Last year I wrote a post about why I learned to crochet and why learning a new thing each year was helping me grow. For 2018 I wanted to exercise better. So how did I do?

First achievement: I actually stepped foot in a gym! I asked a personal trainer for a few sessions and actually I learned how some of the machines worked! I had major anxiety over looking stupid not knowing what to do at the gym. Or being really shit at everything and I’ve definitely conquered that fear! …

2018 has been a HUGE year for codebar mobile!

We ran 10 workshops, 5 for Android, and 5 for iOS! This has involved the help of around 100 coach positions, for over 150 students!

Thank you to everyone who has graciously hosted us:

January @ Quander

I really love attending Droidcon London every year, and this year was awesome! Each year is an opportunity to learn new things and experience new and interesting ideas from other Android programmers. So here’s some of the things I wrote down, maybe they’ll be useful for you too!

Applications Should Be For Everyone. It’s In Your Hands

Britt walked us through why and how she built an App for her Nana where she could take a picture of something, such as a tub of ice cream and it would say what was in the picture. …

I’ve written a bunch already on how and why I teach people to code. This article going to be more of a tutorial on something to code!

This is my favourite activity for introducing people to writing code; building our very own emoji! We’ll use Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and animate it with JavaScript (JS). They’re the same building blocks that make up webpages!

This tutorial will take about an hour, but you could take a *lot* more time making your emoji yours if you’ve got the time! I had one student who spent an entire semester of after school…

Last week I was lucky to attend International Womens Day through Women Techmakers hosted at Google UK. I also finished reading the book “To sell is human” by Daniel Pink. These two things shared surprisingly similar themes and learnings around leadership that I thought were important to share!

Last year I started a new tradition; I’d learn one new thing a year.

Many people pick up hobbies and skills and quit as soon as it gets difficult. With the “one new thing a year” theory, it forces me to push through the hard starting bit, and spend real effort getting better.

This year, I attempted to learn to crochet! I saw an image for a beautiful crochet blanket online and figured I could make that.

A long time ago, I wrote a blog post introducing the concept of an API; what it is, some examples, and how you might use one. However, I didn’t show you how to actually use one in code! This blog post will help you get started using JavaScript and Giphy to display cat gifs.

Setting up

I’m going to be using a website called JSFiddle to write and test my project. JSFiddle allows me to show the code I’ve written, without any of the boiler plate code of a HTML page, or including the JavaScript file. …

Last week I was lucky to attend Google io for the first time. It would be impossible for me to write down all the awesome things that happened, so here’s a couple of things I learned :-)

1. Keynote(s)

This year there were two keynotes, one for product and one for development, although apparently most people joining remotely didn’t know about the second!

My favourite thing they announced were the updates to Google Photos. I can now share everything or photos that contain specific people automatically with people I specify. I can review photos people share with me, and if I like…