Forem: O.T.A

Dear Friends, Followers, and Readers

O.T.A — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 22:49:05 +0000

It has been a long minute.

A break from all things blogging, writing, and programming in general.

I have been working on a lot of projects, some C.S. related others hobby related.

I wrote something about all of this on a different platform.

Sometimes we all need breaks.

So I am writing this to you.

Dear Friend

Effective Tips for Sharing Programming Knowledge with Others

O.T.A — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 12:02:54 +0000

One of my friends/colleagues in my Intro to Cs class was trying to find out a way to convert the normal Unicode U+1F600 into pythons Unicode \u1F600. They had all of this code, like 20 different if, else, elif statements and so many variables and all these different types of constraints ( If you reading this, sorry? Please don't come for me lol :/ ).

There is only one way of converting those values and putting them into Unicode, and that is through the chr(input_code_here,input_base_here) element. If you're interested in a more in-depth blog on all of this, Unicode, Binary, Hexadecimal, and other number bases, tell me in the comments.

Anyways, I then tried to figure out the solution, looked online and got the general idea and code, explained it through comments then sent it to them.

But here's the thing, the person still didn't understand it, and that's because I didn't go and show them and give them the solution. And that's the first tip.

1. Physically help the person

Yeah I know, some of us are introverts and rather be alone in a dungeon 200ft underground miles away from human connection. That might be on the more extreme side. But really if we stop and show and explain how we got that solution and the mind process we did to get to that point, it is extremely helpful for that person to get a better understanding of it.

For example, one of your friends has been stuck on a math problem, doing everything to figure it out. They then ask you, and you find the answer and give it to them with no explanation. Know they have the answer but no idea of how it got there and how to show all the steps. Only providing the answer without explaining and physically helping will never be the best way to learn from their mistakes.

2. Using Visuals

Using Visuals is probably the best way of getting hard-to-grasp concepts into your brain.

reading this

clearly one is easier to understand and quickly get info from.

3. Working in Groups

In general, this is the best way to get ideas flowing and get multiple heads banging to get to the root of errors and argue and complement ways of how to get that problem fixed. Almost like a software engineering team where you all have different ways of doing things but need to come out with one idea saved and one idea to use.

In all, Working in groups, Visualizing, and In-person explanations are key to helping someone else understand harder-to-grasp things or things they get wrong multiple times

If you liked this blog you might like my other blog on Intro to Computers and Data Science, where I go into depth on what the class is and the main concepts I learned, you can find it by clicking here

If you liked this give it a reaction, so I can know if you want more like this blog

Thanks!

Forget about SEO: Focus on What Really Matters

O.T.A — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 03:11:00 +0000

and stop caring about the money part ( as long as it's not your job obviously ), here is why.

It adds resistance

When you are starting with blogging, you most likely want to get views on your blog ( wow ). So you go on google, and YouTube searching how to get lots of views on my blog.

You then get lost in other blogs, where they say you need to do these 27 easy steps to get your first 1000 views or you need to buy our template for optimal blog structure and organization.

Then there is SEO, where you try to compete with all these other blogs of the same topic to be the first link on google, and don't even get started on google analytics.

I am not hating on SEO, I use SEO all the time to get more views on my blog, my self, but rather it can be a barrier for lots of people to just get to writing their blog. Sometimes we don't want to make blogs on, the top 10 websites to learn JS on, but rather do some blogs on our small projects and other things that the algorithm doesn't necessarily like the most.

In all, it's sort of pointless if you are pushing off writing to focus so much on SEO.

You have to plan

Its the most dreaded part of blogging, planning:

You have to plan the date, the series, the thumbnail, the tags, the audience you want to hit, the things you want to write, etc.

It's something I know I will never master and something I did for a while on hashnode and dev.to, would not recommend it.

No one should be planning this hard, it just adds more stress and makes it feel like a burden. This can stop people from uploading blogs, and actually improving their skills in online writing.

A rule of thumb I like to say is, that everyone should, first of all, make a higher quantity of blogs that take a shorter time than make higher quality blogs that take months.

This is supposed to be a journey. Yes, you see all of these high-quality blogs, and they are getting it out on consistent bases, but these people are teams and professionals who have been doing it much longer than you. Don't get discouraged you will learn as you continue.

The whole point of blogging is to write and bring your ideas and knowledge more assessable to people. It's meant to inspire and create. For some like me, it's an outlet to share ideas and projects. Don't get consumed by SEO.

I blundered.

O.T.A — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 14:01:01 +0000

Blogs on dev.to, are starting to get to clickbaity and unoriginal ie.10 ways to make money through blogging, 2 ways to, 30 things too. Its all the same thing over and over again.

And I thought I could change that, by bring in original blogs, and still grow at the same time.

But everything need to be SEO optimized, and its only those unoriginal, information blogs that look good.

I don't know if there is really any point in continuing this blog, if I have to do things like that for SEO optimization.

I don't know what I am going to do.

Productivity Hacks: Organizing Your Gmail for Maximum Efficiency

O.T.A — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 02:28:50 +0000

This was supposed be posted a a month ago, but I didn't feel okay with posting it originally because I felt it was to clickbaity. Anyways I hope you all like

-- Go to my hashnode blog, to get a audio version --

There is one thing, that will help you with email organization. And that is Labels.

Gmail can be messy, having newsletters, ads, updates, your teacher emailing you, GitHub Authentication, etc. So in this blog, I will guide you through the steps to getting a clean organized Gmail, where you can easily see emails for certain things.

1. Unsubscribing from old services

This might be an obvious step, but many do overlook it.

It’s extremely important to delete and unsubscribe from old services/newsletters/and app update notifications.

For example, I have been getting emails from a chess tournament I used to join.

With this, I would un-subscribe. I then went on to mass delete, by copying the email address, then clicking the delete icon.

2. Labels

There are 2 ways of doing Labels

Having only folders:

Or Having a folder with subfolders:

To create these labels, all, you do is click the + button next to labels, for different sections of your email. If you’re going for a subfolder direction then I would go with a 3-section folder structure.

1. Personal/Life ( or for me, emails from colleges )
2. School/Work/Freelancing 
3. Other ( things that don't really fit in the first 2 )

To organizes all of your former inbox emails into these folders, we have to use filters.

There are a few ways of creating filters, but the easiest way is from the actual email you are looking for.

To get started, all we have to do is click the 3 dotted bar on the top of the email:

Then click Filter messages like these.

From there once you input all the things you want to be inputted, click the grey create filter button.

On this screen there are 3 things you need the filter to do:

Prevent these types of emails from piling up in your inbox
Put emails like these under your created folders ( labels )
Have it be applied to the rest of the emails with the same email address

So, 
Skip the inbox ( Archive it ) ✓
Apply the label: Label_Name ✓
Also apply filter to matching conversations ✓

And there you go, less pilling up emails all organized into a folder structure.

If you continue doing this for the rest of your emails, you get to a concept called Inbox Zero, and that’s what this all is, Make your Inbox say No new mail!

Final Thoughts

This blog is a little bit different from what I have posted in the past, though if you like this sort of productivity tutorials blogs, consider reacting to let me know. Or if you didn’t write to me in the comments.

If you might like my former blog post On 4 Apps, that help you study smarter

Or If you are up for a coding challenge consider trying my 52 weeks of code challenge

Count Down to Saturday

O.T.A — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 17:37:10 +0000

Some times my blogs get into the 200+ views and some of them ( well more than 50% of them) don't even past the 25 views threshold.

I know why, its got to do with marketing and blog titles. For blogs that I got hundreds of views on, half of all the viewership was from All external referrers

half of this viewership was from discord, where I would be uploading my blogs into every self-promote section I could.

But I realized:

I will not be able to keep it up
I am barely making any views from each of these discord channels, as that I was in more than 50 averaging about 3 to 2 views, it wasn't very ethical

So I stopped doing that, and really tried to go to channels for a target audience, though in all it did lower my views

And the there was the titles.

I don't want to make the clickbaity, useless information titles on how to add 1 + 1 in JavaScript of how to create a square in CSS. I want to bring content that is useful to me.

But that also means, that my page cant compete with all of these other blogs, that get clicks with these dumb titles.

O.T.A

If you want to read some more rambles like these, consider following, and giving a reaction.

Mid terms are over

O.T.A — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 18:09:31 +0000

Know it's time to grid.

Some stuff to look out for in the upcoming months.

Notion AI blogs
Productivity blogs
Python Blogs
UI/UX Blogs

If you have anything you want to add please type them in the comments, or if you're on discord DM me :).

Other stuff

Do any of you think 3d blender blogs would work here if they were coding-based.

Can't wait for this to happen

If you want a audio version consider going to my hashnode version of this blog, that which has it built in: (Mid terms are over)[]

My portfolio?

O.T.A — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 20:21:11 +0000

This is my portfolio

Folio
4 months in the making, ( most of that time I was procrastinating )

Followers, judge this site out of 10, I want to know if its any good.

What is ICDS? : the class part

O.T.A — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 14:42:04 +0000

ICDS or Intro to computers and data science

Was a class I took last semester ( though I am writing and probably publishing this blog still during the first semester ), where well, we learned about computers and data science. The main reason I took this class is so that I could get 0.5 of my credits in for cs then next semester I would take intro to programming to get that other 0.5. All, in turn, to eventually be able to take AP CS.

That was sort of a ramble, let's get into the ideas/things I learned throughout the class

The overarching ideas

There were many different ideas, topics, and lessons.

But these were the main ones:

Problem-Solving: this is probably the most important topic that came from this class. We as programmers have to be curious, and look at a problem and think, how can I fix it? or how can a automate this part of my life? I believe that if you don't have an open, problem-solving mind, you can’t understand and appreciate programming ( or get through ICDS ).
How to write a good survey question: With google forms, we learned just how badly we were writing survey questions. People would be adding bias, or having leading questions that supported only one side.

Instead of: How happy were you with this program?
you would say 
What was your experience with this program

We learned that we have to prevent the use of double-barrel questions, where we ask multiple questions at once.

Should I do more productivity blogs and more coding blogs?
Yes
No

We should simplify, be unbiased, and make our questions easily understandable so we can get actually useful answers.
How to create Good Data visualizations: Data Visualizations are very important when presenting data. Many people seem to get data visualizations wrong.
For example: which one looks better:

You might be thinking, why would people do this? Well even small things like not having a title or a axis title can ruin the understanding and clarity of a graph.
Really, this is the best one:

Programming Jargon: With the programming part of the class, I didn't think I would learn that much, as I have already learned python and various other programming languages, and was already somewhat intermediate in those languages. But then things like modules and assignment tokens, and the reasons we use these types of operators ... a lot of more technical terms I never knew about. I feel like it's something all programmers should learn for the field (Don't quote me on this, remember I am a teen ).

Okay that's all

There will be a part two where I go into the various projects, probably next Saturday.

If you want an audio version just click here and it will send you to my hashnode version of this blog ( or don't you might be reading on hashnode already )

Follow me Ig.

Like and subscribe or something.

bye ( I am slightly sick rn :( ).

Midterms

O.T.A — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 18:10:10 +0000

Hey all,

I wont be as active for a while because I have midterms this week, But there will be a Blog next Saturday as normal, just no discuss/updates.

O.T.A

Lets Talk

O.T.A — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 15:01:43 +0000

I have a few blogs in the works:

How I organize notion for blogs
The next 52 weeks of code blog ( yes I know it won't really be a week anymore )
My portfolio website
Dopamine Detox, as a programmer.
And like 20 different other ideas in the works

These are things that interest me, things I can easily read and find enjoyment from.

But, they might not be the most interesting topics for you, and my community.

This is why I need your help, so if you have things you really want to see please type then in the comments. I want this blog to be community driven.

Thank you all, O.T.A

1000 post views

O.T.A — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 02:28:40 +0000

1000 Total post views.

63 followers.

I guess people like my stuff.

I didn't think this would do that well, switching from Hashnode to dev.to but clearly something is different.

If we compare to my Hashnode total views you can see what I mean:

Its about half of what I did on Hashnode for more than a year.

I have a audience now, people that will read all my post, critique my blogs,call out app the typos ( I actually don't mind if you do this, just do it nicely ), and watch my every move. That's kinda scary to be honest, but it also means I have to try to make the best content.

I want to make stuff, people actually like, not the 10 ways or 15 things blogs. Its probably not the most sustainable and grow able thing on dev.to but has seemed to work so far.

Anyways, thank you all, like really thank you for following and reading and commenting. One of my favorite things is to respond to your comments, its really the best part of blogging.