upon the path
moments of life in motion
through winter air
Blog
A Moment Of Blue Sky
blue sky peeking throughswallowed quickly by the clouds
whispers of springtime
Saw a moment of blue sky above the trees. I actually wore my sunglasses briefly on today’s walk. Seattle’s winter has reclaimed the sky, though. Yet, rest assured, spring approaches.
At The End Of A Long Day
Mondays are pretty long for me. First, two of my classes tend to have 4, 5, or 6 projects due. And then I have a “class” from 6-8 pm, taking two hours out. There is value in the lectures, of course (else I would just skip and work), but I feel like I’m butting up against the “last minute” every week. I’m a little bit ahead today, which feels good. I actually got a little bit of what’s due tomorrow done. So, yay me!
My preferred state is to be at least a week ahead. Since two of my courses didn’t open until the first day of the quarter, and the third one opened up a day in advance, I hit the ground running, so to speak. And it’s felt like I’m squeaking by every week.
In reality, I am creeping ahead, slowly but surely. I just worry that one illness, or losing a day because of no power (yay Seattle winters!) will break everything. In the end, I guess I just work my way through everything. Do my best, learn every day, and drag myself forward.
Onwards!
January Flowers
in the light of dawn
this bitter bite of winter
balancing with grace
The winter air has a substantive bite. Our weather reports hinted at snow, January marching into February. Yet, even in this time of cold, of darkness, flowers grace life with reminders that spring approaches.
Some Key Tools I Recommend
I’ve been pretty successful at my coursework, and I attribute that to a few key tools. Here are the 4 I use every day, and would deeply struggle without.
- Evernote: this is my note tool, and so much more. I add articles I’ve read, reading notes, lecture notes, and I can scan handwritten notes which are able to be searched (for the most part). It is also my journal and where I brainstorm/mindmap for projects and other workflows.
- Todoist: Organizes my task list. Since I have more on my plate than just school, I use Todoist to input everything I need to get done. I have mine synchronized to my Google calendar, so I can have it all in one view. Assigning times to tasks is really important for me so that they become done.
- Acrobat Reader, Adobe Creative Cloud Student Edition: I use various Creative Cloud apps regularly including Photoshop, InDesign, and PremierPro. I also work some in Illustrator. Reader, though, is the thing I use the most. I mark up articles, presentations, and the like. I expect I would find a cheaper alternative if all I was doing was work in Reader, but as I use the whole suite, it’s a handy product.
- Grammarly: I love this grammar and spelling checker. It has upped my game as a writer, which is rather important in this student thing.
- Quizlet: I use this to create flashcards. Great for reviewing content before a quiz, or to review content for any reason. It’s also nice that I have this on my phone and iPad. Makes reviewing while I’m out and about (which isn’t very much right now) easy. Or if I want to chill out on the couch.
Anyway, those are the main tools I’m using right now. I find these critical to my current life. What digital tools are part of your daily work? Whether you’re a student or not, I’m curious to know.
About the featured image: Photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels
Sunday Morning
cold winter rain
early morning darkness
I shiver, alive
Blogging, Twitter and Focus
If you’re engaged with me on Twitter, you might have noticed I have two Twitter profiles: CarlSetzer and SetzerDigitial. This is for focus. I read years ago that you should keep a blog focused as narrowly as possible.
@CarlSetzer is my oldest Twitter profile, which I started in 2007. I rambled over different topics over time, but for the past several years @CarlSetzer has been focused on my poetry, and mainly my daily+ haiku and regular contribution to the @Baffled Haiku Challenge, and tied to my poetry blog. It is growing solidly and has a fair amount of engagement. When I experiment with posting non-poetry, the engagement is dramatically less, and I slowly start to lose followers.
@SetzerDigital has been around since 2017, started as a part of my brief foray into geek blogging (you can see the remnants on my Tumblr page and this Facebook page), but I’m not engaged with that project at this point. (quick aside: I thought I LOVED geek things and was an expert. As I launched into this space, though, I discovered I wasn’t as deep into things as I thought.) I opted a few weeks ago to repurpose this for something tied with my new career focus. I felt that a new account made more sense than trying to shift gears with my main account. A big thing: I still love writing poetry and engaging with that community. Since I have at least another year of study before I’m trying to look for work, I have plenty of time to build out that community. And that work seems to be solidly underway. In the past 30 days, I’ve gone from 51 to 73 followers, which may not seem huge, but it is a >40% increase. I’m happy enough with that. I do, of course, reserve the right to nuke this whole thing and integrate my two accounts.
Twitter is part of my growing marketing/branding plan. I know that my network will be key to landing my next role. I don’t think that dropping resumes on websites will be terribly effective, for me, at least. Twitter’s developer community is pretty awesome. Thus my community will be crucial in my work search. Having a group of people who know me, know my work, and understand this part of my passion.
What do you think? Oh, if you’re on Twitter, I’d love it if you’d pop on over, say “hi” and give me a follow.
Some Thoughts 2 Weeks Into Winter Quarter
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Winter quarter started January 4th. This round, I’m taking 3 classes: one I’ve already talked about, “Web IV Joomla! and SEO”. I’m also taking Systems Analysis, and, lastly, but not leastly: JavaScript.
Web IV has been the most puzzling. Besides Joomla and SEO, the course also covers Amazon Web Services. All of these are cool, but, what a hell of a collection. I feel a bit of whiplash as I move through the week.
Systems Analysis is something I’ve been looking forward to. Understanding how to look at business systems in a strategic way excites me. I think this will be critical to my future career work.
Then there’s JavaScript. This is the grail! Yeah, this summer I coded in Visual Basic, which was fine and all, but JavaScript is what actual web developers use daily. So I’m delighted. But, code is a double-edged sword.
For several days last week/early this week, two of my projects were stuck. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the code to work. I went through all kinds of imposter syndrome stuff. Finally, grabbed one of my other classmates. It took both of us over an hour, but we figured it out: I was missing ONE curly brace (this thing: “}”). But as I’ve started interacting with the developer community on Twitter, I know this is not uncommon. Every keystroke is important, and variable names are case sensitive. Meaning “GetByID” is not the same as “GetById”. At one point in my career, I highly prided my typing skills. Back in the days of typewriters, that is. Spell check, autocorrect, and even simply being able to delete and re-write have spoiled me. Now my keyboarding kinda sucks. And just when it became critical.
And since I’m never happy unless I’m silly busy, I’m also filling in for a friend who’s on paternity leave. I’m “working” as a media coordinator for Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, WA (unpaid, but that works fine for me right now). This mainly entails creating graphics, as well as editing videos. Nothing too dramatic. I’m doing some of the photo editing in Photoshop to keep my skills up, but a lot of the stuff I’m creating I’m doing in Canva. It’s a pretty slick tool that really speeds up some workflow. Videos are also pretty straightforward. Our church services are online, and we’re using a fair amount of pre-recorded music and such to keep the number of people in the space to a minimum. Mostly I’m trimming down the videos, adding fades and such, and also plugging some b-roll in so that the videos have more visual appeal.
Here are a few things I’ve crafted recently.
Featured image:
Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels
Hope in the Sunlight
calming sunlight
graceful arc through the trees
hope arrives before spring
WordPress Word Of The Day: Vendetta
standing under clouds
the squirrels and crows arguing
ancient vendettas?
I discovered the WordPress “Word of the Day” challenge a long-time ago. Getting these prompts helped keep my creative side engaged. Then the WordPress team ended that project. Fortunately, others have stepped up to keep that initiative going.
Today’s word is “vendetta“. A challenging word, especially for my focus on haiku. As I watch the crows and squirrels quibble over the breadcrumbs in my backyard, I came up with this one. I hope you enjoy it!