Monthly Archives: March 2015

liveblogging

thoughts from today in responsive web design

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i’m in class today, so a lot of these helpful hints have to be attributed to my professor, Andrew Smyk.

today we’re talking about how to get your website noticed and up to responsive web design standards.  my professor purposefully broke his website and made his code terrible as a teaching tool. a pretty effective tool, at that. it’s like a scavenger hunt for bad code!

anyway, here are some dos and don’ts for all of your beautiful webpages:

  • DO: a favicon. let me repeat that. a favicon. apparently this will increase clickability in the browser by 50%. you know how when you have a bunch of tabs open you’re more likely to go back to the tabs with pretty pictures instead of a nondescript blank page icon? yeah. that.

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javascript

CoffeeScript Beginner Beginner’s Guide

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 Introduction

Hey there! You’ve found my intro to CoffeeScript page. You can learn CoffeeScript at the same time I do! I’m no expert, but I’ve learned a few things and thought it would be good to share. This is my beginner beginner’s guide.

CoffeeScript is a self-described “little language” that compiles to Javascript.  I’ve also seen it described as a Javascript pattern-handler, in that it takes common Javascript patterns and gives the developer easier and shorter programming alternatives to write the pattern. For example, and I will get into this is more detail later, CoffeeScript allows you to use classes in a similar way to Ruby or Python, while actually using prototypal syntax behind the scenes. This saves the developer a lot of writing, as we will see.

This tutorial will include written explanations and demo videos. They will be divided into sections based on themes in CoffeeScript. This was my first time uploading videos and I couldn’t figure out how to edit them without majorly decreasing quality, so unfortunately to strike a balance they’re a bit blurry. Any helpful hints would be appreciated!

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liveblogging

thoughts from a conference gone by

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on October 21st, 2014, I attended the WEST (Wearable Entertainment and Sports Toronto) Conference. it was my first ever conference, and basically is the reason I’m now an active follower of wearable news and tech (they got me with their promises of exciting biostats data, obviously). after attending a few more conferences, it is still my running favourite. I livejournaled the event, so I thought I would share. here it is! your new content (and by that I mean it’s from October):

9:21am.
So. First conference! I feel underdressed. Definitely need to add about 17 blazers to my wardrobe. Things I’ve learned so far:

1) I’ve never felt so official as when I received my personalized lanyard at registration. Welcome to the big leagues, kid.

Continue reading thoughts from a conference gone by →

general

the start.

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hello, future readers! in an attempt to set up a working and customized wordpress site (for practice, of course), I thought, why not just make a real blog out of it? so here we are.

I’m not sure how much this will be updated — I was an avid writer in high school but have since found it hard to write about my own opinions (having to cite every reasoning/sentence you ever write for lab reports over four years will do that to you, apparently. schience). maybe this will spark my writing interest, who knows.

I’m also a bit of a stickler for spelling and grammar so if you see any unintended typos please tell me — although ironically I’m not too bothered by capitalization, as you may have noticed. sometimes fluid rules are good for you, or whatever. right?

anyway, (and congrats if you’ve read this far), i hope you find something enlightening/fun/at least a tad interesting while reading. let the writing begin! (i think. it’s up to future me for that one.)