Coffee is made and knuckles are cracked, I believe it is time for a update to this design. I probably won’t change much visually, but a lot of the back end needs to change. This theme was one of my first ventures into responsive design and Bootstrap, and now I know a few more tricks up my sleeve…and some down time.

In the world of web development, there’s just too much out there for someone who wants to learn something new, is a self starter, and likes to learn new things. With new languages and tricks for old ones being developed daily, it is steadily hard to keep up.

But why don’t you just learn one at a time, that will make it easier, right?

No, not really. Here is the problem:

  • Client A wants web tech 1, which you kind of know.
  • Client B wants web tech 2 and 3, which you know 2, but not 3.
  • Client C wants web tech 1 and 3.

Well, crap, do you dive more into web tech 1, or start with web tech 3? But wait, they just released a new version of web tech 2. It makes you want to scrap it all and figure out a way to hook up a USB cord to your brain to just be able to download what you need. But that just means you need to pick up two new subjects, brain tech 1 and computer engineering 1.

And your brain goes {boom}.

There are two types of coders in this world, ones that have had the sun rise on them without them realizing, and those that have yet to experience that. Until you experience the sun rising and birds chirping outside after a night of coding up whatever personal project you are working on, you are not in the know. You may be a newbie, you may be in school and learning, but until that moment happens and there is a glow coming from around your blackout curtains, you still have not crossed that threshold.

Why am I writing this? Mainly because I have become a daywalker, if you want to call it that. Rather than sitting and coding, learning, progressing at night, I sleep. Not tonight, though, tonight I kick off routine until I wake up with “QWERTY” imprinted backwards on my forehead.

Hooray for me, got a new design up. Dove into this one head first using SASS, along with an additional framework/mixin called Bourbon.

For those not in the know, SASS is a parallel to CSS. It’s actually a language that allows you to use variables, nesting and function like elements called mixins. Typically the SASS will need to be run through a pre-processor to compile it into plain old CSS. If that doesn’t put a twinkle in your eye, then you need to be shown what happens when the SASS is processed to get it, just like I did.

I wrote in SASS, with a hint of Burbon:

@include font-face(libelsuit, '../fonts/libelsuit');

SASS was then translated to CSS:

@font-face {
font-family: libelsuit;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
src: url("../fonts/libelsuit.eot");
src: url("../fonts/libelsuit.eot?#iefix") format("embedded-opentype"), url("../fonts/libelsuit.woff") format("woff"), url("../fonts/libelsuit.ttf") format("truetype"), url("../fonts/libelsuit.svg#libelsuit") format("svg");
}

Get it now? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you code CSS by hand, I strongly suggest checking out SASS, as it can not only speed up development, but can also make it much easier to use reusable code.

I seriously do not post enough, and that stops now. I’m over here daily teaching myself new coding languages, techniques and tricks to enhance my abilities, I really should talk about it.

So, the plate is full, overflowing and slopping onto the floor. Been cramming the cranium with things like Git, Ruby, Sass, along with also getting back to command line and running a lot of these things locally on my MacBook. Those don’t include my recent self teachings of WordPress plugins, jQuery, HTML5 and CSS3 (whaaaaaat?!). Ya, my head is going to pop at some point, at least I will have gone out with a bang.