Spring Break Week
Image credit: DALL-E
Ah Spring Break! I remember getting so excited about Spring Break when I was in college - both times! I would look forward to the break and not doing much of anything except sleeping in, playing video games, and reading books. But that never actually happened. Nope! Every Spring Break I’ve had to work. So this one wasn’t much different from the others in my life. Maybe one day I’ll be able to go on vacation during Spring Break. But right now, I need to save my energy for work and class.
But I didn’t just work this past week. I actually got to have some fun while I was off. Here’s some of the things I was up to.
Seeing the new Gundam movie: Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-
Image credit: Sunrise
I’ve recently gotten into watching Gundam anime since I started building the models with my boyfriend. And I’m really enjoying the series so far! I’ve gotten through Mobile Suit Gundam (the orginal series from the 1970s) and I’ve started Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. I’ve also watched The Witch from Mercury and throughly enjoyed that series too! So we were both excited to see this in the theater this past week. And it was great! There was an homage to the original series, complete with 1907s funk music soundtrack! I was so happy to hear that when the movie started.
I also like the new lead for this series - Yuzuriha Amate (or Machu as she ends up going by later on in the movie) and I think I’d really like to cosplay as her in the near future. I love her look, the pilot suit she has on, and her whole character in general. I can’t wait to watch the series when it comes out this Spring.
Getting more Gundam Kits To Build
One of the nice things about working in an art store is being able to use your employee discount. And boy did I use it! I was able to get three Gundam kits and a nice frame for my boyfriend’s poster for the price of one Master Grade Gundam kit! We were both walking out of the store with huge grins on our faces. 😁
And then we went to another hobby store down the street and got more kits to build. Because GunPla is a very expensive, but fun and hard to stop, hobby. Once you buy one kit, you’re pretty much hooked from there. But I’m excited to build my new kits. I was able to make one of the SD (super deformed) kits that I’ve been sitting on with my backlog this week. It’s Diao Chan Kshatriya - and she can’t stand up on her own, so she has to lean against my laptop until I can get a stand for her. lol But it was nice to get back to building SD GunPla again and I’m looking forward to working through the rest of my backlog.
Attempting to Learn TailwindCSS
And I did try to get some coding in this weekend too. I’ve been noticing a lot of people want TailwindCSS as a job requirement. And I didn’t really get to hear about Tailwind until I was looking for Web Dev jobs. So I finally made some time to learn what it is and how to use it.
I started out with a video by Lukas | Web Development & Design that went over the basics of how to set up and use Tailwind. It doesn’t look too hard to use - just a lot of properties to try to remember. But there are a lot of cheat sheets out there that can help you remember what property does what and how it should look on the screen. So I felt I was ready to dive into it, but I wanted to find a simple HTML template to use to try out Tailwind.
But I soon came to learn finding a basic, unstyled HTML site to practice on is a lot harder that is seems! You would think there would be a central place to find something like this since a lot of people are looking for something like this to learn a new framework or library, but it’s a lot easier said than done! A few Reddit and Google searches later led to some places you can find unstyled templates you can use. I did find two places that seem to really work out:
Design Resources for Developers by Brad Traversy - HTML & CSS Templates
This is a Github repo with lists and lists of resources for developers. One of the lists does contain places where you can get basic HTML templates for you to use to practice something like Tailwind. I remember using Brad to learn a lot of stuff when I first started my Web Dev journey. I’m glad he’s still out there helping others learn how to code.
This is actually a page that is from the library Pico CSS, but it does give you some templates that are completely unstyled so you can practice using Pico. I’ll definitely use these to learn Tailwind, but I may go back and check out Pico once I get done learning Tailwind.
Taking time to read some of my book backlog
I actually got to put a dent in my book backlog this past week. So far this month, I’ve read 16 books. One was our PHP book, another was a contemporary fiction novel, and the rest were manga and graphic novels. Many of these are 250-300 pages and I devoured all of them! I was so happy to be able to take the time to read and just escape from the world for a little bit.
Here’s what I’ve read so far this month:
Witch Hat Atelier Vol 6-12
Poison Ivy, Vol. 1: The Virtuous Cycle
Yellowface
Tokyo Ghoul Vol 1-3
Minor Threats, Vol. 1: A Quick End to a Long Beginning
The Forged, Volume 1 - Operation: Black Box
The only one I have to say I liked but didn’t completely enjoy was Yellowface by RF Kuang. I didn’t like how the book ended after everything that had gone on to the characters. And there was only one character that learned from their actions and ended up, somewhat, happy in the end. But the rest I really enjoyed.
And that was my Spring Break. It was relaxing for me and I was able to get the break I needed. Looking forward to coding again this upcoming week.
Happy coding everyone! 👩💻