A lot has changed since I made the first blog post, and I feel like I have a lot to talk about, both in terms of the personal stuff I divulged, and about the site too.
Firstly, I'll talk about the site. Since I last made serious edits to this site (prior to the one I made today), I have gained a significant amount of knowledge pertaining to CSS. This is because I was helping my girlfriend complete their assignment in web desing. It started with me basically giving them help and ideas. But as it becamse more and more obvious that I was really enjoying discussing this kind of thing and looking into CSS, they did not share my views on this. Coupling this with a sense of stress because of other mounting assignments, it eventually led to me simply doing the assignment for them. Which I am very glad that I did, because it has helped me to build fundamentals in web programming, that are now translating to a much better competence for my own site. It helped me to exercise my very weak programmer muscles, which up until this point had atrophied for about 6 years.
So now that I have finally finished their assignment, I have set-out to work at building a lot of the stylistic elements of my site post-haste. And I have already made an addition to the site today that I feel somewhat proud of. It is basically a simulated typing effect on the index page. You see, my vision for the website is one that is very atmospheric and interactive. Hoping to be an exciting change from a lot of the overly static, and dead websites you see these days, that are completely devoid of life. Whether I achieve this goal is another thing entirely, however. But for now, that is my goal and I intend to give it my all in accomplishing that. The thing I made today however still is a little rough, and I could not get the a element to center itself properly under the div element that hosted the animated text. So there is still work to be done there, but that honestly feels like a job for another day now.
There are a lot of other ways in which the assignment has helped. But I think the most pressing one is layout. The way I learned CSS was very web-oriented. Everything was done in standard units, and nothing beyond that really mattered because most monitors were the same aspect ratio and resolution (at least at the time). But my girlfriend is primarily a designer, so their assignment is more focussed on UX. This has helped to come at web-design from an entirely different perspective. And I feel that it will make my design and overall layout a lot more polished now. I also decided to take a look at my webpage on my phone, and it looked absolutely awful because I had done all the positions in pixels. And these measurements were gauged from my 4k monitor which is so extreme in comparison to mobile, which is the device that a much larger proportion of visitors would come to view the site with. Nonetheless, it is clear that I need to do something about that now, so that is my first priority tomorrow. Make the CSS more user-friendly and clean across all platforms.
Speaking of my girlfriend, I met them for the first time during May. It was a completely marvelous experience and truly once in a lifetime. The sheer excitement and anxiety I felt when I landed at the airport in Malaysia, knowing that I will meet the love of my life shortly, was an incredible feeling. But it was also an incredibly complicated feeling, one that I thing defies any kind of simple description. But from that point, my emotions are so much easier to relay. In that, the only thing I felt was happiness. Pure joy, the likes of which I can't remember experiencing to that extent. It truly was the best 2 weeks of my life. Not only because of what I just mentioned, but it all felt like one giant adventure. The food, the culture, the sights and history. Everything was just so exciting. I am going back there ASAP.
As you might expect, I've had a hard time adjusting since I got back to the UK. At first, everything felt so boring in comparison. For the first few days I feel like I found faults in literally everything home-grown. Looking back this wasn't a healthy mindset, however now I feel like I am out of it, and it also feels like it was most likely a response to the feelings of missing my girlfriend, too. I still do miss them, but I take comfort in the daily calls we have, and the likelihood that I will be able to see them again as early as August. I'm feeling good now though, and settled in. I'm enjoying the now, but also am more optimistic about the future than ever before.
Despite being in the happy in the now again, I do wish that I was a little more productive at this moment. I feel like I'm not as productive as I could be. And I'm currently working on a personal planner to try and rectify that. Whether it will work remains to be seen. Coincidentally, I plan to use google sheets, which uses a very similar programming language to Javascript, which I am also learning to learn how to code. And like every project I undertake, I have some interesting, if not completely unnecessary ideas pertaining to my schedule. So, applying any and all Javascript in the personal planner will be a great way to reenforce what I'm learning.
Anyway, I'm gonna stop journalling now as I feel like I have talked about everything I want to. Right now I am very hopeful about the future, but also trying to keep myself anchored and live in the now too. As I don't want to lose track of all the personal projects and things I want to get good at and learn. As those are imperative to my wellbeing and happiness too.