Part 2 – Growing up and living in the South

I’ve lived in the South my whole life. I started out by being born in Wilmington, North Carolina. When I was very young my family moved to Franklin, Virginia.

Franklin is a small town located in the Western Tidewater area of Virginia and about an hour’s drive West from Virginia, Beach. When I was growing up in Franklin it was a small town dominated by a paper mill that employed probably 75% of the people living in the area. My father worked at the paper mill, and we were a typical middle-class Southern white family.

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Current Events

We the people [Police in America]…

June 13, 2020June 17, 2020 by Bruce Gilbert

Part 1 – police are out of control, and have been for a long time

I have always believed in the power of the people. The United States of America has always been about the people who make up this country. The
U.S is a melting pot consisting of Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asian, Indian, Men, Women, Transgender, Gay, Straight, Religious, and non-religious. We are all a part of America and all equal. Well, at least we should be in the true spirit of what America was intended to be.

Recent events are showing that most Americans are not satisfied with the America of today and are taking their opinions and voices to the streets with demonstrations and in some cities riots and looting. I am too old to be put protesting and with the pandemic, I don’t feel safe being close to so many people, but I still have strong feelings and this is why I am writing these blog posts.

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Life

Your thoughts become your reality

August 24, 2019August 24, 2019 by Bruce Gilbert

I have lately been thinking about how your thoughts affect your mood and how your thoughts can also become your reality. I totally agree with this. I believe if you continue to have negative thoughts you will become depressed and when you become depressed then you become sick, and it is hard to recover because you are in a constant cycle of negative thoughts depression and sickness.

Everyone has their ups and downs, myself included. Sometimes it is hard to remain positive based on circumstances that happen to us, situations that aren’t the best and over-all bad luck. I stay positive by thinking of the downtimes as learning experiences. An experience that you will grow from and be stronger because of what you went through.

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Determination

Learning for a lifetime

February 27, 2019March 2, 2019 by Bruce Gilbert

I have a passion for web design and web development. I don’t have a computer science degree or a graphic design degree, but I do hold a BA in Communications from Elon University I also have a certificate in Graphic Design from The School of Communication Arts in Raleigh, NC (now Living Arts college). Additionally, I have taken classes at local community colleges to learn HTML, CSS, basic JavaScript and Flash.

ANYONE WHO STOPS LEARNING IS OLD, WHETHER AT TWENTY OR EIGHTY.” —HENRY FORD

Lately, I have taken courses online to keep up with the rapidly changing technology. Just in the past year, I have taken many courses on Udemy. They offer courses for pay on different web technologies. Some of the courses I have invested in recently are:

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Technology

CSS Animation and how to use it well in your website

December 30, 2018December 31, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

With the progression of Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS) to include the ability to create animations, there are now a plethora of possibilities to create eye-catching visuals on your website and as we all know CSS animations rate very high in the “cool” factor when it comes to web development. Not only that but people love seeing movement and interactivity in digital format. With the right animation, you can accomplish a lot by telling a story which helps describe complex ideas better than text or a non-animated illustration could. Websites with animations can also entertain the visitor to the site longer than a site without animation.

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Technology

Getting started with CSS Grid layout

October 18, 2018November 3, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

One of my strongest areas of web development is Cascading Style Sheets more commonly referred in the web world as CSS. I have always been a visual person, and with CSS I can create a pallet on the web using code (when combined with HTML5). CSS has rapidly evolved over the last few years with technologies and frameworks such as SASS/SCSS and Bootstrap leading the way. Another major advancement to CSS recently is the new layout techniques using grid (Or CSS Grid as it is commonly referred as). In this post, I will expound on the basics of CSS grid and how it can help you to design and code a complex layout for various devices.

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Technology

Best new features in JavaScript ES6

October 6, 2018October 18, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

I’ve been coding in JavaScript for quite a while. In fact, I can remember when JavaScript was used for such cool functionality as a replacement image when you hover over a button for example. It was pretty cool interactivity for 1998, but it wasn’t until libraries such as jQuery came along in the 200’s that JavaScript really took off. Around this time AJAX was a big deal too where you could do things like creating a form where the user could fill it out, submit the form and receive a partial page update without being redirected to another page. Pretty cool stuff indeed!

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Web Design

Fun with Flexbox

May 14, 2018October 17, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

I have been doing web development for quite a while and one of the frustrating things we have to deal with in web design is laying out a web page and getting every element to be positioned just as we want it.

Back in the day, we would use floats and absolute positioning to get everything pixel perfect only to find out the layout was broken in Internet Explorer. Today’s web world is much different with fluid designs, rem units instead of pixels and grid systems such as CSS grid and Bootstrap.

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Life

Enjoy the present because tomorrow is not promised

April 22, 2018May 13, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

It has been said that most people cannot enjoy the present because they are always dwelling on the past or looking to the future. I think that I can be counted in that category most of my life but as I have aged I have slowly learned to not take anything for granted and to enjoy the present as much as I can.

An often heard phrase is “stop and smell the roses”. To me, this means to take the time out of your day to realize where you are, what you are doing, who you are doing it with and most importantly why you are doing what you do.

All content belongs to Bruce Gilbert

Author: Bruce Gilbert

We the people [my perspective of racism]…

Part 2 – Growing up and living in the South

We the people [Police in America]…

Part 1 – police are out of control, and have been for a long time

Your thoughts become your reality

Learning for a lifetime

CSS Animation and how to use it well in your website

Getting started with CSS Grid layout

Best new features in JavaScript ES6

Fun with Flexbox

Enjoy the present because tomorrow is not promised