nsadiq

[nsadiq]

Cool front-end learning stuff

Here’s some awesome games to help you learn Flexbox and CSS grid:

Flexbox Zombies - https://geddski.teachable.com/courses/

Flexbox Froggy - http://flexboxfroggy.com

Grid Garden - http://cssgridgarden.com

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Blog Updates

I’m going to start updating the blog daily with what I achieved on that day. I think I focus too much on the big, long-term goals instead of celebrating the small day to day achievements. This will also help me to “measure” daily productivity. 

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Borderless

Since August 2017 I’ve been working on an awesome startup project with a friend from Heriot Watt. We’re looking at new ways of connecting the creative industry. So far we have validated our “leap of faith” assumptions and are working on building a mobile app. We’re both fairly experienced with backend programming so quickly fired out an API using Django and the Django Rest Framework (http://www.django-rest-framework.org). The tricky part is the front end, we have little experience using modern front end technologies. I’m currently learning React Native (https://facebook.github.io/react-native/) so I'll keep the blog up to date with my progress.  

Stay tuned for Borderless updates!

[nsadiq]

Update

Been a while.

Basically I started studying Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, which has been great but super challenging. I studied 4 subjects in first semester:

Processing Formal and Natural Languages.

Introduction to Computer Systems.

Introduction to Software Engineering. 

Discrete Mathematics. 

They were all very interesting and gave me a good idea of what I want to study next year, i’m looking at transferring to Software Engineering and taking a few computer architecture modules with it. Exam season was a bit of a shock to the system, doing little all year then studying in the last few weeks IS NOT a good strategy at Edinburgh Uni. This semester I'm definitely going to start pushing myself. I’ll be studying Data Structures and Algorithms and Machine Learning (in the same course, crazy right), Reasoning and Agents (AI course), and Probability with Applications. 

Oh and I got a nice new MacBook Pro, 10x better than my old surface - I’m so much more productive on it. 

Here’s to a great semester 2.

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Work has commenced on an exciting new project! Updates to follow. Ps, go check out http://www.newbloc.co, they offer awesome affordable co-working space and unlimited tea/coffee!

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So I think i've found my favourite book shop. There's a place called Heffers in Cambridge and they literally have all the Computer Science books you'd ever need. Guess what though, the Computer Science section was right next to a Jazz and Blues record section, so as you could imagine the atmosphere was pretty great. Anyways, I got excited and bought this notebook to serve as an idea book. I have come to find the importance of writing down my ideas, good and bad. I'm buzzing, look how nice it is!!!

[nsadiq]

Update

So it’s been a while since my last post, i’ve been really busy lately.

My plan for this summer was to continue studying computer sciency stuff and doing a few projects - when I realised I could probably be getting paid to do so.

So at the start of June I began my search for a summer internship and for the next few weeks I essentially did a tour of the UK attending interviews, even stopping off at Autodesk in Birmingham. I eventually received a job offer from a software company in Cambridge, to be a Data Analyst Intern. The company seemed really great so I accepted the offer and within the next week I was in Cambridge studying computer sciency stuff and doing a few projects.

Whilst i’ve been here i’ve learned a metric shit tonne about software engineering in industry - it basically all revolves around testing. I spent my first week writing unit tests and getting into the habit of Test Driven Development.

Every day I learn something new - I work with a software developer who used to work at Goldman Sachs and even Jagex (Runescape people). He honestly seems to know everything about anything/anything about everything.

I am now nearing the end of my first project at the company, building a data warehousing + visualisation solution, which has been really fun because they gave me a massive database to play with. I got to study a lot of data warehousing stuff which was great because we touched upon it at Uni but didn’t go into much detail.

In my spare time i’ve been looking at theory of computation, I never got the chance to study it at Uni. I’m finding it super cool, it really makes me want to watch The Imitation Game again.

I’ve also learnt that if you want to download ANYTHING while at a company you have to go through a pushy salesman.

Cambridge itself has been really nice, although, I do like to run away to London at the weekends.

[nsadiq]

Making loads of good progress with the project, but there’s still loads to be done. It’s slowly turning into a tumblr for movie fans now that I think about it. Here are few of the problems that i’m facing:

<ol>

<li>I need to find a better name than “movies.”</li>

<li>I need to convert some http requests to AJAX, but laravel seems to hate me for that. </li>

<li>I cannot currently display movie posters, Laravel also seems to hate external image url’s.</li>

<li>I can’t find a better background picture than the aesthetic masterpiece shown above.</li>

<li>I still haven’t seen the new Beauty and the Beast.</li>

<li>EDIT: I hate tumblr for not letting me htmlify this post.</li>

</ol>

See these are all problems that I would get an intern to solve, but for that i’d need a convincing sounding company and a nice office.

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No but seriously a css intern would be great thanks.

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I could really do with an intern to build css for me. And to bring me coffee. And cookies.

[nsadiq]

Laravel + MongoDB = <3

I have decided to work with MongoDB for the moviesite project - the features of the site will operate much more beautifully using a schema-less(ish) dbms. I’ll post later explaing my choice in more detail. Anyways, MongoDB and Laravel work very well together thanks to Jenssegers package - https://github.com/jenssegers/laravel-mongodb

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So it turns out that our idea for a "site similar to rotten tomatoes but with improved/modernised ux" is already a thing, a very nicely done thing. As if to rub salt in the wound, the same site also provides the api that i'm using to fetch movie details. 😑 Work will still continue on our site, it makes for some great practice. Anyways, tmdb provide an excellent api and their site is really cool too - https://www.themoviedb.org/?language=en

[nsadiq]

php artisan make:auth

I spent hours last night building a secure log in system for this Laravel project. I *painstakingly* deleted all my hard work this morning when I found out I can just use Laravel’s “php artisan make:auth” command to auto generate a full blown user management system.

Can’t decide if i’m annoyed or pleased with this discovery - but damn i’m really enjoying building an MVC based system with Laravel.

[nsadiq]

Started a cool project with a classmate a while back. We are working on a movie site similar to rotten tomatoes but with improved/modernised UX. Currently, the structure of the site is somewhat primitive (pure php/javascript/php generated html pages) which will not scale up too well. To address the scalability issues we are working to convert the site to Laravel, an MVC style php framework. Laravel is lovely btw, would recomment to a friend. (The sign in page uses the shake effect from jQuery’s UI library and will never fail to amuse me).

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On the way to the shops. Sorry that’s enough photography, back to cs stuff.

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Main campus.

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I’m going on an adventure.