mdohr07: (happy)

Before I talk about the thing, a disclaimer: it's more like something I discovered or found out existed :-) And before I even get into that, I'll talk about some other things...

I think I am now fully recovered from whatever I had caught. My bicycle is back. It is finally repaired and I picked it up from the store last Saturday! Of course now that I have it back and feel good enough to go cycling again it became extra cold and is raining a lot every day -_- I hope there is one day during this week that is neither stormy nor rainy.
Yesterday I met my mom for a coffee. That was really nice. I proposed to go to a bakery with café near where my wife and I live and my mom really liked it there. We just talked until she was going to catch her train back around noon.

In other news: I succesfully graduated that further education course and got the results for my exam (the project with report). I got a beautiful 1,0 (that's an A) 🎉

Now I'll write about my finding:






Astro Logo


This is a web framework. I came across it through some YouTube video(s) that I was watching. One of the professional coders whose videos I watch on YouTube had a blog and I figured out it was done in Astro - which I haven't heard about at that point. I also watched his video on why he moved his blog to Astro and why I (as the viewer) shouldn't. But after some research I decided to ignore that and do it anyway.

There is more than one reason why I really wanted to try the Astro framework. Number one reason is that I really wanted to build a blog since a while. But I don't like any of the blogging platforms around - even though I did actually set one up on wordpress.com that I haven't touched in a while. There used to be nice blogging platforms but nowadays (👵) there's nothing that strikes my fancy. That is actually how I came to use Dreamwidth. I figured out it existed and I liked what I saw and set up my journal here. Also, I stay here, I wasn't planning to ditch my journal here in favor of something else. Not saying never but that's not the plan.
So, before I came here I tried to build my own blog with Jekyll. I am not very experienced with Git and the terminal, so I followed a tutorial or tutorials in plural more like it. This experience was pretty frustrating. There was always something not working. Even if it went just fine in the tutorials and I followed them step by step, there was always something off. I mean, doesn't help that those tutorials were always at least one year old but the documentation was also not helping me much. I have to admit all of that was confusing to me. I tried for several days until I eventually gave up and set up this journal on Dreamwidth.

The frustration and disappointment of not having been able to set up a blog via static site generator never really left though. Then lately I've been thinking about that wordpress blog that is just gathering dust. Originally I had set it up to post about my coding journey. So that I would have a record of my learning progress that I can always go back to and reference. Funny enough I let it gather dust and ignored it during my further education course. I did take a bunch of notes though and wrote down what I learned.
Then I started building my portfolio, which means that I am learning a lot of new things in the process right now which unfortunately I left undocumented. So the thought of documenting it in a blog kept coming back to my mind. But I didn't want to get frustrated again either. So I looked for options, watched some videos and eventually stumbled upon Astro. I mean, it is space themed, how could I not be interested?

Supposedly it had a new, modernized approach to all this and seemed easier to set up. At least that's what I've read and when I watched one or two videos of people actually installing it, it seemed easy indeed. Like, it just ran and the little "setup-wizard" in the terminal looked easy to understand and even pretty. Can you imagine? Somebody took the time to make it look good. There were basic questions for the user to answer in order to set it up to one's needs (like, "are you going to use typescript?"). Next day I watched yet another video and couldn't resist it: I had to try to install Astro immediately! I put on a video tutorial this time too, but actually I could've done without it. In case of doubt, the Astro docs are really well done, but I figured that out to be true later on. I was amazed! Seriously. I followed instructions and everything that was supposed to happen, happened. It just worked and without a hassle my base website was there. Wow, so cool!

After that, yet another tutorial. This one actually takes three hours. Meaning, the video itself is 3 hours long but I spend much more time with it because, you know, pausing, trying things, researching things, changing something up to my own needs etc. So I am not even done with that tutorial yet. I do need it though, because there are several things I am not familiar with and this way I get it set up properly and on top of that I am learning. JavaScript too, which is one of my main goals to learn. Along the way there were a few minor problems though which I figured how good the Astro docs are. Oh yeah, also a thing that I really like: after I just installed my site, I noticed the readme file that came with the installation process and it actually gives you some basic commands like how to run the local host and stuff. For the newbie me that's something to appreciate.

Right now I am making good progress and I am in the part of the tutorial that I was most interested in from the start: blogposts in markdown and integrating them. Yesterday I managed, the basic stuff is working :-) I am looking forward to continue.

There are two open questions for me though: 

  1. Which language do I blog in?
    For my own understanding I might be better off with my native language which is German. But in English I would reach more people in case my coding diary could help others.
  2. Hosting
    At the moment I have no web host. I put all my portfolio projects up on GitHub pages so far. But when I do my blog which I possibly want to run together with the actual portfolio which I hope future employers will see, I find it not very elegant to have that mashed together with my projects on GitHub as just another repo. But on the other hand, I'm very short on money and not sure if I should put it into web hosting...

Well, these are things I will have to figure out eventually and also discuss with my wife. For now I just keep building that blog :-) Regarding the host I found rainbow-web which is the most affordable option I came across so far if I need webspace and a new domain. I don't know how good it is though and how trustworthy.

The three hour Astro tutorial is useful and I recommend it, by the way :-)

mdohr07: (sleepy)
Oh, it's been a while. So.. bad news first: my road bike is in repair right now. It's getting a new back wheel as far as I know, not sure if anything else needs replacement. The freewheel seems to be broken but no idea how it happened. It's been gone since over a week now. I knew it could take a bit longer because the store has to order the wheel and they may not have the exact same one. I do want new wheels actually, but not the same ones of course. I'd like lighter ones and maybe a little more profile (thinking 35 or max 50). But right now I can't afford that and I still have warranty so, not gonna happen now. I'm thinking to call the shop today just to ask how it's going. I hope I'm not annoying, I just want my bike back soon 🥺

The good news are that I finished all the online tests for my further education course as well as the project and the project report and everything is turned in. Officially the course is still ongoing for a month or so and I'm using that time to build a portfolio right now. And by building it I mean that I have to put together some websites or something. And then I can build the actual portfolio to present them in. The first addition to that portfolio is of course the project (mdohr07.github.io/galaxygroove) that I made during the course. I hope I can still do some adjustments first. Which would mainly be that video background, that has priority to me. It is supposed to be in-game-material. Which means I need a game first, at least the prototype. I'm putting those projects online with Github Pages, but not sure yet if I want to do the same with my actual portfolio. Maybe it'd make sense?

Currently I am working on the second website project - just as a portfolio piece. It's a website for an imaginary bike café. It's looking pretty good already, only the JavaScript stuffies are missing. Which is "effects" for the menu and an image carousel. Oh right, the newsletter form field is missing, but that shouldn't be a problem. But in JavaScript I am still very inexperienced, which is why I'm gonna put it into every single one of my projects if possible. That stuff is gonna keep me busy for sure. And then tomorrow I have a one hour career coaching. We'll see how that goes.

mdohr07: (Default)
Running on low energy today, but I grinded all day on my website project. My eyes must be squares by now, they burn and my butt hurts (ロ👄ロ)
Overall I think I made good process and learned new things. Some things I thought were gonna be hard were surprisingly easy but same for the other way around: some things I thought couldn't be that hard turned out to be a pain in the butt.
It is a mystery to me why just whyyyy!?!?!?!! ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ) this damn graphic won't show up at all. It's not the usual "in the wrong place" kinda problem, but instead it's just not there. This was by the end of the day though where I already had become impatient and grumpy and then I quit before (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

Hm...well, now I don't really have stuff to show, it's not online yet. Maybe I should take tomorrow off, but we'll see.

Also this other thing? The problem I just can't seem to solve is an error message that the Sass compiler keeps showing me. Like, I have several .scss files, one being variables which mostly contains colour variables and somehow the compiler seems to have problems with it. It keeps marking colours like $white as errors or problems. The problem apparently being the source or linking, but no matter how often and deep I look, I see no problem there. Plus: the colours are in fact working. So I don't know what's up with that. I tried two different compilers to see if the problem persists, but I couldn't really get the hang of them and it seemed to be the same either way. So, back to the first one.
Also a colour-change on hover wouldn't work. That one I fixed by going into the compiled css file and did the change there manually, because somehow it hadn't picked it up. I also have to keep "watch" and "unwatch" to generate those files. That's also an annoyance. So...if anyone who reads this knows a good and up-to-date Sass compiler for VS code, please let me know!!

 


 


mdohr07: (Default)

In the past years I've been struggling so much to find "my voice" as an artist. Like saying in the previous posts, how I pretty much don't recognize myself in my art. I mean I know I did it, it just doesn't feel like "me" a lot of times. But now!! Finally an experiment of mine worked! I do like it. Hooray!!! ٩(。•́‿•̀。)۶

So I made a pixiv account where there is exactly just that one picture now (¯▿¯)
I wanted to show the image here but apparently it is impossible and I don't see an embed-code on pixiv anywhere either. So the link will have to do I guess (-_-)' Here goes: my first artwork on pixiv.
Now I only gotta manage to do this again... hah...hah... ▓▒░(°◡°)░▒▓

I tried to pay attention to my process but so far I haven't been able to reproduce something alike. What's up with that?! (>_<)

Either way after that I didn't have more time to spare on... hobbies I guess.

 

*.....*.....*.....*.....*.....*.....*.....*.....*.....*....

 

I had to study. Or actually right now I am working on the project for my web dev course. I started this month and planning to do it till the end of the month and see how far I can get. I want to get as far as possible with it because I still have two modules ahead of me. I just left them for later because I don't consider them crucial or even necessary for the project. The project has to go well because I need it to pass the course and it's graded. That makes it priority.

It took some preparation but now I started building the website prototype. I think I might have said that before but I hope I can also make a prototype of the game so I try not to spend too much time on each task. Even the pixel art part I cut as short as I could bring myself to, because I could have kept going on with it for a whiiiiile.

I made eight of these and then another eight "customized". I put that in quotes because as of now this is purely theoretical and just graphics to represent the function of customization.
I am pretty happy with my cute little characters, hehe.
 

mdohr07: (blank)
Lately - especially since I am enrolled in the web development course - I am thinking about my own thinking type or that I would like to be more of a thinking type. I mean, I do think, but sometimes I think that I would like to be more capable of logical thinking. And I am thinking about which ways of thinking would be more beneficial to me - for example when learning about code and concepts. I feel like with some conceptual things I have no problems while with others I struggle a lot, must be about familiarity with those topics. When it comes to coding, the syntax part is my preference while reading about - let's say algorithms and data structures - are rather dull and hard to understand. Even though I do find it interesting! What helps me a lot is to do something myself. Or if at the very least I get to see an actual example so that I know how to visualise something.

Within the Myers Briggs' 16 personalities I am an INFJ-A.
I'm just gonna list the strenghts of the personality type that I am versus the one I could use more of (imo) below.

INFJ
Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging

INTJ
Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging

  • creative
  • insightful
  • principled
  • passionate
  • altruistic
  • empathic
  • rational
  • informed
  • independent
  • determined
  • curious
  • original
While I do like my personality type, I would like to have a "T" somewhere in there, more like the INTJ. I don't see myself replacing the "I", haha... without the negative aspects ideally, though! I already have a few of those posititive INTJ traits. Well, overall I also don't feel very intelligent in general. Which is to a degree possible to change, but it'll take time. All those books I didn't read in my life!
I do want to aim to be a more efficient thinker though, I do want to be able to think more logically. I might never be good at math, but one doesn't rule out the other necessarily.
Either way, I took a thinking style test today (I knew about the INFJ, I didn't take that test today) to try and figure out what my current thinking style is. I don't know how satisfied I am with the test that I took, I did like that the questions were more detailled though and had these little thinking tasks rather than just checking of something between "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree". I am an... 🥁

Executive
"They consider their own ideas as carefully as they consider ideas that others put before them, and they're adept at organizing both types of thought into clear plans of action for the future. However, they often prefer to leave the nitty-gritty components of these plans to others."
Supposedly that means I am...

  • reflective
  • subjective
  • prepared
  • skeptical
Scores
  1. Future-based reasoning: 81.25%
  2. Evidence evaluation: 68.75%
  3. Quantitative reasoning: 56.25%
  4. Cognitive awareness: 50%
     

"This quiz also assessed your abilities across 7 specific reasoning skills. You were found to be especially strong at 0 of them, in the average range at 7 of them, and on the weaker side in 0 of them." ...ok 🥺

There was also this other thinking type test that I took, which differenciates between five types of thinking: concrete (The Doer), analytical or abstract thinking (The Analyst), logical thinking (The Orator), imaginative (The Inventor) and creative (The Original Thinker). My results are:

88%Inventor: maginative thinking
A rich imagination and the ability to think in terms of images and express it in work
75%Doer: concrete thinking
Tendency to think in practical, actionable terms. Contributing to the world by bringing thoughts and ideas together and making them a reality
75%Original thinker: creative thinking
The ability to look at problems and situations from a different perspective and find unusual and often surprising solutions
63%Analyst: analytical, abstract thinking
The ability to process information in the form of codes and complex symbols — something you can’t see or touch
38%Orator: logical thinking
Thinking in terms of words and logic, the ability to form ideas and then deliver these ideas to others in a clear and logical format

And here I see exactly what my weak point is ;_; But the good thing about that is, that now I can look into it and try to improve just that! 


mdohr07: (Default)
Oh wow, another thing that I am learning from my Web Dev class - and which can be applied to (my) every day life is ANALYSIS PARALYSIS! I am in the part about agile software engineering. Which I have to pay extra attention to because my project plus report are supposed to be about it. But the analysis paralysis is something I actually did a lot when I was trying to do art. Wait a second... I still do it. But I try not to. Basically it's the feeling of being unable to make a decision due to overthinking a problem. Okay, gotta go back to the script...


mdohr07: (blank)
I am studying right now and this thing was just mentioned: THE CONE OF UNCERTAINTY!!! Haha, sometimes studiying is kind of funny... Is that something I can represent my life with, too? And this is my first post here, what a great impression I am making ٩(◕‿◕)۶

December 2023

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