Tonights blog comes a little later as we had our first Makers social tonight. It came in the form of an all cohort quiz. My general knowledge sucks so cant say I contributed much. Lol!
We are on a roll with the early mornings, this one I was at my desk by 8.30 trying to further understand some testing concepts. I have been using a great resource called Upcase by Thoughtbot. They call themselves a finishing school for junior devs! They have some great walk throughs of concepts I am trying to learn this week so have been milking their resources dry as much as I can!
Dream team this morning was spent discussing the upcoming social, how strong our general knowledge skills were — pretty poor by our reckoning — and reviewing the music choices we had shared with the group.
Yesterday I tried some of Pete’s music by a band called Autechre….well, yea! Everything I dislike in music was rolled into their album, not for me! Today I was going to attempt Karsten’s video game music.
As a child I spent all of my time on Gameboy with it on mute, I thought this would last the same 23 second’s Pete’s did, but Karsten was smart and found the most tropical video game music and 3 hours later it was still playing! It genuinely felt like I was on some kind of mission all day, which is not a bad feeling for music to envoke.
From there, was more self, directed study. I continued with the Upcase tutorials, while also attempting to have another go at some test code from yesterday. Finally, I had a little read through of the weekend challenge to see if there was anything I needed to prep — but it seemed like there were no new concepts, just maybe a new tool — sending SMS!
Lunch was spent buying cat food, really uneventful but I enjoyed my catch up while walking with Shanice, who is currently learning her boyfriends native language Lithuanian. We compared the merits of learning computer languages and foreign languages, our deduction both very hard!
This afternoon I was pairing with Hugh. Our paths haven’t really crossed at Makers yet so it was nice to meet someone new. He was just starting the step I was also working on.
Now I have found a rhythm of pairing with people, the pressure is definitely off to complete the challenges set and is definitely on solidifying my learning and making sure I understand the concepts we are working with. Because of this today’s session was 90% debate.
To be able to debate is to be able to understand a concept well enough to challenge what, why or how it should be implemented. Hugh and I had such an incredible discussion mostly because we were both impressing ourselves with the level of our own knowledge.
Finally we got to the social, split into teams, I was with Tom and Pete from the Dream Team, Hugh who I had just been pairing with and Hollie and Hamish who I haven’t spent much time with yet. Our team was called the Red Hot Quizzie Pepper’s and from the off we didn’t think we would do too well!
We didn’t come last but we were a way off first place. But I appreciated the chance to relax with some of my peers from the group and also have a couple of cheeky rums too! I also saw my mentor Alex in the mix as well as my coding bestie Margo (remember her) there too!
For tonight, I am going to try and get started on my weekend takeaway challenge, wish me luck!
Software and Soca
Today I am really grateful for a great week, so here is a newer song that will go down in history as legendary. Voice, cheers to life!
I’m off for another rum or two, if you would like to donate to the rum fund, you can support me here and buy me a rum (aka coffee) lol!
