“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn’t fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That’s what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.”
I came across this beautiful quote and it's been giving me the biggest motivation ever (in 2016) to get things rolling and work towards my dreams and goals. Not to mention, Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite authors (I don't even read that much anymore).
I think I spent a good 10 minutes to figure out how to embded the SoundCloud playlist onto this blog spot. There's almost no flexibility whatsoever I could do with resizing or putting out an actual appropriate image that's not my huge face. Here it is though. Yet again, proves how difficult technology is (mainly joking).
I graduated from the WDI course last Friday and really haven't been able to get my ass down to write meaningful code. I spent the last few days going through potential interview questions. And similar to my college experiences, I get excited only when I'm answering questions in regards to the concepts I am familiar with (the basic HTML and CSS/Sass stuff). Once it bleeds into Ruby and/or Ruby on Rails, I feel like I'm free falling until my brain decides to refresh the memories on its own. It's almost impossible to control that.
I am not entirely discouraged by the progress I have been making though. Now that I'm working the bare minimal hours - working just enough so I don't have to starve constantly, and also be able to pay off bills (adding that up, I think I am spending a good 80% of my income and savings on technologies that is supposed to propel me to new horizons. I am still sitting here waiting for the benefits to yield).
As you can see, I have gotten so much better with Priime, an equivalent to VSCO or Instagram. I think that was one of the greatest accomplishments in the past week. Kidding. I've been working on really refining my skills on tying in my UX design background with Front-End Web Development. It's almost obvious that I am pretty set on finding a job as a Front-End web dev. I generally have interest in working out strategies that would entice the user experience without implementing functionality that's overkill. Now that I have gone through an entire 12-week immersive program, I am way more confident and passionate about carving out the appropriate processes when it comes to designing a website. In short, I am branching out to the conventional concepts including but not limited to responsive design or flat design.
Apart from all that self-fulfilling processes, I came across this funny (almost satirical) article on front-wed web development. As an aspiring web dev, I have already experienced the major pain points of the ever-changing web. Technology progresses so quickly, you almost have to write code for the future. Good thing there are frameworks and dependencies, and compilers to assist you on the way. But the following really hit me hard. The feels are so real.
People actually use this thing. Can a library actually do shit out of the box anymore? I just want to install something and use it, not decide all the little plugins I want to use. New developer comes onto your team:
Oh hey, we use PostCSS. Look at the gulp/grunt/broccoli/brunch file and see what plugins I’ve used. When you do that, then look up what each plugin does. After you have wasted the entire day on that, then start writing some css, or PostCSS, whatever the fuck it actually is. I really just wanted SASS but decided to use these 185 plugins instead and you know, because it’s written in Javascript
Source: The Sad State of Web Development [Medium]
PostCSS or CSS preprocessors, in my opinion, almost complicates the entire styling process. But you know, because you are writing code for the future and because you happen to be entering an industry with a bunch of highly intelligent, it's best to be able to learn new concepts on the fly like that even though there are times it really doesn't necessarily yield the greatest benefits(!)
Anyhow, next week I am really going to dedicate a few good hours each day to get my job application rolling. I need to get my iCal up and functioning again, and of course track my job progress on the Trello board so people know I'm not slacking even though there was not a minute when I allowed myself to slip even though this past week has been a difficult week.