writing

Egads, woman. Stop.

~ ihatetoast ~ Leave a comment

I have not written a word (here) since January? I can say that I haven’t blogged since I was 49. No excuse. Not for a chatty Kathy like myself. I know that blogging my problems, processes, solutions has been helpful in the past, but I still won’t do it because I won’t stop coding. I need to remember that it’s okay—good, even—to stop coding.

Here is what happens when I do not stop coding:

  • I do not run.
  • I do not knit.
  • I do not put my Raspberry Pi together.
  • I do not go to movies or watch movies.
  • I do not read for fun.
  • I do not walk the dogs.

Basically, I become a boring cow. (No offense to cows with awesome personalities.) I’m full of do-nots instead of do-nuts. (Mmmm. Donuts.)

There really is no benefit to doing nothing but coding. We convince ourselves as newbies to code every day (cool, do that), but that doesn’t mean every hour of every day. It’s not good to deny ourselves our other passions. I can love JavaScript as I love reading, running, and rknitting. When I want to practice what I have learned with React, Vue, Node, etc., I’ll probably want to make something that supports another passion, but if I let those passions fizzle or think they cannot be nurtured alongside coding, I find myself doing nothing more than making another fkn to-do list.

Egads, woman. Stop. It’s not forever. Just stop coding to let yourself do some other things.

Things that happen when I do these so-called “other things”:

  • I think of solutions to the problems I encountered.
  • I come up with ideas for new projects.
  • I feel good about myself physically.
  • I have other things to talk about other than passing state down as props or mapping.
  • I attend Meetups.
  • I see movies.
  • I ride my motorcycle.
  • I start Couch-to-5k.
  • I start 750 Words.
  • I rest one part of my brain.
  • I exercise other parts of my brain.

I become more interesting. I return to being the person who, when asked “What do you do?”, returns with “What don’t I do?”

Today? I’ve prepared for teaching Python to a youngster, but I’m also starting my Couch-to-5K plan … again. A plan I keep quitting because I wouldn’t quit coding. Today I start with day 1 and will come home after that 30 minutes to work on my MERN HomeChecker app and a smaller React project. I can give up that time. Yes, I want to be a paid developer, but I do not want to become a boring blob.

 

750words day 12: Kid-friendly vs Parent-friendly

~ ihatetoast ~ Leave a comment

A topic I care about deeply. As before, what’s below is from my 750word entry. Because it’s my sit-and-blather entry, I do not return to edit or proofread. Soz.

Stats for this entry: http://750words.com/entries/stats/6815773

Kid-friendly vs Parent-friendly. There is a difference, and that difference can make or break a space for me.
I thought about that when I read this review of Soursop, a delicious to the 10th power food truck at the St. Elmo Brewing Company in Austin: Zagat review of Soursop, Capital of Nomnomnom. The review is accurate and flattering. I do not disagree with anything; however, it is what prompted me for this entry for 750words. They mention “kid-friendly”, and I disagree. That area is “parent-friendly”. That’s better. Chuck-E-Cheese is kid-friendly. It’s also parent-hell. The difference for me is who is at the center and who should be. Chuck-E-Cheese is for children and should, therefore, be kid-friendly and focused. I would not trust any adult, parent or childless, who loves to hang out at Chuck-E-Cheese. Dodgy as all get out. And, as you can imagine, those places are chaos, and not the good kind. Not the fun chaos of a concert, festival, or the last day of school. More like the chaos of beach-goers getting out as a shark takes a kid on a raft, Black Friday at Walmart, or the first day of school.
Think about the difference between parent-friendly and kid-friendly. I think we treat it like “dog-friendly”, but even then dog-friendly places never end up in chaos. Well, mostly. A dog-friendly restaurant allows people to bring their dogs and meet with friends and have adult(ish) conversations. The dogs do not run feral. They’re not unleashed chasing each other and making it hard for servers to deliver their food or other eaters to enjoy their meals. Owners take time out to walk the dogs out to do their bidness and return. No shitting at the table, putting it in a bag, and leaving it for others do deal with because “that’s their job”. No. It isn’t. It is no one’s job to take care of your shit. Literally, shit that belongs to you: your dog’s or your child’s. Rolling up the diaper and having it tightly taped is not making it nicer for the waitstaff to pick it up. There is only one place to change a diaper, and that is the restroom. Doesn’t matter how cute your kid is, faeces is faeces and it doesn’t happen outside of a restaurant.
For me, parent-friendly is more like dog-friendly. Parents can bring their children. It’s still an adult-centered place, but there are some ways for children to be amused without interfering. This maybe the choice of seats (picnic tables are awesome), the decor isn’t such that messes are disastrous, that there’s more open space OUTSIDE to run about, and that people are happy to have you and your child there. With that, though, comes the responsibility of the parent to make sure the child or children aren’t getting underfoot. Learn about momentum, opposing forces, and gravity elsewhere. Parent-friendly is helpful and kind to the community, and in a place that sells alcohol, it’s important to remember who is the focus. Having a child should not lock a couple or an individual away until there are playdates or affordable and trust-worthy teens to take care of the child. It is also important that children learn the difference between a child-centered place and an adult-centered place where it’s an honor to be included.
I have nothing against kid-friendly but when it is the only term used to mean “the entire family can come”, it’s lumping places like St Elmo Brewery and Soursop with Chuck-E-Cheese. The are not the same. Ever. And if you love St Elmo and Soursop, then you wouldn’t want to chase customers away by treating them like Chuck-E-Cheese. And you wouldn’t go to Chuck-E-Cheese and complain about the noise. Children should be exposed to adult locales, but they are for adults. They’re also for parents wanting to leave their kids with a sitter or take advantage of a week of over-night camp. It’s no reward for them if another person’s child keeps banging into them. I said “keeps”. We all bump occasionally, but if a child keeps knocking into others, it’s unpleasant.
We were all children once. We (I hope) have become decent adults. One way of becoming an adult aware of other people’s space is experiencing being a child in an adult-centered venue and knowing or learning how to act and remembering that it’s not always about you.
I do not expect people to change their way of reviewing, but for me, I’ll continue to differentiate parent-friendly and child-friendly.

750Words d3: Ideas (picture books)

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Whoo hoo! I’m three for three in the goal of forever! I’ll take it. I won’t publish them all. The purpose of 750Words.com is to just write. It is not to write to you. Sometimes I’m too whiny, sad, or mad. Enough yuck out there without my adding to it.

This topic came to me as I work through a VueJS tutorial by Maximilian Schwarzmüller. I like to have a plan build as I learn. I find it especially helpful as I’m getting smaller chunks in with an instructor like Big Max. Because his tutorial is organised into small chunks, I have little breathers that allow me to think to myself, “How would I use this?”. I could say that after an hour, but then the “this” would be more about a larger concept instead of smaller tools. It’s harder for me to think “How will I use Vue” or “What will I build with Node” than to ask myself how I could use changing the style dynamically with Vue and a method.

I have more time now to think, plan, and write. Not much more time, though, so let me just publish this and move on to my next lesson. (today’s stats)

When I taught math to 4th graders, I loved reading aloud from picture books. People can blather on about chapter books as though a child must graduate from picture books to chapter books completely. Books are no classrooms; however, you learn plenty from them. I believe that a good picture book offers so much more to the reader than what a chapter book can. Mind you, I love fiction and wish I had unlimited funds so that I could sit home and read and not apply for jobs. I am not here to compare the two as though one is better. There’s enough of that bullshit between childless-by-choice and parents, stay-at-home moms and “working” moms (“”s of sarcasm as we know that SaHMs work plenty).
Although I was a math teacher, I read to the children plenty. One group could handle “Flatlands” even. Expurgated. I’m not a fool. The kids were 9 and 10. There were some things they weren’t going to hear for the first time in their math class! I also read “Where the Red Fern Grows”—not once without snotty tears. But what I absolutely loved the most was finding a beautiful picture book. I loved a good story and the complementary pictures. Read, show, read and show. A good story does not have to be a long one. For me, length is how it stays with me.
Mostly the stories I read were what you might think about when you think of a picture book: an adventure, a lesson learned, a special someone, cute animals, etc. That’s what I thought of when I started teaching, but we had excellent librarians when I taught. They pointed me in the direction of picture books that explained math concepts: multiplication, exponents, geometry, etc. How awesome was that? I still refer to those books when I tell people that math and art are not separated. Proportion? Ratio? Geometry? Symmetry? Have you not heard of daVinci, Michaelangelo, Mondrian?
When I stopped teaching, I remember wanting to write children’s books to make math less frightening or to supplement a math concept. Wanting to write is much easier than deciding to write. Deciding to write is different from having the story and concept down.
It goes without saying that I have not written a book, but in the years since leaving the classroom one never leaves teaching), I have discovered my love of coding, specifically HTML/CSS, JavaScript and its libraries. I am currently getting my VueJS and NodeJS on, and while I’m learning them, my mind keeps returning to writing a picture book. I can’t draw. I can. Everyone can. I am not an artist one pays to draw. How is that? Clearer? Especially as I work through VueJS, I think about making a picture book with my words and my SVG illustrations.
Until I get skilled enough, I need a place to store ideas. I’ll start with a few here.
ABC BOOKS
I love ABC books. Edward Gorey is wonderful and a reminder that picture books and ABC books do not have to be cutesy. Why not one for math or narrow it down to geometry? If geometry, less about ABCs and more about just terms? I’m teaching coding to children (middle schoolers). What about the ABCs of dev. Or keep it to language or basics? What about a build-your-own ABC book? Let the student choose the theme, letter (no need to build ABCs in order), and supply their own images? The program could scale the images to the appropriate size. The child just needs to make the SVG on her own. I don’t know. Work with me here! What made me think of that one is that so many city- or town-specific books aren’t about the town the child hails from. Why not have Clare from Pooperville build an ABC book of her town? Andrew from Fartzburg might build the ABCs about what the people in his village do. Why not? ABCs of good deeds? Seriously, ABC books are unlimited as all they have to be is in alphabetical order. How is that for a scope?
I’m too new of a dev to have that be a theme for me, so I’d have to return to that.
RESCUE ANIMALS
I have greyhounds and have fostered them for years. I’m deeply concerned about their treatment by handlers and the industry. I know that some handlers and greyhound owners who race them truly do love their dogs, but the industry is not friendly. You, Mr Gentle Owner, may keep your hound long after she’s stopped winning and until a ripe age of 16, but we all know that is not the norm. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who do not know a lot about the greyhound and don’t think of them as an option for a pet. “They must need a lot of space.” “They must want to run all day.” “They’re so big, and I have an apartment.” All myths. Greyhounds and other sighthounds won’t be for everyone—same with any breed—but the more literature that is out there, the more people will read and consider. Maybe a book will help a greyhound find its forever home, and maybe it will keep the wrong person from adopting and surrendering. No. Do not adopt a greyhound for you to do your 10k runs with. Usain Bolt is not a marathoner, right?
MATH (of course)
I specifically think of 4th graders as they’re at that cusp of going from concrete-sequential to abstract. I used to have a car covered in bumper stickers. Covered! All over. Not just on the bumper. In the middle of the back was one that read “I hate bumper stickers!”. Students who thought that was hilarious were ready for fractions. Those who were stumped and confused? Well, perhaps this year wouldn’t be the year they got fractions. There are so many ways to show math in a picture book: ratio, fractions (but please leave the cliché pizzas out), division, multiplication, factorials, … Of course, addition and subtraction, but that’s getting to an age I’m not aiming at.
AWFUL TOPICS
Huh? What? How hard is it to parent and bring up awful topics? I’m thinking about pet death, a parent’s job loss, bullying, body changes. There are many topics here, but to just write and include images without researching the topic and how to address it to kids? This is heavy. I’d have to be careful. I should be careful with any topic, but obviously these have an edge to them.

I hope to add more when I think of them. I should also probably quit adding and start planning, but that is another post!

750Words d1: Fitbit, Dancing, and the benefit of boredom

~ ihatetoast ~ Leave a comment

I’m done with my Daily CSS Images challenge and have found that I have missed writing. Following a link from a Medium post, I came across 750words.com and wrote my first piece. They tell you not to edit, so I didn’t. One thing I learned is that I did this in under 30 minutes. I can afford 30 minutes. I had assumed daily writing challenges would take longer. I love math; I love to write. This is perfect for me because of stats: Pretty graphs and yummy pie charts

750words Day 1

I know that some people look at my wrist and see the Fitbit and roll their eyes. I don’t care too much about counting my steps; I walk my dogs nearly every day and run every other day. I also do not care about opinions of others for the most part. What my Fitbit does for me is to remind me to get up and out of my 90-degree angles. While I’m underemployed and looking for a job, I am at my laptop coding, learning more about code, applying, and regretting. At 10 before the hour, my Fitbit rattles me to inform me to dance. Yup. If I’ve not done enough, I get reminded. I shout to Alexa to play 80s pop, and then I dance. I get more steps in with 5 – 10 minutes of dancing than I do walking around the block, AND I get to do this in an air-conditioned house. Sorry, Mme Ozone.
Where are the places to dance for the length of a normal song? I don’t want anything extended or remixed. I want the living room I danced in when I was a kid before I could go out. Where are those places? I do not have the attention span for a long dance-remix. I also want to hear the lyrics. I don’t mind remixes found in dance places; however, for me, those are better in spin classes when I need the distraction for 10 minutes. What I want is to dance for 3 minutes one way and change it up for another. Remixes are just hell for me. I’M DONE WITH THIS BEAT!
It’s not fun to dance alone, but I’m not. I have the unappreciative and wary audience of pets. I figure they look at me like a toy that is too big to kill the squeak. They track me, though. I see it in their eyes. They are entertained. No. I’m not anthropomorphising. They watch. They wag. When I’m done, they come up for attention. It’s change; it’s movement; it’s always different.
The other side of this Fitbit exercise is a graph I have kept in my head. I have become curious as to what songs get more steps in per minute. These are my steps and my moods. Obviously, this is not scientific in any way, but it’s fun. I’d be curious to compare the songs against others but also against each other and see if there are large variations.
I have found another benefit to the dancing: it clears my Etch-a-Sketch head. I am often following a tutorial or trying to apply what I’ve learned from the tutorial to my own code or following a daily challenge. With so many rules to follow, I don’t get to clear my head to just let the mind wander. Since I often choose 80s pop, new wave, or alternative playlists, my mind goes back to being a teen or young adult. I think about anything and everything that is not JavaScript, VueJS, NodeJs. Once I shake the code out, my mind wanders to other things. I come up with the ideas I can bring to life with code. I am a firm believer that getting bored is important. Most of the things we enjoy, need, and use came up while someone was staring off and let her or his mind wander and ask “What if …”. What is the point of learning to code if I can’t come up with ideas to solve problems? Even if I’m far too green to bring my ideas to life, coming up with them is more important to me. Who cares how great the dev team is if there are no fresh ideas coming to them? Get bored. It’s ok. It’s just not ok to “solve” the problem of being bored by whining about it. Get bored. Write. Wonder. And save. Even if it’s not about to happen, get it down and make like the English Beat and save it for later.
Did I mention save it? My grandpa was Paul Cassidy, a ghost writer for Superman in the late 30s. He left Supe for a better paying job as a teacher. I know. Don’t laugh. He also read history for fun and illustrated scenes he read. Where are those? Deep in a landfill. When he moved into his retirement home, he threw it all away. His right—I give him that—but what a loss for his family and others.
So while others may see another middle-aged woman with a Fitbit to count steps she thinks will counter what she eats, I know this buzzer reminds me to get up, dance, and let my mind wander. On that note, Cyndi Lauper is reminding me that girls still just want to have fun.