1st step is to admit you have a problem




I normally don't like to use the term "problem".  I prefer to see it as an opportunity or a "challenge".  Even when reporting a bug, I prefer to see it as a "coding opportunity".

I think I do have a problem, though.  I gave up watching TV.  I am down from about 6 hours to about 1 hour a day.  That is a very good thing.  What I have replaced it with might be just as bad.

It started out with good intension.  I wanted to improve my CSS skills.   I have had a PluralSight subscription for years and I use it often.  For my CSS skill upgrade, I was looking for a very specific Flexbox and  CSS Grid content.  PluralSight was overkill for this.  


So I turned to YouTube!

I had been on youtube for music, how-tos, and animal videos, but not really for technology videos.  Once I searched for Flexbox, I found a treasure troll of great contact, all free.

What I did learn was to watch a vary of different presentations on the same topic.  This will allow you to find a presenter that you can relate to.  That is a key part of getting the most from these videos.  I have watched some videos with great content, but I could not relate to the presenter.  In contrast, I have subscribed to some channels just because I like the presenter, even though the content may not be as good. 

I now have 15 channels I subscribe to on YouTube now.  They cover front end, .Net, IoT, and generic technology.  I watch a lot of these videos on youtube, but at least I am learning from the time I spend watching them.

Here is a shortlist, in no particular order of my favorite channels:

So fair warning, Youtube is like eating Lay's potato chips, you can't watch just one!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yes, Blazor Server can scale!

Image
From the very beginning of the release of Blazor Server naysayers have incorrectly stated that Blazor Server can not scale.  They usually state that the limit is 5,000 concurrent users. There are several misconceptions and wrong assumptions about their statement.  Let's break it down and get a better understanding of Blazor server-side scaling. What is the "limit" for users When Microsoft talks about the need to scale an application, what they are saying is that when a normal response for any concurrent user is taking longer than 200 ms, the system is not performant and needs to scale. We will accept that definition: If any normal user response is taking longer than 200 ms, the system needs to scale for concurrent users. By a normal response, we are referring to a page get, a post, etc.  Large database access requests would not be included in this measurement. What is scaling There are 2 common ways to scale, scale, out horizontally, and scale-up, up vertically. In our di...
Read more

Blazor - Cool Blur Loading Page

Image
  I was working on a project and wanted an original way of showing the user the application was loading besides using the normal "Loading...." text.  I came across a website page and thought I could refactor that into what I was looking for. When my application starts, it displays a full-screen image with a count down while the page loads.  As a special effect, I want to unblur the image the closer it gets to the applicaiton finishing loading.  Once the teh count down is done, we pause for 1 sec, for effect, then proceed to the application.  I think it turned out pretty cool.  See the demo here . I used the server side Blazor project template in my example, but the code should work on any Blazor template. Template changes 1. Rename the original Index.razor page to "home".  Besure to change the routing at the top of the page as well.      @page "/home" 2. Create a new Index.razor page     a. Add routing      ...
Read more

Blazor new and improved Search Box

 Back in March, I posted a new Blazor data grid with a search box ( see post ).  Since then I have found a new and improved search box that I wanted to implement.  The search part is implemented the same.  What I added was the ability for the user to narrow down the search by selecting which field they wanted to search on.  This will help the user find what they are looking for and in a large collection, the search will end up being faster. The goal of making the change was to make the search box a new component and have it handle the UI functionality part. Prep Work Here is the prep work I did before adding the search box: Started with the source code from the post listed above. Upgraded the project to .Net 5 Upgraded the Nuget packages that were out of date. Ensured every build and run. Change to a Component I wanted to create a component for the search box so I could use it in other applications.   1. Create a Folder under UIControls called "SearchB...
Read more