After going 150+ days in the second round, I put this challenge to bed.

Until this year. On the first, I started the challenge over. I will adjust some of the rules as they’re rigid (to me). They’re better rules for those not taking classes and following tutorials. I am doing both. I won’t count classwork or homework as part of the challenge, but I will count any supplemental tutorials or mini-projects. In doing so, I hope to balance my days. If I’m learning NodeJS, then support that with a tutorial, but also keep the UI and frontend fresh with a small snippet, bit of research, or a little project.

Don’t we all need to keep our backend and frontend fresh?

My first few days have been dedicated to finishing Wes Bos’s Learn Node tutorial. This makes my fourth completed WB tute: JavaScript30, What The Flexbox, React for Beginners, and Learn Node. I am always working on ES6 for everyone. I start that one over all of the time to get the practice in. When he releases his CSS grid tutorial, I’ll do that one, too.

Learn Node is a large project that jumps into Node at the late beginning stages. No play in the terminal. Just starting off index and Express, requiring, exporting … He’s taken care of the project decision (a Yelp-like app) and the styling. While at first I felt overwhelmed, by the end, I felt this was a great way to see what it is like to come into a project other people have started.

Now I’m ready to do another that is more ground up. Hello, Andrew “Fantastic” Mead. Honestly, he says “fantastic” all of the time. I like to pretend he has to force himself to say “fantastic” or else he’ll end up saying “fucking awesome”. He’s also like a hot Pee Wee Herman.

Two different styles. I like them both.

But all of this Node is leaving my fronted out to get stale. Ha ha, Code Matey! Not for long. Every workday I have to look at horrible Secretary of State websites. They’re just awful. And you know what has happened. Some manager has dumped the web and online content management to someone who was good with email. Poor sod is already overworked and now has to build and maintain the website.

I do not want to be the person who laughs at ugly sites. They are the same people who love correcting other people’s grammar. Thou shalt not be a dick. Ever. Or we shall try not to, and we shall scold ourselves when we get high and mighty.

Instead of mocking the websites, why not use them as a way to learn and practice the CSS grid system and keep up with Flexbox? (Screw you, Bootstrap. You bore me and junk up my HTML!) The content of those sites is pretty boring. Or at least the section I have to visit. I’d have to keep it ipsummy loremmy. All I care about are the colours, layout, and responsiveness. We’ll see. It’s an idea.

As is Dressy Bessy or Codie Jodie! The doll, which I never had, seemed to have all the fun things: snaps, a button, zipper, laces. She was a shocking mess for fashion, but her purpose was to teach kids to zip, tie, snap, fasten, and whatever else you can do with clothing. Taking notes about the states’ SoS sites, I got to thinking about just the states in general. 50 states. About 50 weeks in a year with two for fluff time. Why not a state a week that had facts about the state, some decoration, enough boxes and divs to fill a page, buttons that did things, etc? Wouldn’t be pretty, but if the only goal is to practice frontend play, why not? Codie Jodie. She’s got buttons, a responsive grid, some css animations, jQuery plug ins, …

Again. We’ll see. I will need to have all things outside of the class and its homework be short and sweet. Not interested in losing more time.

Planning to plan. On it!