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.

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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:

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Technology

CSS Animation and how to use it well in your website

December 30, 2018December 31, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

CSS3 Animation

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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Life

Enjoy the present because tomorrow is not promised

April 22, 2018May 13, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

Stop and smell the roses

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.

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Healthy Lifestyle

Why I love drinking green tea

March 26, 2018March 26, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

Green Tea

I love green tea. I drink a lot of tea in general, but by far my favorite is the green variety. I will drink it hot in the Winter and cold in the Summer. Besides the refreshing taste, there are many other benefits to drinking green tea that might not be well known to most people.

First off, there isn't just one type of green tea, there are many varieties. Among the different varieties are Sencha, Tencha, Matcha, and Gyokuro. The most popular variety is Sencha. These are all teas grown in Japan, the capital of green tea. Read more about the various varieties of green tea.

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Philosophy

Evolution via Agile

January 18, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

Technologies evolve, processes evolve, businesses evolve and even people evolve (some more than others). Of those, I think that technology evolves quicker than anything else. It seems like overnight technologies can change.

With technology changes, there is a need to constantly be updating and evolving digital communications as well. When I say digital communications, I am referencing websites, web applications, blogs, email newsletters.

I have worked on several development teams that have adopted the Agile approach and I have learned a lot and adopted many of the Agile processes to my development process on freelance projects. Some staples of agile development are Sprints, Epics, SCRUM, Stand-Ups, and Feature Driven Development. I won’t go into detail for each one, but a good article can be found here.

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Determination

2018 New Year – New Resolutions

January 9, 2018January 9, 2018 by Bruce Gilbert

Many people in a new year make New Year’s resolutions, and I am no different. Some people write down their resolutions on paper, some just make them mentally and nerds like me blog them out!

Without further ado, here are my 2018 New Years resolutions, at least some of them.

Exercise regularly, drink more water and meditate often.

Eat healthy meals.

Practice gratitude and take walks of gratitude.

Author: Bruce Gilbert

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

Why I love drinking green tea

Evolution via Agile

2018 New Year – New Resolutions