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Happy Coding (With Cats)!

Grey long haired cat peaking up over a laptop screen. The screen has a Git merging exercise on it and multiple tabs open. There's a set of white bookcases in the background. Some have solid doors, some have glass doors.

Welcome to the Ginger Kiwi Blog! This site is developed with 11ty/Eleventy, Nunjucks, markdown, Obsdian, and css with css variables for colours and fonts - and of course lots of "help" from Boo (my grey cat), as well as Maybel and Kitten. Scroll down to see some of my recent and featured articles, or go the the blog page to see all my articles.

Updates for Fall 2023

It's past time for a redesign of the Ginger Kiwi blog. The new gingerkiwi.dev site combines this blog with over two years of writing, with a developer portfolio, while adding a ton of new features, and improving the accessibility. Read the update articles below to learn more.

Nov 13, 2023: Visit https://gingerkiwi-2024.fly.dev to see the new combined, fullstack, Ginger Kiwi blog and dev portfolio being built in public on Fly.io using Astro, Docker, and SQLite3!

Recent Articles

New Astro Site Updates and Plans

Earlier this month I started the long overdue process of combining my .dev and .blog sites into a single full-stack site with improved accessibility, article collections, an RSS, and reader features. As of Sunday evening, the new site is currently live at: https://gingerkiwi-2024.fly.dev, and the backend is working. Readers can now like posts. Continue reading to learn of plans and when it should be live on www.GingerKiwi.dev
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Nov 27, 2023
Building in Public: The Social Saturday Group Debugging Episode

Earlier this month I started the long overdue process of combining my .dev and .blog sites into one full-stack site with improved accessibility, collections, and reader features. During a 4 hour "Group Debugging Party" on the Creatures.dev discord today, the issues caused by updates to drizzle were solved.
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Nov 25, 2023
Audiobooks for Developers 01: The Country of the Blind by Andrew Lealand

This is part of my "Monday Motivation Podcasts and Audiobooks for Devs" series on LinkedIn. It's also an extension of the article "Fifteen Podcasts for Developers to Enjoy" I wrote earlier in 2023. The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland is both the story of the author gradually becoming blind, and the history and current developments of blind culture and technological innovation. Innovation by blind hackers and makers and the disability community that rose in the 1970s around Berkley University, helped grow Silicon Valley, tech in general, and Artificial Intelligence.
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Nov 20, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - 017

In March, 2023 started French for Devs Fridays to celebrate getting to 400 days on Duolingo. Here you'll find weekly useful and/or amusing French phrases for developers. « Pour ceux qui jouent au WCAG Bingo à la maison, ... » ~ Ben Myers. Read the full post for the translation and quote.
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Nov 17, 2023
Quick Accessibility Tips for Developers - With Cats and Coffee Themed Code Examples - Part 2: Links Within Pages

Coding with accessibility in mind can be intimidating if you're not familiar with the needs of disabled, neurodiverse, Deaf/deaf, and hard of hearing users. Here is a quick tip on in-page links to help with longer pages like blog posts.
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Nov 15, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - 018

In March, 2023 started French for Devs Fridays to celebrate getting to 400 days on Duolingo. Here you'll find weekly useful and/or amusing French phrases for developers. « Le débogage, c'est comme être un détective dans un film policier où vous êtes aussi le meurtrier » ~ Anonyme. Read the full post for the translation.
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Nov 11, 2023
A Handful of Quick Accessibility Tips for Developers - With Cats and Coffee Themed Code Examples

Coding with accessibility in mind can be intimidating if you're not familiar with the needs of disabled, neurodiverse, Deaf/deaf, and hard of hearing users. Here are five tips to get you started in making your sites accessible for users and learning how to implement the basics of WCAG.
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Nov 8, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - 017

In March, 2023 started French for Devs Fridays to celebrate getting to 400 days on Duolingo. Here you'll find weekly useful and/or amusing French phrases for developers. « Traitez votre mot de passe comme votre brosse à dents. Ne laissez personne d’autre l’utiliser et achetez-en un nouveau tous les six mois. » ~ Clifford Stoll. Read the full post for the translation.
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Nov 3, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - 016

In March, 2023 started French for Devs Fridays to celebrate getting to 400 days on Duolingo. Here you'll find weekly useful and/or amusing French phrases for developers. « La période d’adaptation de la programmation solo à la programmation collaborative a été comme manger un piment. La première fois que vous l’essayerez, vous ne l’aimerez peut-être pas parce que vous n’y êtes pas habitué. Mais plus vous en mangez, plus vous l’appréciez. » ~ Anonyme. Read the full post for the translation.
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Sep 29, 2023
Data Structures and Algorithms: Javascript Arrays #01

It's time to go down the data structures and algorithms (dsa) rabbit hole. But let's make things more fun - no "foo" and "bar" here! This is a series of pet and Alice in Wonderland themed DSA articles. We're starting with the basics of arrays in Javascript.
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Sep 10, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - 015

In March, 2023 started French for Devs Fridays to celebrate getting to 400 days on Duolingo. Here you'll find weekly useful and/or amusing French phrases for developers. « La confusion fait partie de la programmation »> ~ Felienne Hermans. Read the full post for the translation.
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Sep 8, 2023
Data Structures and Algorithms: Javascript Arrays #02

It's time to go down the data structures and algorithms (dsa) rabbit hole. But let's make things more fun - no "foo" and "bar" here! This is a series of pet and Alice in Wonderland themed DSA articles. We're starting with the basics of arrays in Javascript.
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Sep 1, 2023
Design Tools and Tips for Backend Developers - Part 01: Finding Design Files and Figma to Code 101

This is the first in a series of articles on tips and tricks for web and app design - both for backend dev, and new developers. Every time I get in a discussion with backend or sometimes full-stack devs that prefer the backend, they say that one reason they prefer backend is that they're "not good at design". However, with a few simple tools and tips even those scared of design can become more comfortable in designing good looking apps. Today we're looking at where to find Figma design files and then how to quickly use them to get started coding.
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Aug 8, 2023
Creating a Simple Desktop Layout in CSS with Just an H1 and One Paragraph

This is one of many articles written before I had prism.js code block highlighting added. ... For the past couple of weeks I've been focusing on improving my css and design skills by doing Gary Simon's UI Design course on Scrimba.com. Today, I finished building a simple layout that started with just one level 1 heading and a single sentance paragraph. It's amazing how much can be done with so little html, an image from unsplash.com and a bit of css!
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Jun 13, 2023
Yarn Help! Gets a Doctor Who Scarf Page.

Over the weekend I expanded my Yarn Help! website https://yarnhelp.app to include calculations for the number of balls of yarn needed for scarfs, cat mats, and baby blankets. I also added a [Doctor Who Scarf page](https://yarnhelp.app/doctorwho.html).
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Mar 28, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 04

To celebrate getting to 400 days on Duolingo French at the beginning of March, 2023 I've started French for Devs Fridays. Here you'll find useful and/or amusing French phrases for developers. ~ En cas d'incendie: git commit, git push, bâtiment de sortie. ~ Read the full post for the translation.
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Mar 24, 2023
Fifteen Podcasts for Devs to Enjoy

Andrew Clarkson, cohost of Loonie Engineering with Chris Naismith, admitted this week that he doesn't listen to podcasts and asked for some recommendations. I'm an avid podcast listener and have had this article on the back burner for ages. So Andrew's LinkedIn post is the carrot to get this article out. Here's 15 podcasts for devs to enjoy. Five are tech related, five podcasts with engaging stories and interesting facts for curious dev minds, and five are about other cities and countries - including of course Aotearoa New Zealand.
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Mar 22, 2023
What Amazing Leadership Looks Like - A Thank You to My First Ever Retail Manager "Namroo"

I had a couple of quite negative experiences last night. One I have to continue to deal with sometime today. However, I want to start the day on a positive note with sharing a story about the amazing person who was my first retail manager, Namroo. As I was only 13 years old, I was expecting to just be sweeping and mopping floors and cleaning up at the corner shop. Instead, this amazing man with over 40 years of retail management experience treated me like an apprentice. I got trained on every single last part of grocery retail. He's had a life-long impact on me.
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Mar 21, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 1

To celebrate getting to 400 days on Duolingo French this week I'm starting French for Devs Fridays. Here you'll find useful and/or amusing French phrases for developers. This first week is a translated quote from Harry Porter-Mills, Head of Technology & Infrastructure at Relay Platform, on Toronto JS Slack. L’interface utilisateur est née de l’esprit d’un développeur Java travaillant sur une machine Windows au début des années 2000. Read the full post for the translation.
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Mar 3, 2023
Happy International Wheelchair Day 2023!

International Wheelchair Day is an annual global event that started in 2008 to celebrate the positive impacts that wheelchairs have had on wheelchair users' lives. For fellow developers, and engineers this may not be a coding article, but it's still relevant for us. Disabled people are our coworkers and peers as well as users of our apps, websites, and software. Also, wheelchairs are a huge awesome technical feat of engineering and design. Did you know that electric wheelchairs and power assist add ons for active user manual wheelchairs often have connected software and apps? Plus, I included a free dev resource at the end of the article!
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Mar 1, 2023
Good vs Great Design: UX and Mobility Aids

On January 21, 2023 I volunteered at #A11yTOCamp at Microsoft here in Toronto. With the event's focus on accessibility there were many people with visible mobility aids. This led to many conversations about design and mobility aids. Great design and user experience isn't just about a product being functional and usable, it should be aesthetically pleasing and bring joy to users. This is true for both digital and physical products. The main inspiration for this article is to have one place to share some of the great designed, beautiful and/or cool mobility aids with others, and to discuss this through the lens of design.
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Feb 23, 2023
I Just Added My Past Retail Sales and Management Experience Back to My LinkedIn

This past November 2022, I did a major refresh of my LinkedIn profile. One of the biggest issues was that I started working in grade 7. So based on my work experience it looked like I'm almost at retirement age! However, I've realized that leaving my retail experience out is leaving out many of the skills I've used and built on since then.
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Jan 6, 2023
Five Free and Cheap Ways to Improve Your Geospatial Technology Skills and Learn GIS to Advance Your Career

You don’t have to spend a lot of money or go back to university or college to learn or improve your GIS and Geospatial Technology Skills. Article published on GoGeomatics Canada's digital magazine in the Education and Careers section.
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Sep 10, 2020