Lara L. Schenck

Looking back at these updates, the theme is very much “it’s spring time, and the seeds I planted are growing!”. Literally and metaphorically.

June 16, 2021:

Cauliflower!

I neglected to post this before, and it is deserving of its own blog post: the WordPress CSS Audit is complete! Read the Make post here, and see the most recent report here.

Generally speaking, everyone in the garden is doing very well!

June 15, 2021:

The FizzBuzz in CSS workshop for CodeDay went well last weekend. I look forward to delivering it again, and improving it each time.

This is a cool example of what you can make with the concepts! And here is the CodePen collection so far.

Next week we are going on vacation to Denver then Yellowstone, and after that I’ll take some more time off to work on personal projects. Nepali lessons are on pause for the summer, but I can now form basic sentences, and hiking (with my Nepali partner – that is why I am learning Nepali) will be a good time for practicing and learning new words and phrases.

I’m reading about notional machines, and preparing a blog post with some links. I think several of my interests overlap in notional machines, and it is definitely a concept that makes my brain “light up”.

May 29, 2021:

I decided it last week, and will announce quietly here: I am going to apply to graduate school this year for Fall of 2022. I would like to pursue computing education research, with a elements of programming languages and human-computer interaction. There’s still a lot to figure out, but making the decision is a big step. I think I will have to choose between interests for the PhD, and that will be difficult.

May 25, 2021:

Long time, no update! Here are a few updates:

I will be teaching a workshop for CodeDay on June 12! The workshop is titled “Generative Art with FizzBuzz in CSS”, and the description:

FizzBuzz is a programming problem used to teach for loops and if/else statements to beginners. CSS, the programming language for styling web pages, doesn’t have for loops or if/else statements…can we program FizzBuzz in CSS? Absolutely! In this workshop, students will learn about declarative programming languages by creating beautiful, generative art with FizzBuzz in CSS.

Hoping to have a monster video or at least some slides for introducing the concepts.

I’m learning about category theory – I found a virtual programming languages meetup that pre-records videos and has a Youtube playlist going through Category Theory for Programmers by Bartosz Milewski. They also have one for the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs which is a classic computer science text that I’ve wanted to read. I’ve watched a few talks about category theory so far, but it’s not quite clicking for me yet.

April 24, 2021:

Lots of cool things lately! Definitely excited for these graph traversal monsters to make more appearances.

I’ve been working with Andre Jacobs on the Supreme Network website. Supreme Network connects successful mentors with people who are recently released from prison, and the website serves as a marketplace to support revenue via affiliate marketing, and in the future, a business directory and membership portal.

April 21, 2021:

I’ve started tracking my many projects in a spreadsheet system. I put a good amount of time into setting it up, and I wrote all of it in Spanish for practice. I also did a core values exercise (again) and I think I’ve figured out my values, for real this time.

For my job, I’m working on a contribution to the Co-Authors Plus WordPress plugin to add support for Gutenberg, and it’s an interesting and educational experience.

I’m going to physical therapy for my knee, which I’ve learned is IT band syndrome and is a result of several things, including running shoes that don’t have enough padding, and my tendency to never stretch.

Lots of cool monster things going on, but probably no official updates for a while.

Enjoyed making this FizzBuzz CodePen.

April 12, 2021:

Idea: Non-linear learning paths, so when you are stuck on one topic, you can jump to another and then check back in with the former until you are unstuck. Inspired by Nader, who sent me an email with some great questions about learning to code, for which I am writing a blog post response.

April 6, 2021:

I’m going to start taking Nepali lessons next week. My Spanish knowledge has gotten to a point where it can be secondary, more casual learning where I slowly improve with speaking opportunities and by consuming media in Spanish. This is a big accomplishment!

April 4, 2021:

I created a page about my mission that is similarly “uncut” (I guess you could say this about a lot of things).