Ginger Kiwi

Exploring technology, design, and accessibility

Blog

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
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

Sep 1, 2023
Ginger Kiwi Blog Redesign - Version 3.0

It's almost time for yet another update to the Ginger Kiwi blog design. There's a semantic issue with a lot of the headings, I'd like separate pages for articles with different themes, and a dark mode. For now my focus is The Alice in Wonderland Project and job applications,
CONTINUE READING

Aug 8, 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.
CONTINUE READING

Aug 8, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 14

In March, 2023 I 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. « Programmeur - un organisme qui transforme le café en logiciel. » Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

Jul 7, 2023
The Alice in Wonderland Project Updates!

The Alice in Wonderland Project started a lot of enthusiasm, but without much planning during Hacktoberfest 2022. It's now in redevelopment as an experiential, project based learning open source software project and curriculum to help new developers learn GitHub workflows and Open Source in a supportive, social environment. Version 2.0 will be ready for new participants for Hacktoberfest in October, 2023.
CONTINUE READING

Jun 30, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 13

In March, 2023 I 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 clé d'un développement efficace est de "« faire de nouvelles erreurs intéressantes. » » Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

Jun 30, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 12

In March, 2023 I 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. « J'écris du Javascript ! Il faut faire corps avec le chaos pour écrire du Javascript » Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

Jun 23, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 11

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. Comment les non-programmeurs voient le code : *« Le code peut sembler alarmant pour les non-initiés : des «langues» impénétrables qui se lisent principalement comme une calculatrice ayant un accident vasculaire cérébral. » Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

Jun 16, 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!
CONTINUE READING

Jun 13, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 10

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 Règle 90 90: L'écriture des 90 premiers pour cent d'un programme informatique prend 90 pour cent du temps. Les dix pour cent restants prennent également 90 pour cent du temps et les touches finales prennent également 90 pour cent du temps. » Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

Jun 9, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 09

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. ~ Java est à javascript comme la voiture est à la moquette. ~ Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

Jun 2, 2023
Jumping Off a Dev Career Cliff

🦓 May was Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder Awareness Month! 🦓 To wrap things up I'm writing this more personal, but still career related post. Writing this feels a lot like submitting my first pull request as a new dev on a large public GitHub repo - like I'm jumping off a cliff on a zipline with tons of people watching.
CONTINUE READING

Jun 1, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 08

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. ~ L'écriture des 90 premiers pour cent d'un programme informatique prend 90 pour cent du temps. Les dix pour cent restants prennent également 90 pour cent du temps et les touches finales prennent également 90 pour cent du temps. ~ Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

May 26, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 07

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. ~ Mesurer les progrès de la programmation par lignes de code, c'est comme mesurer les progrès de la construction d'un avion en poids. ~ Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

May 19, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 06

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. ~ Si le débogage est le processus de suppression des bogues logiciels, alors la programmation doit être le processus de les insérer ~ Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

May 5, 2023
What's Happening With The Alice in Wonderland Project?

The Alice in Wonderland Project started without much planning during Hacktoberfest 2022. Learning GitHub workflows and how to work as part of team building a project can be intimidating and challenging for new developers. So I created an open source repo to help other new developers learn GitHub work flows, learn how to contribute to a remote team project, get involved with open source while being social and making something fun. However, I've since realized that I was actually creating something more than an open source project. It's the fledgling curriculum of a project based learning program.
CONTINUE READING

Apr 3, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 05

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. ~ Mon chat a renversé mon café sur mon clavier! ~ Read the full post for the translation, and a cute cat photo.
CONTINUE READING

Mar 31, 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).
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

Mar 24, 2023
100 Days of Code - Week 06: Days 126-130

This is a daily record of my second iteration of 100 Days of Code. This time I'm doing 5 days a week instead of 7. This is week 06 of 20 weeks. This week is a big change for gingerkiwi.blog. I got syntax highlighting with prism.js working. Now I can finish and publish all the technical articles I've been keeping in my drafts folder because the code blocks looked so icky.
CONTINUE READING

Mar 23, 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.
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

Mar 21, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 3

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. ~ Mon code NE FONCTIONNE PAS, je ne sais pas pourquoi. Mon code FONCTIONNE, je ne sais pas pourquoi. ~ Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

Mar 17, 2023
100 Days of Code - Week 05: Days 120-125 (6 Days this week!)

This is a daily record of my second iteration of 100 Days of Code. This time I'm doing 5 days a week instead of 7. This is week 05 of 20 weeks. This week I finished the Scrimba UI Design course, started Wes Bos' Command Line and Flexbox courses, and spent sometime in my Exploring CSS Layouts repo. I also dived back into Javascript on Thursday reviewing constructor functions, methods and Object.assign(). On Friday I updated the design and deployed my Yarn Help! project to my own domain at https://yarnhelp.app. Finally on Saturday I worked extensively on the Docs, including plans for future expansion.
CONTINUE READING

Mar 13, 2023
French Fridays for Developers - Week 2

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. ~ Développeur junior : Comment avez-vous trouvé le bug si facilement? ~ Développeur senior : J'étais là quand le code a été écrit. Read the full post for the translation.
CONTINUE READING

Mar 10, 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.
CONTINUE READING

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!
CONTINUE READING

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.
CONTINUE READING

Feb 23, 2023
100 Days of Code - Days 101-200

This is a daily record of my second iteration of 100 Days of Code. This time I'm doing 5 days a week instead of 7. I love the structure of 100 Days of Code, but having a break to do other things keeps coding fresh. This iteration I'm starting by focusing on UI Design and Engineering - including the nitty gritty of Figma, the fundamentals of design, and more advanced CSS including animations. As always I'm thinking about how what I'm learning impacts and interacts with accessibility.
CONTINUE READING

Feb 12, 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.
CONTINUE READING

Jan 6, 2023
UX Project Work, Massey University, 2021

This is a quick post to share a project file from my UX course at Massey University in 2021. The file is too large to upload for a job application. I'll turn this into a proper post later this month.
CONTINUE READING

Jan 6, 2023
Happy New Year

2023 is starting out awesome! I finally have my new JAMStack blog design functional. I finished my 100 Days of Code challenge at the end of December, am on my 343rd day of Duolingo French, and am almost 50% done the Scrimba Frontend Developer Career Path.
CONTINUE READING

Jan 3, 2023
Top 5 Best Practices for SaaS Marketing on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the best B2B marketing platform because of its 800 million members and professional networking focus. But it’s also one of the priciest. To get the highest ROI for your SaaS marketing budget use these top five best practices for SaaS marketing on LinkedIn. This was written as part of final stage of a job application and interviewing process in 2022.
CONTINUE READING

Dec 14, 2022
Accessibility Isn't Optional

I haven’t posted in a few days - not even about my #100DaysOfCode. I also haven’t written as much as I typically do - at least technical and web content writing. Instead, I’ve spent that time using my writing skills and energy on disability advocating and educating.
CONTINUE READING

Nov 17, 2022
Introducing Bitesize Accessibility: A New A11y Series for Developers, UX Designers, and Content Creators

Welcome to my regular article series "Bitesize Accessibility" that provides developers with quick and hopefully entertaining information on accessibility! Accessibility doesn't have to be time consuming, or complex. Learning a little every few weeks, and spending even 5 minutes every hour or two while coding can have huge payoffs.
CONTINUE READING

Nov 7, 2022
Learn GitHub Workflows and Open Source the Fun Way: The Alice in Wonderland Project

Welcome to Wonderland! Getting involved in open source and learning GitHub workflows can be intimidating and challenging for new developers. During Hacktoberfest 2022, I created an open source repo to help other new developers learn GitHub work flows, get involved with open source while being social and making something fun.
CONTINUE READING

Nov 5, 2022
The Ginger Kiwi Blog is Under Renovation: It's Time For a Complete Redesign

While the early 2022 version of this site was functional, I wasn't happy with the design. I'm currently working on a new responsive JamStack static site version of this design using 11ty and Numjucks.
CONTINUE READING

Nov 3, 2022
How Having Surgery for a Hole in My Retina Led to Teaching Myself Adobe Xd Yesterday

In 2021, I quickly learned Adobe Xd for a UX group project. However, my experience with graphic and web design is rooted in a course mixup many years before - one that was partially caused by my needing eye surgery. You never know where an experience will take you. This is one of those stories.
CONTINUE READING

May 27, 2021
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.
CONTINUE READING

Sep 10, 2020
Design Tools and Tips for Backend Developers - Part 02: How to Choose a Colour Pallet and Fonts 101

This is the second 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 how to choose a colour pallet and fonts (typography) for your app.
CONTINUE READING

Nov 21, 1999