To me, it’s not just about a lack of workers but a lack of well-paying jobs. Where I work, the starting pay is minimum wage, and it’s a physically intense job. Many new hires end up leaving because they don’t feel the pay justifies the effort, which leaves the rest of the team under even more strain.    I took a few weeks off to give my mind a break and to step back from the constant cycle of either not hearing back from job applications or receiving generi...

      Jumping Paws is a project that I have been working on for a few weeks now. It's a game about a little yellow cat running along a moving video game landscape. The cat has to jump over a series of brightly colored yarn balls to continue his run. If he crashes into one of the balls, it's game over. The longer the cat runs, the more points the player gets. As of 7/23/24, the code is broken down to 9.5% HTML, 13.6% CSS, and 77.2% JavaScript. Those percentages will probably change as I continue to improve the code. I built a basic version of the Google Chrome dinosaur game from a YouTube tutorial and used the same code setup for this game, with added customizations. Some of the changes that I made were adding a background image and increasing the canvas board's overall size. I also changed the characters and added a reset feature for game over.       I read an article on how to make an infinite loop for a CSS background image. I will include the link b...

        It's been a difficult couple of weeks. I feel like my day job has been mentally taxing and any free time that I have after work is spent on adult responsibilities and professional development. My brain doesn't get much of a break. I read this book The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and it talks about how the majority of successful individuals have a morning routine that involves them waking up early and setting the day up to be productive. I've been trying to develop my own routine. I've set my alarm to wake up at least 30 minutes earlier so that I don't feel rushed. I'm also trying to incorporate a habit of reading a daily inspiration excerpt from a book, journaling in a gratitude notebook, and spending at least 10 minutes on mindfulness/self reflection. I've been making a fruit/vegetable smoothie for breakfast and working out most days. It's been difficult to keep up with the practice though. My small apartment doesn't really provide a quiet,...

      It's been awhile since I last posted. I took a break from the Blog, as well as posting on LinkedIn, for the past few weeks. I had a phone interview for a job last month that I thought would pan out. It wasn't quite in the tech field like I wanted, but it was a tech company, which was a step in the right direction. Ultimately the recruiter ghosted me though, so I took some time away and to try and pivot mentally. I landed my first client though. I was tasked with building a website for their appliance repair business. The only specifications that I was given were that it should be basic and contain an appointment calendar. Since I would be building my first professional site, I thought it would be a good opportunity to start learning WordPress and how to host a site outside of GitHub. I chose WordPress because I have seen a lot of job listings referencing it, so figured it would be a useful skill to learn. I knew also that WordPress would require at least a little ba...

      To better sharpen my JavaScript skills, I will start building and posting random projects found on the Internet. I decided to attack a different approach to these projects. In the past, I've used tutorials or interactive web platforms in an attempt to master JS, but none of these have helped me learn the concepts. I can follow patterns and memorize code but I have not developed a deeper understanding. I find that I learn better when I have a good understanding of the foundations to build upon.       In one episode of the Scrimba podcast, an interviewee spoke about how the best way for her to learn was good old-fashioned pen and paper. She would write the code out to better help her remember it. Writing code sounds strange, but I figured it was worth a try. The first project I decided to build was a flashlight effect that I found  here . Developed using HTML, CSS, and JS, it gives the effect of a flashlight shining across the computer screen ...

      A little over three years ago, at my previous apartment, there was neighborhood cat that everyone fed. Each person had their own name for her, but my family and I called her Gato. Well, Gato was the definition of scraggly. She was tiny, had awful skin problems, and was missing chunks of hair, but everyone absolutely adored her. She was a street cat through and through and wouldn't let anyone convert her into a house cat, but we did our best to look after her. Within a year, she had given birth to two litters of kittens. After the second litter, I took her to get fixed and her shots. The first litter I hope was adopted throughout the neighborhood as the feral kittens all eventually disappeared. The second litter remained a mystery for a few weeks. While she was pregnant the second time, we often let her inside to look after her. My partner would rub her belly and feel the kittens kick. She even spent Christmas with us and slept under the tree. Then one day Gato poppe...