DEV Community: Kurtiss Frost

Fighting with motivation

Kurtiss Frost — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 05:16:51 +0000

I haven't posted in a while or really done anything tech related in a few....months? Weeks? Honestly, it's been so long that I have no idea how long it's been.

Here lately, I have been struggling with motivation issues. I haven't felt like doing anything productive. I haven't been studying web development, or trying to get any certs or any of the many other things I have set out to learn about. Not even just tech related things. I haven't tinkered with my Linux coding environment, created any graphics, edited a video, or really anything creative.

Here lately, I have just been struggling with motivation to do anything. I work 40 hours a week and when I get home I wind up just goofing off or just going straight to bed.

Last year I wrote an article about how I wanted to increase my productivity in that article, I vaguely mention that I hadn't felt like marking things off of my to do list. This is a little more serious than that. Here recently, I haven't felt like doing anything related to tech.

I'm not 100% sure why either. Part of it could be my ADHD. Part of it could be that maybe I am just burnt out and need a break? There are a multitude of things that it could be. I'm just not really sure how I should tackle this. On the one hand, I could just bite the bullet and just do it, regardless of how I feel about it but, I feel like that would yield negative results in the long run.

I feel like taking a break could be good for me to recharge my batteries and help me get re-motivated when I finally pick up where I left off in my studies. My only thing is, sometimes when I take breaks from doing things like that, sometimes it takes me a long time to get back on topic, if I ever do, and I don't want that to happen with web development.

How do you handle lack of motivation?

Like the title says, how do you handle it when you find yourself lacking motivation to do something? Do you take a break? Power through?

Do you have any tips or advice? Struggling with your own lack of motivation? I wanted to open this topic for discussion and pick the community's brain a little and see what your thoughts on this were.

Distro hopping. Potential v2 setup?

Kurtiss Frost — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 03:25:21 +0000

Note: Much like all my articles, this one has been sitting in my drafts for about a month. I'm not sure why but, here lately, I have been starting articles and not publishing them. I just wind up leaving them in my drafts for a while and then I finally finish them.

Recently, I had mention that I had gotten my coding environment set up. In that article, I mention that I decided to go with Linux Mint (Cinnamon) for the time being. Well, I may not be using it for as long as I thought.

While I was browsing YouTube, a recommended video caught my eye. In the video, the user talks about why KDE is just "better". Without knowing anything about KDE, I decided to give it a watch and I was kind impressed. In the video, KDE Plasma is showed off and I really liked what I saw. So much in fact that I decided to try it out on VMWare and VirtualBox. You would think running it on 2 different VM's would give me an idea about how the OS works right? Well, you would be correct and wrong at the same time. Let me explain.

While it is true that I can try out all of the features and such in a virtual machine, for some reason this particular OS doesn't seem to want to play well with VMWare or VirtualBox. Performance is "ok" in windowed mode. But as soon as I swap it over to full screen, performance takes a HUGE hit. I'm not exactly sure why either.

My computer has 32GB of DDR4 RAM and an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 3700x. I've got both instances of the VM cranked up to 6 cores and 16GB of RAM and I still have these weird minor issues. So I decided "Why not just make a physical install on an old 1TB drive?" and that's exactly what I did.

I went of to the KDE Neon and grabbed the ISO and set off on my journey. Here is my journey.

Getting the ISO downloaded and flashed to a thumb drive was the easy part. I decided I would try to see if I could get this OS to run on a 1tb Seagate external drive. To my surprise, I couldn't even get to install. I tried 2 different KDE distros (KDE Neon and Garuda Dr460nized) and I got the same error message both times:

"The bootloader could not be installed. The installation command
grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck --force /dev/nvmen1
returned error code 1."

The install got hung up around 72% before it threw that error. So I rebooted back into Windows, re-formatted the drive and decided that instead of devoting the whole TB to 1 distro, I would try to split it into 2 different partitions and try to get 2 distros on there. This also failed with the exact same error with the exact same 2 distros.

Something about the KDE distros just doesn't want to play nice with the drive. Maybe it's because it's an external media source? I'm not even convinced that that is even2 the problem but I was getting flustered because I had been working on it for around 4 hours at that point and I decided I needed to take a break and get some sleep (it was was 3am after all). So I went to bed and left it until this morning.

After a few days of trouble shooting, I decided that I would try a different method of install. They was I was trying to install it was through an application called Ventoy.

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. With Ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly.

I scrounged around in my desks junk tech drawer and found a flash drive I wasn't using and I created a bootable media source using Rufus. When I got into the bios and booted into the OS, everything worked like it was supposed to. The installation went through just fine but I ran into another problem. I have an X570 AORUS MASTER and it has built in wifi. For some reason, KDE Neon is not showing that I have any wifi sources at all. I can boot into the OS and it runs smooth but, I don't have wifi. I'll have to look into that problem next. Without wifi, I can't in good conscience, completely swap to this distro for my coding environment.

EDIT: I didn't use the distro for about a week or so and when I booted into it this weekend, the wifi problem had fixed itself. Now that I had a 100% full working distro, I updated everything, installed VS Code and Discord, setup git, and installed npm. On top of that, I also themed it. Unlike what I normally go with, this is a lot of muted colors. I decided to go with the gruvbox theme for everything. Here are a few screenshots. It's still a work in progress.

The desktop wallpaper.

The file manager and icons.

The terminal. The windows ascaii is temporary until I quit being lazy and add my own custom ascaii to the config file.

Even VS Code has the theme.

Overall Thoughts:

As it stands right now, having only used the distro for around 4 or 5 days, I LOVE it! KDE is so cool and has a lot of customization options. Konsole is ok. The weirdest thing that I had to get used to was using pkcon refresh and pkcon update. Other than that, I would give the distro ⭐⭐⭐⭐.

I look forward to using it more and trying to figure out the distro. KDE is pretty cool and I look forward to learning more about it.

My Coding Journey pt. 2: Nested divs and flexbox

Kurtiss Frost — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 05:17:01 +0000

Current Jam:

Nested divs. What can I really say about them other than they are kind of confusing at times. Honestly, nested code in general is just confusing to follow sometimes. But one thing I have noticed about HTML is that nested divs seem to be something that I, in my current limited knowledge, would say is a very important thing to learn. Most sites that I frequent every day use nested divs for their content. YouTube, Ebay, & Twitter to name a few.

Here is a sample of some nested divs from my StreamOS project:

 <div class="video-preview">
          <div class="thumbnail-row">
            <img class="thumbnail" src="assets/images/thumbnail_2.png">
            <div class="video-time">45:00</div>
          </div>
          <div class="video-info-grid">
            <div class="channel-picture">
              <img class="profile-picture" src="assets/images/channel-3.png">
            </div>
            <div class="video-info">
              <p class="video-title">
                Super Summer Mix Vol. 3
              </p>
              <p class="video-author">
                Chillhop_Guru
              </p>
              <p class="video-stats">
                19M views &#183; 4 years ago
              </p>
            </div>
          </div>
        </div>

This one isn't too bad but, I have seen them where they just keep going to the right for what feels like miles. If it wasn't for VS Code adding the lines to show what divs go together, I would be lost. This is a skill that I definitely want to get better at.

As I said, I feel like nested divs are a very important building block to learn and I am trying to do more beginner projects that use them in conjunction with my next topic: flexboxes.

One thing that goes hand in hand with nested divs is flexbox. Flexbox is another one of those concepts that I feel like is super important and that, at this moment, kind of gives me trouble. Combining flexbox with nested divs really lets you style your site in some creative ways. First let's look at the html for the segment:

<nav class="sidebar">
      <div class="sidebar-link">
        <img src="assets/images/home.svg">
        <div>Home</div>
      </div>
      <div class="sidebar-link">
        <img src="assets/images/explore.svg">
        <div>Explore</div>
      </div>
      <div class="sidebar-link">
        <img src="assets/images/subscriptions.svg">
        <div>Subscriptions</div>
      </div>
      <div class="sidebar-link">
        <img src="assets/images/originals.svg">
        <div>Originals</div>
      </div>
      <div class="sidebar-link">
        <img src="assets/images/youtube-music.svg">
        <div>YouTube Music</div>
      </div>
      <div class="sidebar-link">
        <img src="assets/images/library.svg">
        <div>Library</div>
      </div>
    </nav>

This section of code is for the side bar. It combines <nav> with <div> and then with some CSS magic, we have a sidebar.

.sidebar-link {
  height: 74px;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
  flex-direction: column;
  cursor: pointer;

There are some other elements like grid, relative and absolute that you can also throw in there to style it.

The reason why I want to learn this, other than it's important, is because I want to use it for my portfoloio/personal site. I have a rough layout idea in mind and the above elements and css will definitely come in handy for the "projects" page of my site. I have a few ideas I want to try but I am still learning about CSS right now in my Udemy course and I haven't quite gotten to the flexbox and grid sections of the course yet.

So far I have been having a blast learning CSS & HTML. I have learned a few things I didn't know and brushed up on some topics I already did. I'm going to keep whittling away at the course and try to apply the knowledge I'm gaining to small practice projects where I can get some experience. I have a few more tutorials lined up that I want to try out that use flexbox and grid but I want to try not to rely on just tutorials and try to apply the knowledge to my own projects both big and small. One thing that I can also do is watch specific tutorials on the topics I want to deep dive into. But again, I need to be careful as to not fall into tutorial hell. It's a fine balancing act but, I look forward to the journey.

I think in terms of "hardest part" out of the HTML/CSS sections, the nested divs and flexbox have been my problem child. I get the concept but, I find it hard to implement them sometimes. I'll definitely need to spend some time in this section of the course before moving on to the JavaScript section. Speaking of JavaScript....

Without knowing squat about JS at the moment, this is all speculation but, I imagine once I learn some JS, I'll be able to combine it with flexboxes and nested divs to make some pretty interesting things. So I'm really looking forward to that. I'm hoping that the few concepts I learned from python will be transferable to JS. I think that is the language I will need to sink the most time into studying.

But anyway, that's all for today. Thanks so much for reading and have a wonderful day/night!

My Coding Journey pt. 1: Finding the passion

Kurtiss Frost — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 04:30:28 +0000

Welcome to the first post of many of "My Journey Into Coding". This series will kind of serve as a dev journal as well as a documentation of the progress I am making as I try to learn what I can to one day get a job as a web developer. I want to start out by saying, I love web development. It's been a passion of mine since I was around 16 or 17. When I was in high school, our computer class let us make projects for a technology fair and my teacher convinced me to enter.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to enter. The year before, I had created a PowerPoint presentation. Somehow my teammate and I managed to get second place at Regional and State. (We got eliminated the second time). I knew I didn't want to do another PowerPoint so I went to my teacher and she suggested I give the website thing a shot. So I did.

I decided I wanted to do a fan page for a band I was really into at the time (and still love to this day) +44. I don't exactly remember what the editor we used was but, I knew I wanted to hard code everything and not do WYSIWYG. I worked on it everyday in class (because at that time, I didn't own a computer) and after hours of hard work, I finally got it done. All hard coded, no CSS (because at the time I didn't know what it was and I didn't have time to learn it), just straight HTML. I would up getting 2nd place at regionals and 3rd place at state. This really ignited my love of web development. (I have it burned to a CD somewhere in my house).

Fast forward 2 years and I wound up making a website for the anime club at my college. Sadly, that site is lost to the sands of time cause the hosting site I used disappeared without a trace.

On top of those 2 instances, I also got big into designing Myspace layouts. All those little things combined made me really want to take the plunge in web development. But, I wound up talking myself out of it because at the time, I wasn't sure if the demand for that would justify me making that my major so I wound up just specializing in general CS.

Now we're at the present. I'm a little wiser now and something has rekindled that initial spark for web development. I started doing research into what skills I would need to learn to hopefully one day be able to get a job as either a front-end or full stack developer. I knew I would need to know the "trifecta languages" (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) but, after that, I had no clue.

So what I decided to do was look into some free resources online and try to find something that would give me a good start that wouldn't be too hard to expand upon. I decided to go with:

freecodecamp: freecodecamp had a lot of interesting topics on it including "Responsive Web Design", "Front-End Development Libraries", "Databases" and "Coding Interview Prep". So, it had a lot of resources and they were free.
The Odin Project: This was one that my friend told me about. I haven't done anything on here yet but, it also offers a plethora of content. I was interested in the "Foundations" courses as well as the "Full Stack JavaScript" course. I also liked that they had a "Choose Your Own Path" kind of deal.
Lastly, during Black Friday, I noticed Udemy was running a sale and I picked up the The Complete 2023 Web Development Bootcamp which also had a TON of information. Topics range from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node, Express, MongoDB, SQL, and even Git/GitHub.

Currently, I am doing the freecodecamp Responsive web and the Udemy course. While I was looking for what to do, I decided I wanted to tackle a small project and I decided I would look at some tutorials and see what all I could create. Using a video, I was able to make [StreamOS](streamos.kurtissfrost.com] which is a YouTube clone that I tried to add my own flavor to.

So overall, I am really looking forward to continuing my journey into the world of web development. I am going to keep learning as much as I can and try to not only make projects that are in my lessons but, to also try and branch out and make projects with the knowledge I have in the moment. This way I can hopefully avoid "Tutorial Hell" and I can also get practice in actually creating a project from the ground up.

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you all have a wonderful day/night!

A beginner's guide to readme files

Kurtiss Frost — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 21:26:07 +0000

What exactly are readme files? I'm sure if you've ver been to GiHub or downloaded software before you've probably seen them. What a readme file is is a file that contains all relevant information about a piece of software. In some cases, it can serve as the software or applications documentation source.

One of my favorite parts about uploading projects to GitHub is working on the readme file that will go with the software. Today, I want to share with you what I have learned about writing readme files as well as a few resources you can use to help spruce up your readmes. I will have links to all relevant resources, articles, and repos.

Some of my favorite readmes that I have made are StreamOS,
Knights vs Goblins, and Random Pass Word Generator (Python). I like them for different reasons but, they all have one thing in common: They were a BLAST to work on.

Tip 1: Inserting an center image.

One thing I always like to do is make a banner or graphic for my repo to give it that visual pop! But, I always hate how the image is never centered. One thing you can do is use the following html code to center your image:

<p align="center">
   <img src="[YOUR_RAW_IMAGE_URL]" alt="[YOUR_ALT]"/>
</p>

This will also work for any badges or text that you would like to have centered.

Tip 2: Less is more

It may be tempting to put everything in the read me. How to install it, run it, set up the code, etc. But, long readme files are kind of a slog to get through. Try to keep only the most important information in the readme. If your application has a lot of documentation, you can

create a /docs folder in the root of your project, where you can keep additional markdown documentation that can be browsed directly from your code hosting platform (assuming GitHub).

Documentation 101: creating a good README for your software project by Erika Heidi

Tip 3: Consider creating a wiki:

This is not as tricky as it sounds. Turns out, every repo that you upload to GitHub comes equipped to have it's own wiki. According to GitHub:

You can host documentation for your repository in a wiki, so that others can use and contribute to your project. Every repository on GitHub.com comes equipped with a section for hosting documentation, called a wiki. You can use your repository's wiki to share long-form content about your project, such as how to use it, how you designed it, or its core principles.

Going back to tip 2, if your particular repo has a need for a lot of long-form documentation, then a wiki may be what you're looking for. To learn more about GitHub wikis you can go here

Tip 4: Consider adding more .md files as necessary:

A couple of other files you can add to your repo that you may need are the contribute.md and the code_of_conduct.md. Honestly, I have never added these because I have wyet to make a repo that really needed them. I link to an email for submitting contributions and reporting bugs but, I have never really added either of these documents to one of my repos. BUT, if your project needs them, I definitely recommend you go check out the linked articles and learn more.

I really don't have many more tips and tricks. Creating readmes isn't an exact science but, there are some rules and formatting guides that you can follow that will not only make your readmes stand out but will also make them functional. What I can do however is link you to some of my favorite resources that I have used to learn how to create better readmes.

How to write README files like a pro by Olaf Górski
GitHub README Templates
GitHub PROFILINATOR by rishavanand
GitHub Profile README Generator by rahuldkjain
shields.io
simple icons (AWESOME site. I use this one almost everytime I make a readme)
awesome-github-profile-readme by abhisheknaiidu (This is a really good repo to get inspiration for your profile README).
awesome-readme by matiassingers (Another good source to get inspiration for your README files).
creative-profile-readme by coderjojo (Even MORE README examples)!
GitHub Badge Generator by michaelcurrin (This is a site that I use every time I make a repo. I use this in conjunction with the simple icons site)

So that about covers it. If you have any sites that you use when creating your readmes, let me know. Thanks so much for reading and have a wonderful day/night!

AI Generated Python RPG combat system.

Kurtiss Frost — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 20:24:28 +0000

Edit 12/17/22:

The ai has been update and it FINALLY completed the second prompt. You can find it in the repo

So here recently, I have been messing around with the ChatGPT ai and I gotta say, it's been a lot of fun just messing around and asking it different prompts. You can find the code over on my GitHub page.

One thing I wanted to try out was asking it to write something in a coding language. I remember back to when I was working on Monster Killer and how at that time, I had no idea how I would go about writing a combat system because I didn't understand that much about Python. At this point in time, I still don't know much because I kind of put learning that on the back burner now so I could focus on learning JavaScript for front-end development.

So I decided to ask the ai the following prompt:

"use python. Create an RPG combat system where you are a knight that fights a Goblin."

This is what it gave me:

# define the Knight class
class Knight:
  def __init__(self, name, health, attack_power):
    self.name = name
    self.health = health
    self.attack_power = attack_power

  def attack(self, opponent):
    print(f"{self.name} attacks {opponent.name}!")
    opponent.health -= self.attack_power
    print(f"{opponent.name}'s health is now {opponent.health}.")

# define the Goblin class
class Goblin:
  def __init__(self, name, health, attack_power):
    self.name = name
    self.health = health
    self.attack_power = attack_power

  def attack(self, opponent):
    print(f"{self.name} attacks {opponent.name}!")
    opponent.health -= self.attack_power
    print(f"{opponent.name}'s health is now {opponent.health}.")

# create a Knight object
knight = Knight("Sir Arthur", 100, 10)

# create a Goblin object
goblin = Goblin("Goblin", 50, 5)

# have the Knight and Goblin fight until one of them dies
while True:
  knight.attack(goblin)
  if goblin.health <= 0:
    print(f"{goblin.name} has been defeated!")
    break
  goblin.attack(knight)
  if knight.health <= 0:
    print(f"{knight.name} has been defeated!")
    break

Now, whenever I run that, it literally just has the Knight auto attack the Goblin and the Goblin doesn't retaliate. So, while it did do what I asked it, it's not exactly what I was looking for. So I decided to go back and ask it again and restructure my prompt as follows:

use python and make an RPG combat system where you can fight a goblin. The user controls the knight. You have three options: Attack which deals damage. Defend which reduces damage taken by 25%. and Run which has a 50% chance to end the combat. The goblin can only attack or defend and picks at random.

I wanted to see how complex you could make the prompt and if the ai would be able to execute it. This is what it turned out:

Did not save this code. Sorry 🙁

It took it a minute on this one. I thought about it for a minute and then started spitting out code until it got to

knight_health -=

it appeared to get hung up here and it thought about it for a minute before continuing. I sat there for about a minute and decided I would start a stopwatch and see how long the ai would be stcuk. The final time was 21 minutes! It never managed to complete the prompt. So I decided to reset it and start over. Sadly, I didn't copy that code before the refresh.

For the third and final test, I ran the same prompt but this time, I started the timer as soon as I hit enter on the prompt so I could see how long it would take for the ai to generate my prompt. In the middle of it, I had to leave to run some errands I decided to just let it do it's thing while I was gone. I was gone for around When I came back, this is what it had done:

import random

class Character:
  def __init__(self, name, health, attackPower):
    self.name = name
    self.health = health
    self.attackPower = attackPower

  def attack(self, enemy):
    print(f"{self.name} attacks {enemy.name}!")
    enemy.health -= self.attackPower
    print(f"{enemy.name}'s health is now {enemy.health}.")

  def defend(self):
    print(f"{self.name} defends against the enemy attack.")
    self.health += self.health * 0.25
    print(f"{self.name}'s health is now {self.health}.")

  def run(self):
    if random.random() <= 0.5:
      print(f"{self.name} successfully flees from the enemy!")
      return True
    else:
      print(f"{self.name} fails to flee from the enemy!")
      return False

# Create the player character
knight = Character("Knight", 100, 20)

# Create the enemy
goblin = Character("Goblin", 50, 10)

# Start the combat loop
while knight.health > 0 and goblin.health > 0:
  # Display the current health of each character
  print(f"{knight.name}'s health: {knight.health}")
  print(f"{goblin.name}'s health: {goblin.health}")

  # Display the options to the player
  print("What would you like to do?")
  print("1. Attack")
  print("2. Defend")
  print("3. Run")

  # Get the player's input
  choice = int(input("> "))

  # Handle the player's choice
  if choice == 1:
    knight.attack(goblin)
  elif choice == 2:
    knight.defend()
  elif choice == 3:
    if knight.run():
      break

  # The goblin attacks or defends at random
  if random.random() <= 0.5:
    goblin.attack(knight)
  else:
    goblin.defend()

# Print a message when the combat

The prompt got hung up and didn't complete. I let it run for 2 and a half hours and it never managed to complete it.

I think I may have made the prompt a bit too complicated. One thing I have learned is that your prompts seem to have to be very direct but not overly complicated (or at least in my experiments). If I make the prompt too complicated, the ai gets hung up and doesn't complete the prompt. If I make it too simple, it seems to generate wonky code that either doesn't work or doesn't follow the original prompt.

Overall, I think the ChatGPT ai is cool and I want to keep messing around with it. It has some super cool functionality and it's pretty neat to mess around on. The downside is that when you are inputting your prompts, you almost have to be a wordsmith. Too many words seem to confuse it, and not enough seem to make it not always give you what you're looking for.

Overall though, I think it is a super neat ai and I'm going to keep experimenting with it. Eventually I would like to find a way to work it into a project somehow but, that is something for a WAY later date. I have so much to study now for my Udemy course and for web development that I have put learning Python on the back burner for now. For now, it is something I mess around with when I have a little free time. If you are interested, I have uploaded the files over on my GitHub page.

Thanks so much for reading and have a wonderful day!

My coding spaces v1

Kurtiss Frost — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 17:18:59 +0000

So, in an article I posted the other day, I gad mentioned that I was working on getting my coding environment set up. Well, after a long weekend of trial and error and research, I have a "version 1" type setup. Screenshots can be found at the very bottom of the article.

IT'S ALIVE!

So, normally I use Windows for most things but, in my research on front-end development and just development in general, I noticed a lot of people talking about how they use the terminal for their workflow. So, I decided I should try and get my own workflow setup.

Now, I am no linux guru but, I am comfortable in the terminal. Currently, I have Ubuntu installed on my laptop and Windows 10 with WSL installed on my desktop. This would normally be acceptable except for a few things.

For one, I am not 100% sold on WSL. I'm not sure why. I have watched tutorials on it and I have seen people use it but, something about it just isn't clicking for me. The second issue I have is, while I like Ubuntu, I want to try out other distros and see if there is one out there that really "speaks to me".

So to remedy these "problems: I have decided to do the following things:

Set up Linux mint on my laptop to replace Ubuntu:
This will let me try out a new distro and see if it's for me or not. Right now I haver been using it for about 3 and half days and I am really enjoying it.
Set up Linux Mint on VMWare:
This way I can keep the environments the same and it won't be weird swapping from my laptop, to the desktop, to the virtual machine.

So, the first step on my linux machines was to install VSCode. It was kind of a pain to have to install it and all of my plugins twice but, what can you do. This is all for the sake of science.

Then I began looking into different terminals. I decided to go with Konsole for now but there are a few others I am looking at. My main complaint here is more of a personal complaint. When I was looking at terminals, I think I got a little sidetracked by the customization options instead of meaningful features. The main point of these two linux set ups was to try and get me a nice beginner coding environment set up. So, I want to revisit this topic at a later date and try to get one that is going to be suited to what I need but also still be customizable. I'm a sucker for that stuff. That is always the most fun. You get to take a distro or a terminal and make it feel like it yours. That's a pretty sweet feeling.

Next, I looked into a few other things to install like Ranger and I got a few other things I'm looking into.

The final thing I did was install synth shell. With this I could make my terminal look a bit sexier. I have a few more things that I want to do but I haven't gotten around to them yet. A few other things I want to do is look into making my own system and terminal theme. In my mind, I have this idea of muted colors for some reason and I want to see if I can accomplish that.

Other than that, I haven't really done much with it.

Do you have any suggestions for things I could do? Applications I could install? Lemme know!

EDIT: Hopefully, I will be able to get a v2 done sometime in the future after I give this one a whirl and see if it fits my needs. Thanks to everyone for checking it out!

Screenshots:

Discussing my interview process for Google [Follow Up]

Kurtiss Frost — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 03:38:58 +0000

NOTE: This is article has been sitting in my drafts for about a week or so now due to the process taking so long.

I apologize for the vagueness about the interview process. I'm not sure what kind of rules they have about discussing the topics covered during the interview process and I don't want to take any chances.

This is the follow up post to my Discussing my interview process.

Well, it's been about 3 weeks since I had my interview for a data center technician 1 at Google and the results are in...and I'll get to them in a sec, I just want to talk about a few things first.

Firstly, the waiting. It can't be helped. That is part of the interview process. You do your interview and then you wait to see if you got the job. In this case, I had my interview at a weird time. My interview was held on November 14th on a Monday. Normally, or at least in my experience with this particular company, sometimes it can take them a while to get back to you. I wasn't expecting to hear anything the first week because I knew they had to have time to evaluate me, my skillset and to look at me resume. The following week, was Thanksgiving. I definitely didn't expect to hear anything back then because it was the week of Thanksgiving. It was a short 3 day work week for us and my recruiter was out of office for that entire week. So I had a guess that it would be sometime this week or next week before I heard anything.

While at work today, I decided to reach out to my recruiter and check on the status of my interview. My recruiter told me that he would call me tomorrow because he had to talk to me. I'm not sure what that means but, we'll see.

The next day:

He said that I could potentially have 1 more interview depending on if the hiring manager manager wanted to continue. He said it would be around a week before I knew where my application stood. If the hiring manager wants to continue, I'll get 1 more interview and then, if I make it past that interview, my application will get sent to a hiring committee that will review it. If they also say yes, I will get the job. So again, we'll see what happens.

He also told me that, due to how my interview went, he wasn't comfortable with sending my application through for the position I interviewed for (L2). He told me I could go for an L1 position of I was still interested.

I told him sure. I mean, a job is a job and after my interview, I already kind of figured that's what would happen. Not to mention, given my current skill set, I was way more comfortable going in as an L1 and doing that for a while until I could develop the necessary skills I needed to go to the L2 position.

So now, more waiting...

One Week Later...

So, I hadnt heard anything by Tuesday so I decided to reach out to my recruiter again. He said that he was still waiting on the hiring manager to get back with him but he would schedule a phone call with me the next day at 1pm anyway. I guess to go back over everything and see if I had any questions.

The final verdict:

I get to work today and around 1:20 he calls me. The news was...not good. He told me that, based off how my interview went, the hiring manager did not want to move forward with my interview at this time. He apologized and asked me if I had any questions for him. I told him no and he gave me some advice on what I could study to improve my chances the next time and that was it.

He said he'd leave my application status as "open" and see if any other HM's we're interested and that was about it.

So, if by some chance another HM at a different site is interested, I would have 1 more interview and then have that sent off to the hiring committee.

Final thoughts and feelings:

I am feeling so many things right now that it is a bit overwhelming to get it all in a post so I'm just gonna free form it until I cover the most important topics. I just want to preface this next section and say that this is in no way a pitty party or me feeling sorry for myself. I'm just expressing how I feel right now two hours after the call.

I'm sad: Obviously, first and foremost, I'm upset I didn't get it. I feel like my efforts didn't matter. I'm bad about beating myself up and I feel like I don't know anything about computers or how they work. The interview process this time around was BRUTAL for me. My nerves really got the best of me and I struggled to even make it to the end of the interview.

I'm mad: not at my recruiter or the company but at myself. Because I have a tendency to beat myself up, I'm mad at myself because of so many different reasons. Because I didn't study enough (even though I studied diligently for months) I wasn't prepared enough (Not really sure how to avoid that feeling). Because I feel like I didn't try hard enough (even though I did the best I could.

I'm defeated: Because everything is still so fresh and raw, the thought of giving up and not applying again crossed my mind. I'm gonna reevaluate everything once I've had time to process it all and look back on it but, right now, I'm not 100% sure if I want to apply again.

Imposter syndrome: That is probably the second thing that crossed my mind. I felt like I was completely out of place and in the wrong field. I've said it earlier but I'll say it again: the interview process was BRUTAL this time around. It really made me question myself and what I knew about the job.

There are just a lot of feelings and emotions rushing through my head and I think I just need to take time to reflect on everything and revisit this whole thing at a later date.
It's not all bad though.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

None of this is to say that it's all bad. I love my current job and I have learned a lot. I'll continue to work there for as long as I can and try to learn as much as I can.

This whole process has been neither completely good or completely bad. I have learned a lot and I know what I need to improve upon if I decide to apply for the position again.

I want to take some time and reflect on it and then start working towards my next goal. Whether that be trying to get the full time data center position or continuing my studies in full stack development. I'll figure it out one day at a time.

There's not really much else to say about this. I want to thank you so much for reading and hope you have a wonderful day/night!

How I want to increase my productivity⏱

Kurtiss Frost — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 19:55:14 +0000

Nothing feels better than being able to mark things off of your to do list. This past week, I sadly haven't had the time or, on some days, felt like marking things off of mine.

I just want to take a minute to talk about what is on my to do list and how I want to go about tackling each bullet point.

(PROBLEM) Too many articles saved to my reading list:

I am really bad about scrolling through dev and medium on my lunch break and seeing a ton of amazing articles and thinking to myself" "OHH! That sure does sound interesting. I better add it to my reading list for later!" the only problem is, later has yet to come around. I have around 200+ articles save to my reading list on each site and I kind of want to narrow that down some.

(SOLUTION) Slowly chip away at them:

Not really much else to say than that. In the coming week, I want to try to knock that number down by around 50 on each site. (more if i'm feeling froggy). I am going to try my best to not add any more to my reading list until I knock it down some but, I have a feeling that is easier said than done. There are too many good articles on here and I can't read them all.

(PROBLEM) Begin work on my website:

I have procrastinated on this long enough. I have been saying for months now that I am going to start it. Well, it's about time that I did.

(SOLUTION) Just do it:

Much like the Nike slogan says, if I want to make progress, I am just going to have to dive in and start working on it. Much like the previous solution, that is easier said than done. I think my biggest hold up right now is that I am currently studying HTML and CSS and I want to have a better grasp on those before I set out to make my website but, I also don't want to use that as a crutch and never get around to making my website.

My compromise here is to try to work on small projects that are using the elements I am studying on and just try to add a little bit to the small projects as I go.

(PROBLEM) Pick back up on my studies:

Unfortunately the past week, I have been slacking on my studies. I have just not felt like coming home and working through my freecodecamp lessons or looking at anything coding/tech related.

(SOLUTION) Ease my way back into it:

I have a bad habit of hyper focusing on things which in turn seems to make me give up on them faster than I normally would if I didn't. So I am going to ease back into my studies so I don't get burnt out as fast.

(PROBLEM) Finishing setting up my coding environments:

Here before I got into "the funk" I was wanting to setup some coding spaces for me on my machines. I wanted to install Linux Mint (Cinnamon) on my Windows 10 machine using VMWare. I was also going to swap my laptop over from Ubuntu to Linux Mint so I could have a mirrored experience on both machines.

I want to set them up with a fresh install of VSCode, customized terminals, git, etc. so that I can have a nice coding environment that I'm not only comfortable using but that matches my current workflow and needs. Not to mention, I want to style it. If I'm going to be spending a lot of time in it, I might as well make it look as good as I can, right?

(Solution) Research:

I need to sit down and get myself a list of extensions and applications to get it setup the way I want it.

So yeah, that are my current problems and the solutions I would like to implement to solve them. Hopefully by this Friday (December 9th) I will have at least 2 of these knocked off of my list.

Thank you so much for reading and have a wonderful day/night!

First Project using CSS

Kurtiss Frost — Sat, 26 Nov 2022 08:00:50 +0000

So, the other day I mentioned that I was learning CSS and I am proud to say I have completed my first project with it!

Following a YouTube tutorial I was able to create this: streamOS, a YouTube clone site.

I have a few things I would like to change later (such as adding a dark mode, and changing the sidebar icons) but, for my first project using CSS, I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

If you're interested, you can find the website here or visit the GitHub repo.

Learning CSS has been a blast so far and I look forward to making more projects with it! :)

Thank you so much for reading. Let me know what you think about the site. All feedback welcome. Have a wonderful day!

I took the plunge into CSS. Day 1 thoughts.

Kurtiss Frost — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 08:45:02 +0000

So, I know I have probably mentioned it before but, I feel like I should reiterate it again for this post: I want to be a front end developer.

I have always loved making websites ever since I was a teenager in high school computer class. I never thought I would get to take that passion very far because the area I live in is not exactly the best place for jobs like that. Keep in mind, this was around 2005 to 2007 and I hadn't really figured out how the whole "being an adult" thing worked yet. I didn't think of looking for a remote job and I didn't dare consider moving (I had lived here my whole life and all my friends and family were here so it was a very hard choice to make). So, I kind of let my passion die and gave up on my CS degree that I was going for.

Fast forward to now and I am working for a company called Modis Engineering at a Google data center. Working there really lit a fire under my ass and rekindled that creative spark. I began looking into what I would need to learn to be able to try my hand at being a front end developer.

In my youth, I dabbled in HTML3 and I was vaguely familiar with it but, I never touched CSS or any other languages back then. So I kind of wanted to start off brushing up on my HTML a bit and trying to learn some CSS as I go. Using these 2 languages, I can work on some simple sites and try to work on improving not only my design skills but also my critical thinking and code formatting skills.

So I took the plunge and started learning CSS. My mind was blown at how cool it was. So far, from what I have learned on day 1, the syntax isn't too complicated. I mostly have to remember what everything is called. The creativity it gives me with just adding this to my HTML knowledge is mind boggling.

I've looked at other people's code before from places like GitHub and Codepen but, I haven't actually done anything on my own yet. Making a few simple buttons and being able to format my plain ol HTML into something that looks cool is a great feeling. I am pretty early on in my coding journey but, I am having a lot of fun learning and I can't wait until I get to "the good stuff" (more advanced CSS coupled with JavaScript).

For some reason, I had this fear of getting started. A fear of failure. I have been telling my friends that I was going to start learning this for several months but, every time I would go to start, I would sit down at my computer to get started, I would either psyche myself out, or my ADHD would get the better of me and I would never start.

Well, that ends today. I literally just have to remember the old adage "Just Do It." If I don't try, I'll never know, ya know? Once I put those first few lines of CSS down, my passion turned from a flame into a roaring inferno. I was motivated and I want to learn more.

I look forward to learning more on this journey and I can't wait to see what I can create once my skills and tool kit are improved upon. Thank you so much for reading. I hope you have a wonderful day/night!

Logo Design

Kurtiss Frost — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 08:57:30 +0000

Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well today. Here recently I have been working a little bit in python trying to learns some things and following some tutorials and I created a project that I want to upload.

The Project:

The project is an AFK bot that will move your cursor for you when you go AFK.

The Use:

One example of a use case is in screen savers/sleep mode. If you have a screen saver enabled or have it set for your computer to go to sleep after a set amount of time, you can use this to keep that from happening.

The script is set to run indefinitely so you can just leave it running in the background while you do your regular tasks. If you ever have to go away from your keyboard, the code will move your mouse after it goes the set amount of time and doesn't sense any input.

The Point?

This is a fairly basic script that I made following along with this video. But still, I want to upload this to GitHub where I can get a bit more practice using the platform. One thing that I love doing, is creating eye catching and appealing README files.

For this release, I decided that I wanted to make a logo for the repo to give it a little bit of a pop. What initially started out as I was just going to make one logo turned into me creating around 7 variations.

What I am asking of you is I can't decide between the logos I have made. I want your opinion.

Which one do you love and why?
Which one do you hate and why?
Are the all bad and I need to do a re-design?

Logo #1:

For logo number 1, I had this random thought about the mac style buttons and I wanted to do something like that. This one is ok? It is probably my least favorite of the bunch.

Logo #2:

For this one, I kept the same idea but I wanted to see what it would look like as an app style button. I like it a little more than logo 1 but, I think I like some of the other designs more.

Logo #3:

With this one, I decided to go with the keyboard keys for AFK and just add the word "bot" underneath. This really isn't a bot but, it runs on repeat in the background and the word bot sounded cool.

Logo #4:

Same as logo #2 I wanted to see what the logo looked like in an app format. This one is ok but, I think I like 3 more.

Logo #5:

V1: With logo #5, I had a weird thought. This is a script that is running on a timer. For some reason, this sparked an idea and I wanted to at least make a mock up. This is what I came up with. I used the name "PROJECT CHRONOS" because of Kronos, the God of Time. This one was kind of meh. I liked the idea but, I wasn't sure about the clipart so I wanted to try to make one more to see if I could come up with something a little different.

Logo #6:

V2: Sticking with the time theme, I added an hourglass beside the text and tried to make it about the same size as the text. This one turned out really well. Out of the 3 versions I made, this one or V3 are my favorite.

Logo #7

V3: This is the 3rd version of this "batch" of styles and the final one on the list. I like the contrasting blue against the white. I'm not really sure if I like it more that V2 though.

So, that's all I've got. Like I said, this is an open discussion. I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Which one do you love and why?
Which one do you hate and why?
Are the all bad and I need to do a re-design?

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day!