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Since I Been Gone

Since I been gone / I can breathe for the first time / So I'm trekking on, yeah, yeah / Thanks to you, GROW Externships -Kelly Clarkson, paraphrasing     Hello Loyal Readers. Happy New Year(!). What have I missed? Seriously, as far as I can tell it was some pretty uneventful days around the homefront. But, I can hear you all asking: where have you been, Max? Well, I was out of town. Actually, I was out of country - and in Japan!   Actually, what a place to spend December 7th...       So, how did I get there? Although I did ironically visit Matsue - the entire City of which, from the mayor on down, is encouraging learning and building with Ruby - I was unfortunately not brought to Japan for programming reasons. Which is to say - I was, very fortunately, brought to Japan, by a company for other reasons. Specifically: my agricultural skills.     For those who don't know me, a little background may be of benefit: at one time I was a farmer. I had my own back-forty , flock of chic
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Tales From the Other Side: e.stopPropagation();

 Hello Readers,      Greetings from a chilly November day in New York. The kind of day that forces you to forget that Fall is after Summer, and to remember that Fall is before Winter. The kind of day that makes one glad they spent several years in Vermont and now have several tricks up their sleeve. Namely: warm socks and vigorous walking . But I digress.     The first 'tale from the other side' that I wanted to share is actually the one I was most excited about (in real time!) when I learned about it. Spoiler alert from the title: it's the event.stopPropagation() javascript method. So...what the heck is it?     Well, here's a few things about it: It's a native Javascript method, so there's no extra libraries, packages, components, syntaxes, etc to import. It's in the same 'family' as event.preventDefault() , so those familiar with other common event handlers may already have a sense of where it can be called. Think about all the ways you could wa
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Introducing: Tales from the Other Side

      Hello to my loyal fans. I hope you all have been having an excellent autumn/summer/spring/2022 since you last stopped by, hoping to find what was instead a mysteriously (and no doubt, frustratingly) absent fresh article from me. Apologies for keeping you waiting. But here it is!     Still, I hear you. "What", you might be asking, "could be so important that it would be worth pausing on committing to record these written anecdotes that so many of us have come to enjoy?". Well, I'll tell you what - I got a job! I got a job! I got a job!     Well, sort of. I got an internship. For several months this summer-through-fall I worked as a member of the Frontend Web Team at the Meal Kit delivery company Blue Apron . I was pretty excited for the opportunity. Not only would it be my first job in tech, but the food industry in general is something I've been an enthusiastic part of for most of my professional life. Not only was I excited to retain some semblance of
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Saying it "Out Loud"

    If, for no one else, this post may wind up mostly for me. In that, I'm not trying to use it to communicate new information to you; I'm trying to keep track for myself, as a reference, a set of steps I've been instructed to take by another blog post . But, if it's not for other folks to read, why publish it at all? Well, the honest answer is: I also hope it can positively show my workflow, etc, in case someone else is looking to inspect my skills. Because, you see, it was a potential employer who sent me down this rabbit hole. Time to put my thinking cap on.     I should take a step back. In general, since my time in FlatIron School's Software Engineering Course, I have been really eager to keep my "backend" skills sharp, and been searching equally for "Frontend","Full Stack" and "Backend" entry level positions. Then, a company with a backend position got back to me :o     But, their Technical Interview is not at all what I
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from Scratch!

    Hello, my loyal fans. Good news from my world - tomorrow I'm starting not just a new job, but a new (to me)  kind of job: I'm going to be a tutor! In this case, specifically, I'm going to be a Coding Tutor. And, even more specifically, I'm going to tutor Elementary School kids.     But (and this is the twist): I'm not going to be tutoring them in Javascript, HTML, CSS or the other languages I learned at the FlatIron School. I'm going to teach them a language specifically meant as an introduction to the possibilities of code; a language that works on a much more visual/click-and-drag basis, as a way of getting kids excited about the possibilities that coding can unlock. I'm talking about Scratch . Aww, lookit that cute cat     On first introduction, the language surprised me, or even made me skeptical, as something worth learning. Allegorically speaking, I have an abundance of fond memories playing on the software KidPix when I was a child, but in no way
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If It Ain't Broke...

     I write you now, on a blog that was created as a requirement for a class, as a Graduate of that class ( hooray! ). But, like all good things in life, this space as an idea for musings has taken on a life of its own, and so I feel compelled to share another thought from the tech world I had: when did Gmail become the standard for online email? Seriously - in the Career Services literature that's given to every student following said class, this office - in charge of helping students find work in the field of technology - has this ("hot") take:  Email Address(es) : Should be @gmail.com @me.com or @customdomain. Avoid AOL, Hotmail or Yahoo email accounts because employers may view users with those accounts as out-of-touch or not tech savvy.     Reading this, I felt the sting of injustice (actually, more like embarrassment). I use a Yahoo email account! In fact - I have since high school! And what's wrong with that? It works just fine! And as my Grandpappy used to s
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Don't Touch That Dial

    This article was inspired by a technical error I can't replicate through writing, nor refer to in official documentation (unless I missed something ). The overhead digital projector in one of the classrooms I attend, in between displaying its computer signal and a neutral, soothing blue screen displayed something curiously familiar: tv static. you may be familiar...     For a brief instant, the "snow" felt oddly comforting. It made me think of old movies in the basements of old houses. It reminded me that  Hunter Thompson liked to fall asleep to white noise  (white noise, side note, actually having some  therapeutic benefit? ). It made me wonder if my teacher needed to climb on the roof and adjust the antenna.      Then it hit me: what the heck? Technically speaking/as this  helpful reddit page  explains, tv static was originally the cause of an internal mechanism within the television: the amplifier, normally in charge of boosting whatever signal it received (from th
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