A little over halfway through the quarter and the end is in sight!

We have started integration of our database and UI on our app and so far it is going pretty smoothly. Everyone in our group has taken or is it currently in (like me) 493 Cloud Applications and a lot of what we learned/are learning in that course was applicable in the integration of front-end and back-end components of our app. We are using Firebase as our database and have been impressed with how powerful it is.

Getting to know our team with weekly meetings and by working together has been another fun part of this project. Doing this program remotely can make it hard to interact and network with other students, so having a quarter-long project with a group has been a nice change of pace. I was a little unsure at the start of the quarter how it would go and a little nervous about going through the entire quarter in a group setting, so I’m stoked with how well its been working out.

In personal news, I just scheduled my first job interview! I’m really excited about the potential opportunity, and a little nervous as it is my very first interview.

The dog days of winter are starting. It gets dark so early now and my dog doesn’t understand why I’m feeding her an hour later than normal and why we aren’t getting our usual evening walks in as often.. resulting in lots of grumbling and the dropping of an empty bowl at my feet while I’m trying to study. Good thing she’s so cute.. as the saying goes, with great cuteness comes no responsibility.

Cheers!

Have you ever spent an entire day thinking it was the day before? That was me this week. Thursday was Wednesday and today came all too fast. Time seems to be on fast forward. Already halfway through the quarter, almost can’t believe it. Our project is moving along. We split the team into front-end and back-end and I am on front-end. Designing the app has been a lot of fun and a nice break from learning Swift and Xcode and everything iOS.

We have been using Sketch and Figma to make our mock-ups. It is so easy to move files between Sketch and Figma which makes designing one app where one person has Windows and the other Apple much easier. Sketch and Figma are also very similar in functionality, so once you learn one, the other is fairly straightforward to pick up. Figma has been great for collaboration, allowing multiple people to edit/view at once, and as it works on your browser it is easy to share – no downloading or uploading of files and changes appear in real time.

This week we finally sit down to start coding the app. Once again, YouTube tutorials has been my best friend. This one, Sketch to Xcode, from Karin Prater has been especially useful. The Scrumdinger Tutorial from Apple Dev that we first went through to ramp up Swift knowledge has also proved invaluable, as it is a very similar model to how our app will work and provides us with a great starting point.

The journey continues with minimal road bumps so far, these last few weeks have been a blur, and I’m curious and excited about what the next few weeks will bring.

Here’s a picture of my sister’s dog, Wally, for some bonus dopamine.

We meet again.

Exciting news! I got put on the Paw Parks team for my capstone project! I am so stoked, there is nothing more in this world I love than my dog and my local dog park. I’m so thankful to be able to work on a project I care about this quarter, it makes 467 less of a class and more of a fun project.

The first week or so has been dedicated to learning Swift/XCode. This has actually been really fun and something I’m looking forward to build on in the future. Swift is pretty intuitive, and XCode makes it extra easy. Thank god for YouTube tutorials. Shout out to CodeWithChris, without you this Capstone Project would not be possible.

I have a great group too. I haven’t done any kind of virtual or otherwise meeting in a long time, so I was pretty nervous for our first one. It went really well, I’m a lot less awkward than I anticipated and I have awesome, like-minded group members. I’m looking forward to the rest of this quarter and am excited to see what we can make.

Outside of our project, I’ve just been applying to jobs like mad and prepping for interviews. The getting-a-job part of this whole process is more daunting than this entire program has been, but one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, and we will get there. The last week or so, I’ve had many moments of “I can’t believe I’m here.” In a good way.. I am in my last quarter, finishing something that seemed near impossible at the start, about to take a leap into the “big next phase” of life.. and its exciting. I’m thankful for everything I’ve learned and am learning and can’t wait to see where it all takes me.

Completely unrelated, in the most exciting news of the week, I scored tickets to see Dead and Co. (Final Tour) at the Gorge Amphitheatre. I was raised by dead heads, to be a dead head, and so the tradition continues.

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Cheers y’all.

Greetings! This is the first of many posts to come chronicling the journey that will be my capstone project. I’m in my last quarter of the Post-Bacc CS program and am excited to apply everything I’ve learned to something that could be used by others. As someone (perhaps overly) obsessed with my dog (and everyone else’s) I’m hoping to be involved in the Paw Parks or Dating App for Animal Adoption projects. Stay tuned for all to come!

Cheers

Duckie the Daring