Forem: Christine Belzie

The Birth of Shala: Creating an AI Mental Health Companion for Digital Wellness

Christine Belzie — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 04:31:52 +0000

Note: This blog post is our capstone project for Kaggle's 5-Day Gen AI Intensive Course with Google

Table of contents:

Let's Time Travel
Why the name Shala?
From Chatting to Prototyping
Making Shala human
Future Plan(s)
A good Experience
- Me
- Anjolie
- Jordan

Let's Time Travel

Think back to a time in your life where you felt so overwhelmed and wanted to talk to a professional about but decided not to out of fear of being seen as weak or a wimp by your friends and family. That quiet kind of suffering, the one that sits in your chest while you try to mask it with a smile is more common than most people admit. For instance, 50% of people who suffer from depression or other mental health illnesses opt out of seeking help due to the stigma surrounding mental health issues. This is exactly why Anjolie (@pixels2bytes), Jordan(@jordancarlin), and I created SHALA(Supportive Help Agent and Lifeline Assistant), an AI mental health chatbot designed to be there when it feels like no one else can be.

Why the name Shala?

After Anjolie, Jordan, and I decided to create a mental health chatbot, we started brainstorming names in our Discord chat. Anjolie suggested "Shala," an acronym for Supportive Help Agent and Lifeline Assistant. Initially, I hesitated, fearing the name wouldn't be unique enough. However, upon discovering that "Shala" is Sanskrit for "home", I realized it perfectly reflected our goal for users to feel a sense of home when using our chatbot. Now coming up with the app’s name is not the only thing that made Shala awesome. Join me in reminiscing on how we brought it to life.

From Chatting to Prototyping

Since we wanted Shayla to feel approachable, we went with a simple chatbot interface. Pairing a generative AI agent like Gemini with Gradio turned out to be a great fit not just for its flexibility, but because the default chatbot design had a warm, inviting feel. The soft color palette and clean layout made it easier to create a space that felt safe, not clinical. From there, we thought things were going to be a smooth ride but little did we know that we were in for a bumpy ride.

Making Shala Human

There were so many challenges that we came across when building Shala but if we had to pick one, it would be training Shala to give more empathetic responses. We dug around everywhere for datasets that were clean enough to work with and actually helped her sound like a real, caring human, not an AI robot reciting facts. This was tricky, because Gemini’s model is great at being accurate, but not so great at being emotionally aware. Trying to get it to respond with warmth instead of just precision was a real struggle. One dataset we found from GitHub seemed promising at first, but it turned out to be all over the place too inconsistent, too chaotic. It started making Shala’s responses weird and unpredictable during testing, so we had to scrap it completely. We eventually overcame this by taking the RedditESS dataset, parsing it into a more readable format and injecting it into the embedding model, helping Shala produce responses that are very heartwarming.

Future Plan(s)

In the future, Jordan, Anjolie, and I have a number of enhancements in mind to make Shala even more helpful and user-friendly. For example, we’d like to implement a feature that allows Shala to quickly and accurately identify and provide resources that are specifically relevant to the user's location. This would involve integrating geolocation services and a comprehensive database of location-based resources, enabling Shala to tailor its responses to the user's specific needs based on where they live. By providing resources that are geographically relevant, we can ensure that users receive the most appropriate and accessible care and support for their particular situation.

A Good Experience

Overall, building Shala with Jordan and Anjolie was fun. Collaborating with them not only deepened my understanding of AI and machine learning but also highlighted the profound impact that datasets can have on a chatbot's personality and user interactions. Witnessing how our chatbot evolved and adapted based on the data it was trained on was truly fascinating.
If our story got you interested in learning about Gen-AI, Google just released a self-guided version of this course. Also, If you want to see more of mine, Jordan’s and Anjolie tech adventures, follow us on dev.to and check the other links below:

Me

Christine Belzie Follow

Technical Writer| Open Source Maintainer | Coding Hobbyist

🐦 Follow me on X(Twitter)

📝 Check out my other content on Hashnode

🫱🏾‍🫲🏻 Connect with me on Linkedin

Anjolie

🐦 Follow Anjolie on GitHub

🫱🏻‍🫲🏽 Connect with Anjolie on Linkedin

Jordan

🐦 Follow Jordan on GitHub

🫱🏻‍🫲🏽 Connect with Jordan on Linkedin

If you want to learn how to use accessibility tools in your developer workflow, check out my article on @keploy’s blog

Christine Belzie — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 05:23:48 +0000

Best Practices For Using Accessibility Testing Tools

keploy ・ Mar 7

#programming #javascript #beginners #ai

If you’ve been looking for an easier way to learn about meta descriptions & how to write them, check out my latest article below ⬇️

Christine Belzie — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 07:45:35 +0000

How to Write SEO Meta Descriptions Without Losing Your Sanity

Christine Belzie ・ Mar 1

#howtodevto #beginners #writing #seo

[Boost]

Christine Belzie — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 07:38:22 +0000

How to Write SEO Meta Descriptions Without Losing Your Sanity

Christine Belzie — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 04:37:00 +0000

Picture This
What Are Meta Descriptions (And Why Should I Care?)
Method #1: The Template Approach
Method #2: Use Ahrefs
Explore More

Picture This

You’ve just finished typing the final draft of your article in Dev.to’s text editor. You’re about to click the Publish button when you spot this:

Your excitement turns into hesitation. What do I even write here? Do I just ignore it? Does it even matter? Spoiler alert: It does. In a blog post, meta descriptions are like pieces of honeycomb—sweet treats meant to attract attention. But instead of buzzing bees, you’re luring readers. I know meta descriptions might seem like a small detail to stress over, but fear not. By the end of this article, you'll know exactly how to create them without losing your mind.

What Are Meta Descriptions (And Why Should I Care?)

Meta descriptions are short summaries (typically 150-160 characters) that search engines and readers use to understand what your article is about. They’re your chance to catch the reader's eye and persuade them to click on your article’s link. Think of it like a restaurant menu: if the description doesn’t sound appealing, you’ll move on to the next dish. In the same way, if your meta description doesn’t grab attention, readers might skip your article.

Now enough talking, let's learn how to actually write them.

Method #1: The Template Approach

If you’re eager to get started but need a simple framework, try this easy-to-follow template that I created:

[Actionable Hook] + [Value Proposition] + [Call to Action]

First, create an actionable hook. It needs to be a phrase that will grab the reader’s attention and make them think, I need to read this! For example, when writing my meta description for the article “How to Add Color to Your Dev.to Article’s Code Snippets”, I came up with:

Want to make your Dev.to articles stand out?

It’s direct and appeals to beginners who want to improve their articles. Once you’ve got your hook, add your value proposition and a call to action. The value proposition tells the reader what problem your article will solve or what it will teach them, while the call to action urges them to read your post. For my code snippets tutorial, I used this phrase:

Check out this tutorial on adding color to code snippets and make your Dev.to articles pop!
Now, combine everything:

Want to make your Dev.to articles stand out? Check out this tutorial on adding color to code snippets and make your Dev.to articles pop!

And just like that, you’ve got a solid meta description. Now before you go, there’s one more method I want to show you.

Method #2: Use Ahrefs

If your brain is fried and you want a faster way to come up with a meta description, I highly recommend using Ahrefs' Meta Description Generator.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Describe your article’s topic

In the text editor, write a brief description of your article’s topic.

Step 2: Let it generate!

Click on the Generate Meta Description button. Scroll down to see a list of meta description suggestions. You can also click on the writing tone dropdown menu to change the mood of your meta description.

Step 3: Modify and paste

Choose one you like, tweak it to your liking, and paste it into your post’s meta description box.

Voila! You’ve got your meta description in no time!

Explore More

Congratulations, you’ve just learned how to write meta descriptions without getting a headache! 😊 If you're looking for other ways to optimize your articles on Dev.to or other projects, check out CTRLDev. They offer an amazing blog and services that can elevate your digital presence to the next level.

If you want to start using AI tools but don't know which one to pick, check out my review on Pieces. It might become your first AI best friend! 😊

Christine Belzie — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 15:09:16 +0000

Pieces: Your Ultimate Coding AI Best Friend

Christine Belzie ・ Jul 4 '24

#review #programming #ai #coding

If you need some inspiration for public speaking, check out this great article by Bekah from Virtual Coffee

Christine Belzie — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 14:25:43 +0000

Finding Your Voice: Why Speaking Matters in Tech

BekahHW for Virtual Coffee ・ Jan 30

#opensource #techconference #community

Lost at Sea: Navigating the Storms and Sanctuaries of My 2024 Journey

Christine Belzie — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:57:00 +0000

This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Retro’ing and Debugging 2024.

Photo by Stockcake

Whoa
Smooth sailing
- Accomplishment #1: Becoming a writer for Pieces
- Accomplishment #2: Participating in RSOD
Sinking into a sea of confusion
A Silver Lighting in Bleak Skies
Shoutouts
Footnotes

Whoa

If I were asked to use a metaphor to describe my tech journey in 2024, it would be like Odysseus sinking in the deep ocean due to exhaustion from constantly battling sea monsters. Now before I start rambling, join me in reminiscing about the wins, losses, and musings about 2025.

Smooth sailing

There were so many wins that I experienced in 2024, but I had to pick a few, it would be the following:

Accomplishment #1: Becoming a writer for Pieces

My colleague @sophyia messaged me on X(Twitter) saying that she read some of my articles on freeCodeCamp, mentioned @get_pieces¹, and thought I’d be a good fit for their content writing program. By working closely with the head of content, I gained deep knowledge about developing articles that are strategically optimized for search engines. Here are my favorite articles:

Accomplishment #2: Participating in RSOD

Over the summer I participated in Rocky Summer of Docs(RSOD)². It’s where people win $200 for writing three-five tutorials for the GNOME Desktop section of the Rocky Linux’s documentation site. Here are few tutorials I have written:

Through this experience, I not only learned the power of Linux but also how to work with a virtual machine, something that can greatly serve me in the future.At this point, things were sailing smoothly. Little did I know that a big storm was about to hit.

Sinking into a sea of confusion

It was July, and I was just finishing writing my weekly tweet buildspace’s nights and weekends challenge. Then out of nowhere, I started feeling very sleepy. Me being the fighter, I thought I just need a little break from blogging, open source, job searching, and tweeting to be my energetic self. Well that little break turned into a long vacation for the rest of 2024. During that rest, I found myself feeling unmotivated to post or do anything related to open source and blogging. I even came to the sad realization that my dream to being a full time technical writer is not possible for me at this moment. 😢

A Silver Lighting in Bleak Skies

Since having my sad realization, I’ve been doing some soul searching an idea came to my head. I remember a close relative suggesting to pursue a career in IT and brushing it off because I didn’t think it would help me with becoming a technical writer. I decided to give it another shot this time around. So after doing some research on IT HelpDesk position, I jumped for joy! 🥹 This role has the skills that I can transfer in a full time technical writing position. I know there will be more tough seas ahead in making this shift but with persistence and faith, I’m determined to continue sailing! ⛵️ 😊

Shoutouts

Topic Sentence: As I always like to say, “There’s no u in group”. Here are some people I would like to thank for their help:

Thank you @elliezub for being a great colleague, fellow technical writer, and creating awesome work about Pieces
Thank you @anmolbaranwal for inspiring to a bit more adventurous with my blogging! 😊
Merci beaucoup @thomasbnt for being an awesome coding buddy! 😊

If you want to stay updated on my journey, follow me on Dev.to and check out my other social links below 👇:

🐦 Follow me on X(Twitter)

📝 Check out my other content on Hashnode

🫱🏾‍🫲🏻 Connect with me on Linkedin

Footnotes

Pieces is an awesome AI tool that improves your development workflow. It’s like having a coding AI best friend. 😊 If you want to learn more about it, check out my review ↩
Rocky Linux started this initiative after being inspired by Google Summer of Docs. Check out their websiteto learn more. ↩

The Power of Custom Merchandise: 4 Ways to Elevate Your Brand Identity

Christine Belzie — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 04:48:01 +0000

Importance of Brand identity

When it comes to the role a company’s brand plays in its identity, Ashley Friedlein, the founder of Guild, aptly states,

Brand is the sum total of how someone perceives a particular organization. Branding is about shaping that perception

In other words, a company’s brand is crucial in people’s decision to buy their products. One effective way to shape and enhance this perception is through selling custom merchandise. Custom merch includes a wide variety of items such as t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, hoodies, purses, shoes, and towels, essentially anything you can think of. If you're still hesitant about selling custom merch and its impact, don't worry. This article will discuss 4 ways custom merch can transform your company’s brand identity, making it more relatable and memorable to your customers.

1. Increases Brand Visibility

Whether it’s Supabase’s anime-inspired t-shirts or GitHub’s tote bags, custom merch can help create a sense of unity and belonging among customers, employees, and supporters of your brand. It also serves as an excellent tool for introducing people to your brand. In fact, 85% of people remember the companies that gave them branded merchandise. For instance, when I first started my open source journey in 2022, I heard about Hacktoberfest because they offer t-shirts to participants who merge four pull requests. This sparked my curiosity, and through learning more about the event, I quickly realized it was a fantastic way to improve my technical skills and engage with the open source community. Increasing brand visibility is just one of the ways custom merch can transform your company’s identity. Let’s explore another powerful benefit.

2. Strengthens Customer Loyalty

Offering custom merch or exclusive designs for brand advocates and customers as a reward for their loyalty creates a sense of belonging. For example, when Spleet Africa decided to use WiiCreate to provide merch to loyal customers, the CEO mentioned that the majority of stakeholders and the customers [who] received their merch felt like they were a part of the company’s community. I can attest to this as I found that I continued participating in GitLab’s monthly hackathons after winning two of their t-shirts. It makes me feel like I belonged to the community, which increased my motivation to contribute to their repositories. Now before you start rewarding your customers. Let’s look at another way custom merch can transform your company’s brand identity.

3. Amplifies Marketing Efforts

Custom merch is a powerful, real-life marketing tool that can significantly enhance your company's promotional efforts. In fact, more than 50% of consumers have a favorable impression of an company after receiving a promotional product. For example, I decided to follow Supabase’s X(Twitter) account and participate in their t-shirt giveaway after reading their blog post about one of their customers. It gave me the impression that Supabase is a fun organization that strives to make tech more inviting for people from all backgrounds. Now before you go, there’s just one more way custom merch can transform your company’s brand identity.

4. Fosters Authenticity

As cliche as the saying ”Authenticity wins” is, people do tend to respond positively towards a company’s merch when it is promoted in a genuine, non-salesy manner. In fact, 28% of customers find brands to be memorable when they highlight the stories of their audience using their products over the products themselves. For example, when Ramp, a custom t-shirt company, conducted their sales email campaign, they got around $10K in total revenue by presenting funny stories about themselves and their potential clients’ logos in a humorous way.

Embrace the transformation

Whether it strengthens your customers’ loyalty, amplifies marketing, makes your company more authentic, and increases its brand’s visibility, having custom merch can be the very tool that transforms your company’s identity. If you’re eager to explore more ways to leverage custom merch for your brand, check out the article, “Revolutionizing Your Brand: The Power of Custom Business Merchandise” and consider partnering with WiiCreate for stress-free custom merch creation. Additionally, follow my blog for more tech-related content and check out my socials on Linktree to connect with me.

Pieces: Your Ultimate Coding AI Best Friend

Christine Belzie — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 18:40:46 +0000

Time to be honest
Is Pieces candy?
Pieces: the code catcher
Pieces: the code’s pokédex
Pieces: the time traveler
Things to improve and add in the future
Now it’s your turn
Credits
Footnotes

Time to be honest

I have a confession to make. I struggle with describing the code snippets I use in my technical articles. I know, I know, it’s shocking, but all hope isn’t lost. For the past few months, I have been using this awesome tool to help me overcome this struggle. This, my friend, is called Pieces. I first learned about it from my friend, @sophyia, a former DevRel at the company. She asked me to join their guest writing program after reading my articles on freeCodeCamp's website. I’m a believer in trying a product before writing about it. So, I decided to download the desktop app and install the Chrome extension to see what it’s about. After a few days of using it, I was hooked. Now before I start sharing more tech confessions, let me tell you what exactly Pieces is.

Is Pieces candy?

As delicious Reese’s Pieces is, this type of Pieces is not something you can eat. It is actually an free AI tool that assists when you are coding.Think of it as a technical Tinkerbell from Peter Pan¹. If you want to learn more about what Pieces can do, check out their short intro video here ⬇️

Now that you two have met, let me show you how I use Pieces in my workflow.

Pieces: the code catcher

In the past, I’d save code snippets that I wanted to use in my blog posts with the Chrome browser's bookmark feature. Unfortunately, I’d either scramble through so many tabs or the Bookmarks tab to find them. This left me with a headache. Once I started using Pieces’ web extension, I had a much easier time finding my saved code snippets. Here’s how.

Step one: Highlight a line of code

Step two: Right-click and pick the option, Save to Pieces.

Step three: Go to Saved Snippets area of the Desktop app

And viola, a saved code snippet! It's like a technical version of a Pokeball for catching Pokemon²!😊 Pretty cool right? 😉

Now before I start rambling about this feature, there's another one I want to show you! 😀

Pieces: the code’s pokédex³

In the Desktop app, there’s a feature called Copilot chat. It’s like the Pokedex but for coding! 😀

I tend to use it if I’m struggling with fixing a line of code I’m creating for my open source contributions or projects. For example, I was working on the JavaScript file for my 404 page project.

CBID2 / 404-page

This is the 404 page I built for Codedex’s monthly challenge

404-page

Description

This is my submission for Codedex’s February monthly challenge.

The Challenge

The goal is to redesign their website's 404 page.

Inspiration

Since Codedex's website design is video game themed, I thought back to my childhood and how I'd get annoyed whenever I saw a Please Standby warning while playing games like Pokemon Silver on my Game Boy Color, so I decided to bring this experience to my submission for the challenge.

The Result

View Demo

Credits

Sad face by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
Cursor pointer by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

View on GitHub

I wanted to reference a line of code from that file in the project's README but I was struggling to describe it. After doing some mental ping pong, I typed my code in the copilot chat and asked for some for help:

In the above screenshot, the copilot explains that my code snippet selects the search input field and search button elements from the webpage. It also mentions that after the user clicks on the search button, the event listener sends the user to their desired section of Codedex's website. Even though I didn’t win the challenge, I did win in knowledge! 😀

Pieces: the time traveler

In the Pieces Copilot, there is a new feature called Live Context. It looks back at the content you recently viewed. It's kind of like a time machine minus the risks of changing people’s futures or causing them to not exist. Now before I start rambling on about the cons of time traveling, let’s see how it works⁴:

Click on the New Chat button.

Turn on the Live Context toggle.⁵

Then, type your question or idea in the chat or use the Suggested Prompts.

As shown in the screenshot above, I’ve made it to the writing stage of my technical article. In the past, I would rely on my brain to remember what I’ve written, which gets annoying. Once I started using the Live Context feature, it was easier for me to track my progress. This feature is also helpful if you are looking through files in a large codebase. For example, I was reviewing an issue for an open source project, but I was not sure which files needed the changes. So I went to the Copilot chat, typed “Where can I make add the canonical links?”, and got this response:

This, I got advice on how to structure the canonical link and where to place them. All in all, the new Live Context feature is awesome. Need more tips? check out the @get_pieces team’s blog post, 20 Novel AI Prompts Made Possible Only by Pieces Copilot+.

Things to improve and add in the future

As much as I found Pieces enjoyable to use, there are some aspects of the tool that can use some improvement. Having to turn on the Live Context switch each time I start a chat on the Desktop app can get a bit tedious. So it would be beneficial to have the option to toggle the button on or off once. Also, the Co-pilot chat feature does not have a text-to-speech option. This can make it difficult for users with low motor skills to read the AI's long responses. Furthermore, adding this option would make reading these responses more bearable.

In the future, it would be awesome if there is a mobile version of the Desktop app. I sometimes work on my blog posts on my tablet, so having this would make it easier for me to finish them, especially if I’m away from my laptop.

Now it’s your turn

There you have it folks, my product review of Pieces! Whether you are a technical writer or a developer, it is a great tool that improves your workflow. Also, the people at the company receptive to feedback and works fast to address your concerns. Overall, I recommend adding Pieces to your tech stack. Now enough of me talking, click on the links below to download the tool, join the community, connect with me, and start working! 🙂

Install Pieces 🤖
🤝 Join Pieces' Community
Check out my Linktree 🌐

Credits

Pokedex GIF by 1jps

Pokemon GIF by ruined childhood

Footnotes

This is a fairytale about a forever young boy would takes a group of British children to his home island, Neverland ↩
Pokémon is a popular anime from the 90’s. It's where children catch animals with powers and train them for fights. ↩
Pokédex is a tool that the characters in Pokémon use to track information about the creatures they catch, such as their names, powers, weaknesses, etc. ↩
The Linux version of this feature will be released soon. With that in mind, this brief tutorial is macOs-focused. If you need more help, check out the Live Context section of Pieces’ documentation. ↩
Make sure that you enable the Workstream Pattern Engine enabled to gather the context first. To learn more about this, check out this section of the Live Context tutorial ↩

Bytes: The Meal That Makes Your Computer Feast Like Crazy

Christine Belzie — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 04:27:23 +0000

_This is a submission for DEV Computer Science Challenge v24.06.12: One Byte Explainer._

Explainer

A byte is a basic unit of info made of 8 bits. These are like crumbs for your computer. Bits come together and become complex files like ingredients in a recipe becoming a tasty meal. Overall, bytes give your computer a digital feast every single time! :)

Two Flags, One Country, Same Message

Christine Belzie — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 19:39:40 +0000

*Note: _This is my submission for this month's CSS Art challenge on Dev.to *

Table of content:

What I built
Demo
Struggles
My overall feelings about this challenge
Footnotes

What I built

When I think of June, Caribbean Heritage Month¹ comes to mind. I noticed that Haiti is often underrepresented during this time, so for this CSS art challenge, I decided to draw two versions of the Haitian flag and describe its history to educate people about the country.

Demo

View the source code here:

CBID2 / Haitian-flag

This is my submission for Dev.to's CSS Art challenge

Haitian-flag

Description

This is my submission for Dev.to's CSS Art challenge. The goal is to draw what comes to my mind when it comes to the month of June.

Inspiration

In the U.S., June is Caribbean Heritage month. During this time, I noticed that Haiti is often underrepresented, so I decided to create two versions of the country's flag to educate others about its history. To learn more about our creation process, check out my post on Dev.to.

The Result

You can see the final result here.

Credits

Coat of arms of Haiti.svg by FXXXderivative work: Thommy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Lokal_Profil and Myriam Thyes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Flag and Coat of Arms
The History of Haitian Flag Day

View on GitHub

Struggles

A major challenge that I faced in this challenge was working on the 1964 version of the Haitian flag. First, I duplicated the HTML code that I did for the present version:

<div class="flag-color-one"></div>
  <div class="coat-of-arms"></div>
  <div class="flag-color-two"></div>
</div>
<p class="flag-slogan"> L'Union fait la force! </p>

Then, I tried giving the CSS a unique touch by only adding code for the code of arms:

/* code  for first Haitian Flag */
.1964-flag-color-one {
  background-color: black;
  flex: 1;
}

Unfortunately the design didn't change:

I was on the verge of giving up, but then I reminded myself: "Would Haiti have gained its reputation as the first Black republic if figures like Jean-Jacques Dessalines² had given up?". Feeling a new surge of confidence, I started brainstorming more ideas. Then, a question popped into my head: "Why not try wrapping the code for both flags in their own container?". At first, I used the <div> element, but to make the code more accessible, I switched to the <section> element:

  <!-- Previous flag (1964) -->
<section class="flag-container flag-1964">
  <section class="flag-1964-color-one"></section>
  <section class="coat-of-arms-1964"></section>
  <section class="flag-1964-color-two"></section>
</section>

Then, I placed its CSS in its own section:

/* Code for 1964 flag */
    .flag-1964 .flag-1964-color-one {
      background-color: black;
      flex: 1;
    }

    .flag-1964 .flag-1964-color-two {
      background-color: #ce1126;
      flex: 1;
    }

After that, the design worked! :)

You tell them Quan! :) ³

My overall feelings about this challenge

This challenge was fun! :) I not only worked on my CSS skills, but also learned more about Haiti. If you want to see more of my coding adventures, follow me on Dev.to and check my other links below:

Me

Christine Belzie Follow

Technical Writer| Open Source Maintainer | Coding Hobbyist

🐦 Follow me on X(Twitter)

📝 Check out my other content on Hashnode

🫱🏾‍🫲🏻 Connect with me on Linkedin

Footnotes

In the U.S., Caribbean-Americans celebrate and educate others about their culture, and highlight the impact the island had on the country. If you want to learn more about this holiday, check out their website. ↩
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was the first emperor of Haiti and the leader in the Haitian Revolution. To learn more about him, check out his biography ↩
This is a GIF called dynasty warriors success by wifflegif ↩

Forem: Christine Belzie

The Birth of Shala: Creating an AI Mental Health Companion for Digital Wellness

Let's Time Travel

Why the name Shala?

From Chatting to Prototyping

Making Shala Human

Future Plan(s)

A Good Experience

Me

Christine Belzie Follow

Anjolie

Jordan

If you want to learn how to use accessibility tools in your developer workflow, check out my article on @keploy’s blog

Best Practices For Using Accessibility Testing Tools

keploy ・ Mar 7

If you’ve been looking for an easier way to learn about meta descriptions & how to write them, check out my latest article below ⬇️

How to Write SEO Meta Descriptions Without Losing Your Sanity

Christine Belzie ・ Mar 1

[Boost]

How to Write SEO Meta Descriptions Without Losing Your Sanity

Table of Contents

Picture This

What Are Meta Descriptions (And Why Should I Care?)

Method #1: The Template Approach

Method #2: Use Ahrefs

Explore More

If you want to start using AI tools but don't know which one to pick, check out my review on Pieces. It might become your first AI best friend! 😊

Pieces: Your Ultimate Coding AI Best Friend

Christine Belzie ・ Jul 4 '24

If you need some inspiration for public speaking, check out this great article by Bekah from Virtual Coffee

Finding Your Voice: Why Speaking Matters in Tech

BekahHW for Virtual Coffee ・ Jan 30

Lost at Sea: Navigating the Storms and Sanctuaries of My 2024 Journey

Table of Contents

Whoa

Smooth sailing

Accomplishment #1: Becoming a writer for Pieces

Accomplishment #2: Participating in RSOD

Sinking into a sea of confusion

A Silver Lighting in Bleak Skies

Shoutouts

Footnotes

The Power of Custom Merchandise: 4 Ways to Elevate Your Brand Identity

Importance of Brand identity

1. Increases Brand Visibility

2. Strengthens Customer Loyalty

3. Amplifies Marketing Efforts

4. Fosters Authenticity

Embrace the transformation

Pieces: Your Ultimate Coding AI Best Friend

Table of Contents

Time to be honest

Is Pieces candy?

Pieces: the code catcher

Pieces: the code’s pokédex3

CBID2 / 404-page

This is the 404 page I built for Codedex’s monthly challenge

404-page

Description

The Challenge

Inspiration

The Result

Credits

Pieces: the time traveler

Things to improve and add in the future

Now it’s your turn

Credits

Footnotes

Bytes: The Meal That Makes Your Computer Feast Like Crazy

Explainer

Two Flags, One Country, Same Message

What I built

Demo

CBID2 / Haitian-flag

This is my submission for Dev.to's CSS Art challenge

Haitian-flag

Description

Inspiration

The Result

Credits

Pieces: the code’s pokédex³