DEV Community: Dwayne Lacey

Bruce Lee Tribute Page

Dwayne Lacey — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 13:58:02 +0000

This was my second portfolio project for freeCodeCamp's responsive web design certificate. This project was a really great learning experience in regards to my understanding of how to center a lot of different elements as well as how border-radius worked.

A key thing that I gained confidence in during this project was the box model as well as how to use the border-radius property. I really struggled at first with understanding how to properly center all of my elements and how to keep them proper sizes at different view-widths. Eventually I started to learn to set my actual widths using my base width and then the scaled up widths using a max-width measured in pixels. To fix my border-radius and get a circular rather than elliptical rounding, I learned that the border-radius property actually takes two arguments in order to specify how round it is.

In the future I would like to get better at planning out in advance how I'll organize my elements and I'd like to better understand how to get the most out of using flexbox. I also feel ready to begin learning React and Bootstrap to help with my styling.

For those interested, the source code can be found here https://github.com/Dwayne-Lacey/tribute-page and the live page is deployed here https://dwayne-lacey.github.io/tribute-page/

I'd love to hear feedback on how I could improve! Thanks for reading

Front-end Mentor QR Code

Dwayne Lacey — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 15:30:05 +0000

Recently I found out about a site called Front-end Mentor. I've started finally learning front-end technologies in depth lately but I found that while HTML feels relatively straightforward, CSS seems a lot more difficult to code in because of the planning. This is the first project I've tackled from their site and it tasked me with creating a simple QR code webpage. One of the major things I struggled with on this project was the use of the box model to properly organize my elements on screen.

.main-container {
    margin-left: auto;
    margin-right: auto;
    margin-top: 100px;
    border-radius: 5%;
    padding-bottom: 2.5em;
    width: 100%;
    max-width: 360px;
    background-color: hsl(0, 0%, 100%);
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
}

While I previously had tried to manually set my margins, it felt like no matter what I'd made my margins there was no change. Eventually I learned that I needed to keep my left and right margins set to auto.

I also couldn't seem to get the included font family from google to display, so I was forced to use the fallback font. I linked my font within my html like so:

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Outfit">

Then I also set the font family to Outfit in my css as shown:

h1 {
    font-family: 'Outfit', sans-serif;
    text-align: center;
    color: hsl(218, 44%, 22%);
    font-weight: 700;
    font-size: x-large;
    padding-left: 30px;
    padding-right: 30px;
    margin-top: 15px;
    margin-bottom: 0px;
}

p {
    font-family: 'Outfit', sans-serif;
    text-align: center;
    color: hsl(220, 15%, 55%);
    font-weight: 400;
    padding-top: 0px;
    padding-left: 40px;
    padding-right: 40px;

}

In the future I would like to get better at planning out in advance how I'll organize my elements and I'd like to better understand how to get the most out of using flexbox. I also think that I still could use some more work on understanding how to effectively use the box model.

Mock CPU/ISA in Python

Dwayne Lacey — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 19:16:06 +0000

This project was my final programming assignment within the computer science career path on Codecademy. Utilizing Python my goal was to mimic the way a CPU processes information. I chose to hone in on the memory management and instruction set architecture side of things and establish the processor and it's registers, as well as a cache and main memory. The program works by retrieving instructions from a text file to process and first fetches instructions from the cache (which will fetch them from the main memory) and then decoding them and performing them. My instruction set architecture primarily replicated the MIPS32 architecture with a couple modified instructions that I did not see within the dev documentation. If you'd like to check the project out, it can be found at github.com/Dwayne-Lacey.

Tic-Tac-Toe V2

Dwayne Lacey — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 03:55:46 +0000

This was a remake of one of my very first python projects. The original project was a tic-tac-toe game that ran within the terminal and was very randomized when it came to the computer choosing a place on the grid. As a challenge to myself and way of seeing how much I'd grown as a developer over the year, I decided to remake this same project from the ground up using Tkinter to build a GUI for the game and by writing my very first min-max algorithm to provide a very challenging experience. The result is an AI for the user to play against that is very good at winning Tic-Tac-Toe and difficult to beat. This project helped teach me a ton about the Tkinter library but also really tested my knowledge of data structures and algorithms. The project can be viewed on my GitHub at https://github.com/Dwayne-Lacey/Tic-Tac-Toe-V2

Video Game DB PostgreSQL

Dwayne Lacey — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 09:56:56 +0000

Recently I've been spending some time working with PostgreSQL. While I have had experience building databases within Microsoft Excel, it's been an eye opener to see how everyday sites I use at work and home communicate with an underlying database. As a start to understanding how to build a proper database schema and automate data input into my database, I built a sample database for GameCube/PS2/Xbox games as well as a python script to automate the entry of my dataset rather than writing several insert clauses. I'd love to hear any feedback about how I could improve my schema. The SQL file and python script can be found below for those interested;

https://github.com/Dwayne-Lacey/VideoGameDatabase

Billboard Artist Recommendation Software

Dwayne Lacey — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 04:03:58 +0000

This was my final project for the Data Structures and Algorithms course in the Codecademy Computer Science Career Path. This program utilizes a data set built around the top 50 artists on the billboard top 100. Utilizing a modified TreeNode class, a modified Binary Search, and a Quicksort algorithm, this program allows the user to input the beginning of a potential genre they'd like to find an artist for and then provides a list of possible genres back to search from until they've dialed in on a single genre. The program then provides a list of recommended artists based on their ranking alongside album and song info about the artist. For those interested, the required code can be found here on github; https://github.com/Dwayne-Lacey/Artist-Recommendation

Tic-Tac-Toe Terminal

Dwayne Lacey — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 03:22:06 +0000

This project was part of the Codecademy computer science program and was the final project for the first course within the program. Previously I had developed terminal games for Coin Flipping, Dice Guessing, and Battleship and those experiences helped in deciding the way the game would flow as well as what classes and objects I would need to build each piece of the game. For those interested, the code for the game can be found on my repository on GitHub at https://github.com/Dwayne-Lacey/Python-Projects