November GUSH! List

Hey friends!

Its been almost a month!  Eep!  This is going to be more of a GUSH! list of amazingness, so here goes:

• If you still haven't checked out Codewars I don't know what you are doing in life. 
• Web Dev training is going awesome!!  I'm about 50% done with Treehouse's 'Ruby on Rails' track.  It includes 13 sections including  Responsive Web Design, jQuery, Ruby, and Rails to name a few.
• Buffer This fantastic social media manager has given me the opportunity to really come into my own as Imagine Me's community manager.
• How NOT to Suck Online - I printed out the PDF and its hanging, framed, on my desk.
• Web Development Tools!  Gosh, way to many to list here - I am like a little kid in a candy store with all the goodies I've found lately.  Here are a few:
• Pattern Lab - An awesome way to save time, space, and resources when building web sites!!
• Subtle Patterns - You all probably already knew about this gem, but it has been a tantalizing 'goodie' for me full of subtle patterns to tile to my little hearts content! 
• Brad Frost - A web design god in human form. (Twitter: @brad_frost)
• Responsive Design Resources - Awesome set of tools from said god (see above)

Its been a month full of learning amazing things and I couldn't be more excited!  

Making vs Taking the Time to Code

Hello friends!

I have to admit my fervor for coding has been sparked anew!  It may be the cold weather snap in Minnesota has pushed me indoors or perhaps the mental check on the difference between "making" and "taking" time.

Lately, I've been trying to "make" the time to code.  However, I am neither a Time Lord nor a deity and cannot make time.  Instead, I made the mental switch to dedicating myself to "taking" the time to code. Each and every day.  There are awesome tools that provide daily code challenges (see my last post where I gush all over Codewars) as well as multiples of sites dedicated to "meat & potatoes" learning.

Albeit a little expensive, I finally dove into all that is Treehouse.  I've flirted with the site for a while, but what really drove me to pay the fee (usually I pick free sites) was the combination of languages in each track.  In reality, each language has its strengths and weaknesses.  A wise developer knows how to use Javascript, HTML, and CSS in harmony (or uses AbsurdJS but more on that another time).  Treehouse really impressed me in that there isn't a single track in which you only learn a single language.  Its well worth it to check it out!

Finally, I have another GUSH! post.  DEVICE 6 from Simogo (the game studio that brought Year Walk to the world).  Where should I start!?!  Its an experience.  I absolutely love the puzzles. I love the interaction. I love the audio. I love that Anna gets a whole song.  I love the style that brings a fantastic feel to the game.  And despite what most reviews say - I love the length.  I played through the game in around 3 hours.  It was worth every penny of the $3.99 on the app store.  Expensive you say?  That's half the price of a micro brew and still less expensive than a Pumpkin Spice Latte - and it will last longer than either of those.  If ya decide to play it, please let me know what you thought!

There was never a good war...except CodeWars!

Hello friends!

Its been a crazy fall so far.  For those of you who don't know, I have been working with the indie game Imagine Me from KinifiGames and its launch for the Nintendo Wii U.  Paired with this launch, there will be a Mac, PC, and Linux version of the game.  I was originally part of the Kickstarter back in 2011 and it has been so much fun picking it up again.  If you are at all interested in finding out more, please visit the website or find us on Twitter.

As for the other projects, I'm elated to share with you my most recent passion - CodeWars.  Codewars is a compilation of code challenges for JavaScript, CoffeeScript, and Ruby.  You earn kyu (Japanese term used in modern martial arts and academic tests) by completing Kata (the detailed choreographed patterns of movements in martial arts).  The challenges are mainly community written - and pretty fantastic!  I absolutely love that I can use it daily to refresh myself on JavaScript and Ruby syntax. I definitely recommend the site.  Once you sign up, let me know what you think!! :D