Woke up very early today, ready to get in a productive day. Started the day by going over the design teardown video again, in order to refresh myself on design teardowns (as opposed to UX teardowns). I'll be posting daily again instead of those very long, multi-day posts, as holding myself accountable on a daily basis boosts my productivity.
As an aside, I bought a light alarm. It's neat, it wakes me up gradually over the course of half an hour, by turning on a light at a dim intensity, then raising that intensity up over the course of the half hour before I am supposed to wake up, and then an alarm sounds at the desired time, just in case. It has helped me a lot, because I close my blinds at night (to avoid light pollution from the street), so then in the morning, when the sun comes up, I don't really notice, and that's not good, because our bodies are made to rise with the sunrise.
The interesting part is that it actually works. So, for example, I usually wake up before the alarm even sounds, and I wake up feeling great, it eases me out of my sleep instead of jarring me out of it like a typical alarm does. This light alarm isn't really coding-related, per se, but in order to code, we've got to have our mind and body in tip-top shape, and this light alarm helps with that, so that's why i'm mentioning it. I highly recommend getting one, even though they can be a bit pricey, for example, mine was around $75.
That said, I don't really see the light alarm as a waste of money, I see it as an investment in myself, in the same vein as buying the ergonomic chair, the ergonomic and spacious desk, the laptop stand, the book stand for reading coding books, and the bright lamps, for having a nicely illuminated desktop, for example. All of these purchases have aided me greatly in working towards my goal of becoming a web developer. Before I bought the ergonomic chair, for example, I had a chair with no back support and a metal wal-mart chair which cut off the blood flow to my legs after 20 minutes or so, making me not want to sit down, but now, with this new chair which is perfect for tall people like me, I can actually sit for 8 or 10 hours (or more) straight if I need to without any discomfort. This means I can focus on coding instead of on physical discomfort.
So yeah, that's just a few thoughts on investing in yourself. Sometimes some of the things you get will not work out, and that's o.k., a couple of bucks will go to waste, but if you research the product enough and decide it could help you in achieving your goals, then you'll be right more often than not, and it'll pay off in increased productivity.
Today, Erik Trautman hosted an online presentation (via Google Hangout) in which he invited potential coding school applicants to ask any questions we may have about the program. I submitted a couple of questions in case Erik could use a few extra to fill out the presentation. To be honest, the only real question I have is:
"When can I start?"
Hahaha! Seriously though, I've got to keep up the momentum and get these modules knocked out. They're actually pretty fun to go through, and I'm learning a lot. Coding is cool.
Oh, the hangout started! There's a girl chatting with Eric, and I can see her in the video...I'm not sure if I am supposed to do video. I thought it would be like a chat, I haven't used Google Hangout before. Neat.
Ok, I figured out how to use it! Next time, I'll look for the save chat history feature, I didn't know that the chat would not be saved without it. Nonetheless, that was cool. I found out that Erik's a mechanical engineer, and he's been coding since college. That's pretty cool. Oh, and he was in finance before going into coding as a career, which is cool because I was in finance too, when I worked as a stock broker.
Erik mentioned that two of the students from the first class now work for The Odin Project/The Viking Code School. I think that's pretty neat. I wonder if they work remotely or if they work from an awesome San Francisco office. I'd consider moving to San Francisco...perhaps.
Erik mentioned the Pomodoro technique and rescue time when i asked him about time management tools, so I'll look into them.
I love this. Making the decision to code is making every day novel and exciting, as well as giving me an even happier outlook on the future than I already had to begin with.
Good stuff.
As an aside, I bought a light alarm. It's neat, it wakes me up gradually over the course of half an hour, by turning on a light at a dim intensity, then raising that intensity up over the course of the half hour before I am supposed to wake up, and then an alarm sounds at the desired time, just in case. It has helped me a lot, because I close my blinds at night (to avoid light pollution from the street), so then in the morning, when the sun comes up, I don't really notice, and that's not good, because our bodies are made to rise with the sunrise.
The interesting part is that it actually works. So, for example, I usually wake up before the alarm even sounds, and I wake up feeling great, it eases me out of my sleep instead of jarring me out of it like a typical alarm does. This light alarm isn't really coding-related, per se, but in order to code, we've got to have our mind and body in tip-top shape, and this light alarm helps with that, so that's why i'm mentioning it. I highly recommend getting one, even though they can be a bit pricey, for example, mine was around $75.
That said, I don't really see the light alarm as a waste of money, I see it as an investment in myself, in the same vein as buying the ergonomic chair, the ergonomic and spacious desk, the laptop stand, the book stand for reading coding books, and the bright lamps, for having a nicely illuminated desktop, for example. All of these purchases have aided me greatly in working towards my goal of becoming a web developer. Before I bought the ergonomic chair, for example, I had a chair with no back support and a metal wal-mart chair which cut off the blood flow to my legs after 20 minutes or so, making me not want to sit down, but now, with this new chair which is perfect for tall people like me, I can actually sit for 8 or 10 hours (or more) straight if I need to without any discomfort. This means I can focus on coding instead of on physical discomfort.
So yeah, that's just a few thoughts on investing in yourself. Sometimes some of the things you get will not work out, and that's o.k., a couple of bucks will go to waste, but if you research the product enough and decide it could help you in achieving your goals, then you'll be right more often than not, and it'll pay off in increased productivity.
Today, Erik Trautman hosted an online presentation (via Google Hangout) in which he invited potential coding school applicants to ask any questions we may have about the program. I submitted a couple of questions in case Erik could use a few extra to fill out the presentation. To be honest, the only real question I have is:
"When can I start?"
Hahaha! Seriously though, I've got to keep up the momentum and get these modules knocked out. They're actually pretty fun to go through, and I'm learning a lot. Coding is cool.
Oh, the hangout started! There's a girl chatting with Eric, and I can see her in the video...I'm not sure if I am supposed to do video. I thought it would be like a chat, I haven't used Google Hangout before. Neat.
Ok, I figured out how to use it! Next time, I'll look for the save chat history feature, I didn't know that the chat would not be saved without it. Nonetheless, that was cool. I found out that Erik's a mechanical engineer, and he's been coding since college. That's pretty cool. Oh, and he was in finance before going into coding as a career, which is cool because I was in finance too, when I worked as a stock broker.
Erik mentioned that two of the students from the first class now work for The Odin Project/The Viking Code School. I think that's pretty neat. I wonder if they work remotely or if they work from an awesome San Francisco office. I'd consider moving to San Francisco...perhaps.
Erik mentioned the Pomodoro technique and rescue time when i asked him about time management tools, so I'll look into them.
I love this. Making the decision to code is making every day novel and exciting, as well as giving me an even happier outlook on the future than I already had to begin with.
Good stuff.
SUMMARY OF CODING SKILLS
Total Treehouse Points: 5,385
Treehouse Points by Subject Matter (Miscellaneous not included):
HTML: 663
CSS: 1,599
Design: 1,193
Development Tools: 747
Javascript: 1,120
Treehouse Ranking (%): "You have more total points than 94% of all students."
Treehouse Badge(s) Earned Today:
Treehouse Courses Completed:
How to Make a Website
HTML
CSS Foundations
CSS Layout Techniques
Aesthetic Foundations
Design Foundations
Adobe Photoshop Foundations
Adobe Illustrator Foundations (66% complete, switched focus from web design to web dev)
Git Basics
Introduction to Programming
Javascript Basics
Codecademy (& other) Courses Completed:
HTML and CSS (Codecademy)
Design Foundations
Adobe Photoshop Foundations
Adobe Illustrator Foundations (66% complete, switched focus from web design to web dev)
Git Basics
Introduction to Programming
Javascript Basics
Codecademy (& other) Courses Completed:
HTML and CSS (Codecademy)
Books Read or in Progress:
Completed: "Head First HTML and CSS," by E. Robson & E. Freeman
In Progress: "Eloquent JavaScript," by Marijn Haverbeke (On pg 27)
In Progress: "Head First Javascript," by Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson (On pg 56)
In Progress: "A Smarter Way to Learn Javascript," by Mark Myers (on pg 72)
My Progress on The Odin Project:
1. Introduction to Web Development 100% Complete
2. Web Development 101 29% Complete
3. Ruby Programming 0% Complete
4. Ruby on Rails 0% Complete
5. HTML5 and CSS3 0% Complete
6. Javascript and JQuery 0% Complete
7. Getting Hired as a Web Developer 0% Complete
Hours Spent Coding Today: 3
Total Hours Coding: 473
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