Friday 23 January 2015

End of Week 5... It's flying by

Hi everyone,

I’m taking sometime out on a beautiful winter Friday afternoon at Makers to let you know what’s been happening.  

I hope you are well, January seems to be flying by, or maybe its just me, encapsulated in a shell where there does not seem to be enough time to do everything I want to do.  There is so much to learn, and yet, I wish I could freeze time and be able to read and learn all that I want… I wish there was a matrix type plug where knowledge can be uploaded into my brain… The way things are progressing in the tech industry, this may be possible in our lifetime.

Makers is not just about Coding

It is cold outside, but a lunchtime game of football followed by a codejam will warm you up. There is a five-a-side football pitch belonging to a community centre next door to Makers, which we can book and forget about the coding for an hour. This is great and long may it continue.

Last night, Dana, our Chief Joy Officer, put on a games night for us with alcohol and pizza. She looks after our wellbeing, organising yoga and meditation sessions throughout the day. She is great!

Codejam

Codejam is a fun and challenging 1hr every Friday, it started last week, and was co-created by our wonderful alumni helpers Denise and Nicci. We are put into teams of four, mixture of both cohorts, and we are set two Ruby kata’s which we have to solve in a TDD environment. We write the tests and write the code, under pressure from time and competing against the other teams.

I feel like my contribution in Codejam has been minimal thus far, I have been to both weeks. My confidence is low so I am more a spectator, but I will keep going and I will keep learning, and having fun. It’s a great idea.. So double hands up for Denise and Nicci!!! Whoop Whoop!!!

What we have been learning

This week, we’ have made a Thermostat using javascript and jquery which has buttons and changing colours corresponding to energy usage … It’s pretty cool. Now I just need to learn HTML and CSS to style my page. So that’s learning javascript, jquery, HTML and CSS, simultaneously.  My head hurts…

Last week we were making our own bookmark manager before being set our weekend challenge - create our own version of Twitter… We used Ruby, Sinatra, and capybara. I am struggling with this so I will have to go back and do it again.  Don’t worry, I am used to this J

Exercise

I have been increasing my morning gym visits, I have been 3 times this week. I exercise for 30mins in the morning before I get into Makers, luckily there is a gym on the way, which is really convenient. My goal is to make it five days in a row next week… We shall see… Oh… And to change my diet… I am not so sure about that… A good friend from my last job, Curly Steve, told me the reason he goes to the gym is so that he can eat what he likes… I have taken this as my reason!

So, I better get back to learning how to code… What shall I do… Javascript? HTML? CSS? And now node? What??? Come on…

I would advise anyone who is thinking about doing this course to get some familiarity on all of the above… It certainly helps and you will get a lot more from the course.

Oh, and Makers has now started an online course, so you can do what I am doing in the comfort of your own home…


Something to think about…. S’later…

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