Hello world…

Hello! And welcome to my first blog post. I should probably start by telling you that this wasn’t originally intended to be the first blog post but I thought, dear Reader, that if you were going to be following me, you deserved the skinny on who I am, what I’m up to and what makes me think that anyone would be interested in reading what I have to say.

Who I am

I’m Elizabeth. I did a music degree, worked in France and Luxembourg for 4 years in a private bank, moved to London to become an actress nearly 5 years ago and decided in January this year that much as I love the acting, it’s not paying the bills and though I don’t regret having tried it, maybe it’s time to do something else.

What I’m up to

Then came the scary part — deciding on a new direction to take. Yet I wasn’t scared. I actually felt excited. As any actor will tell you, the heavy competition of that industry can take its toll on your self-esteem and sense of identity and I suddenly realised thatI didn’t have to deal with that any more and that it would be easier to get practically any other job. After a bit of a think, I decided that whatever I chose to do, learning how to code could only be an asset. I already work for two start-ups (flexible jobs which were a total boon when I was trying to find acting work and going to auditions), in user support and admin and with the massive take-off of the telecommunications industry over the past decade or so, getting into tech seemed like a good career choice and is something I’m already vaguely compatible with. For the moment, I figure that front-end is my friend, having a bit of a creative bent and more customer service experience than I probably want to own up to, so cue HTML, CSS and JavaScript! This blog will, as a starting point, follow my adventures in this exciting new world and record my baby attempts at designing a website.

Why you might be interested in reading what I have to say

Well, first of all, I can’t guarantee that you will be! But truth be told, I’d never considered writing a technical blog before — I know so little about it, why would anyone give two figs for my opinion? However, a few days ago, I attended a Meetup organised by Women Hack for Non-Profits, a bunch of likely lasses who aid gals like me develop their skills while helping good causes. The theme of the night was blogging and they got top tech blogger Ben Nadel to send over a few tips, some of which really stood out for me.

If it tripped me up, confused me, or wasted my time, I think it’s worth documenting. This does a service to anyone that might try to Google for the same thing

I didn’t think I had anything to offer in the tech sphere at this point in my development and thought the people who *should* be writing tech blogs were seasoned pros with decades of experience. But this showed me that what I can offer is my perspective — launching into this from a standing start, other people in my position might have similar struggles so why not share what I learn?

And, sometimes embarrassingly, I am that person — Googling for the solution to a problem that I already solved 8 months ago. Talk about paying it forward to your future self!

Although I’m using good ol’ Microsoft Word — I have a fairly extensive HTML Cheat Sheet — and even older-fashioned notebook and pen where I’m recording my JavaScript syntax, having somewhere where you are forced to write in a more structured way about issues that you’re having and problems you have solved is not a bad way to keep notes. Even if no one reads this but me, it’s a worthy exercise!

So with the above in mind, I resolved to keep a blog and hope that I won’t embarrassingly give up after only 3 posts.

Now that introductions are over, it’s time to get cracking. First up….Learning to code — the relative merits of Codecademy and SoloLearn….