Posts by lennys (70)

lennys January 13, 2024

New truck!

So I bought a new truck yesterday. It's not brand-new, its a 2022 Toyota Tacoma quad-cab. Its got about 32,500 miles on it and is charcoal gray. I'm happy with it so far. It's got a 5 year warranty so I don't have to worry about expensive car repairs now, and I have a dependable vehicle again. I probably paid a little too much for it, but I can live with it. I'm looking forward to taking it to Half Moon Bay this coming weekend. I've also been studying React, which is not going very well. The more I learn about it, the more it seems like overkill for my little projects. What I wanted to do was build an API for this blog, so that I could wire in a React front end, and eventually make a mobile interface for it as well as the one for the regular web traffic. But there's a steep learning curve with React, and from what I've read so far it seems like this is only useful to me if I start working on a much larger project. So I'm mildly annoyed with the whole process. I have another Django & React book on the way here but it'll be another 4 or 5 days before it gets here. I'm hoping that the book will do a better job of explaining things to me than the online resources I've found so far. Since I'm not a JavaScript developer learning how to use React has been difficult, and I have several half-finished projects written in Django and React that I can't figure out how to fix. The Django part of it is pretty straightforward, and for the projects that use an API I've been able to get it working, but once I start working on the React front-end I run into issues I can't figure out. It's a good thing I don't have to make a living with React, or I'd be in trouble.

lennys January 07, 2024

Coding can be frustrating at times...

So I ordered a new Django & React book from Amazon. For some reason it will take 2 weeks to get here, but I'm hoping it will arrive sooner than that. I went through one of my Django books again and got through the API creation part, but I ran into an issue I couldn't figure out, like usual. I emailed the author about it and asked if there was code online I could reference. I haven't heard back yet, so now I'm going through my other Django book again. Building the Django backend and the API is getting easier, but I'm still struggling with JavaScript & React. Hopefully the new book will help with that. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to get anywhere with all this coding stuff. It sure seems like the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know and can't do. It's frustrating. I talked about this in therapy this week, and now I just have to remind myself every so often that I need to keep working on it, and I'll get somewhere with it eventually. This is nothing new for me, I've been struggling with these feelings for years. At some point I still hope to create a business out of this, but that'll be a while still.

lennys December 28, 2023

Post-Christmas blues

Today is Thursday, and Christmas was just 3 days ago. I spent it at Mom's house in Oregon with Mom & Stepdad plus my brother, his wife and 3 kids. It was a good holiday, but was over too soon like all holidays are. I got some things I wanted and a few items that I didn't know I wanted, plus a few things I needed. The kids had a good time, and I had fun hanging out with everyone. I miss them already. This will be the last time I take any days off for a while. I'll be working on New Years Eve/Day this year, and I have a birthday coming up in about 3 weeks during which I'll also be working, so it's back to the grindstone for me. I finished up a tutorial about Django APIs and React frontends today. I think I've got the Django-end of things covered pretty well, although I still need to work on building APIs for practice, but when it comes to React and JavaScript in general I'm still pretty green. I haven't been able to find a good blog tutorial for Django APIs + React stuff yet, but I'm still looking. I was hoping I'd find a blog tutorial I could work through and eventually adapt to the next iteration of this blog, but that'll have to wait a while I work through this learning curve. When I built this blog, I adapted it from a tutorial I found on YouTube, but now I'd like to build an API that serves as the backend and use React for the frontend. This will enable me to make changes to the frontend of things to accommodate mobile browsers and whatnot without making any changes to the Django backend. I know it's possible, I just have to find a good guide online somewhere and work my way through it. I have a couple of books about building APIs in Django with a React frontend, but they don't cover making a blog in that manner so I'm still looking for something that directly covers it. I have more ideas than I have time it seems.

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