Kozueism - Little Mumbles
Mumbles 1 - here we go! May 04, 2020
Well, this is the first entry on this page. Everything about this site will change over time…but wanted to get the first entry in with a snippet of what the home page looks like initially before any changes are made.
It’s going to be a long process, but I hope that the contents I am planning on posting, everyone will enjoy or even find useful in the future! Well, off to learning more on how the modern-day web sites are put together (without WordPress!)
Mumbles 2 - May 10, 2020
The home page is updated! It took a while to figure out which image to use but seems appropriate to use Aki’s image.
This was a struggle to get this to work because I kept on forgetting that clearing cache is a fundamental when doing this (T-T). As they say...usually the user that's the issue...
I suppose more coding practice is necessary too…. And I should start making a reference notebook in case (well, I know I will) I forget…
Mumbles 3 - May 14, 2020
I'm finally picking out colors for this site! I’ve always liked the mustard yellow (my birthstone color?) and tan , some sort of blue combination…
There are so many changes I want to make but since I’m still a beginner of all beginners, it is taking FOREVER! I am also learning on how to make this site cell phone friendly…. To me, that’s super important since I tend to use my cell phone majority of the time… I mean, who honestly wants to sit in front of a computer when they could be doing things on the go!?
Hopefully, by the end of the week, I will have much more updated than what I currently have – time is going by way too fast….. I can’t keep up…
Mumbles 4 - May 19, 2020
Well… so much for updating by end of the week last week. The land of manga took over majority of my time to escape reality for a little bit.
I am hoping to get a recipe site up within the next week to week and a half… I know I keep saying this but learning simultaneously while building a site is so hard!!! Thank you everyone for randomly visiting my boring site. I promise I’ll have a little less boring content up eventually!
Mumbles 5 - May 21, 2020
So much for trying to optimize for mobile phone viewing. This has proven to be a much more difficult task than what we went over in the lecture. The lecture was using the MAX-WIDTH element but the lecture is a couple years old… so I am trying to follow what is the current trend… which is using the MIN-WIDTH element. I know this is probably all foreign sounding to everyone that isn’t into any of this…. But I needed to mumble it all out.
Mumbles 6 - May 31, 2020
Last day of May! Time sure is going by and I definitely need to focus more on my studies and less on my phone. I’m going to start learning a little more about flexbox and get into a little more complex css before I delve into javascript and php. The photo and recipe page is going to have to be on hold for a couple of weeks until can get a full grasp of some of the other functions that are out there!
On a happy note… My Instagram account is added to the site! Yay! Check out the updated footer section!
In the meantime… I am going to have to also study for my license in Japan…This should definitely be an interesting test…. I almost want to take bets on how many times I will fail before I pass… I heard this area isn’t the easiest with the exams.
Mumbles 7 - June 11, 2020
Well, it’s been quite a drab these days. The humidity here is like 80% and the rainy season has officially started. For someone who comes from 40 – 60 % max humidity in the summertime, this will feel like a huge weight on my shoulders until my body can acclimate, if it ever acclimates.
I’ve been learning new things for websites…which is having me revamp a whole bunch of my codes. The revamping has taken forever since it looks like I wasn’t as consistent as I should have been with creating a responsive design. I have a bad new addiction and that is taking web courses…. But it is interfering with actually studying for my driver’s test over here…
Mumbles 8 - June 14, 2020
As I age, there seem to be more and more things that seem to irritate me about the small things around me. A rather recent one is a long narrative on a web-site before I can get to the recipe I am looking for to make a quick dinner. Why do people have to write their life story? I’ve missed the recipe so many times because of it… Sometimes, I just exit the page if I can’t find the recipe within a couple of minutes. Maybe they can just have the “read more” option.
Another thing I find irritating are pop-ups that show up not just on websites but your computer. You try clicking the tiny tiny “x” in the top corner and somehow, it connects you to the promotion web site anyway. Granted, its’ partially my fault for installing the free version but….seriously, every day??????
Mumbles 9 - June 29, 2020
I finished my advanced CSS course and now I feel like revamping my whole website…again! The icons need updating, the color scheme even, and the media queries, the css grids, flexbox, the works! The next thing to learn will be JavaScript….
The last couple of weeks has been a little hectic, for certain and trying to migrate from brackets, since I do not know how to just upload one thing in Brackets, to visual studio code has been a little bit of a hassle as well, all the while trying to comprehend NPM? It’s been a trip.
In the meantime, I think it’s time I start on the ‘portfolio’ and ‘photo’ section
Mumbles 10 - July 10, 2020
Well. JavaScript has been kicking my butt real hard so I haven’t done anything I would like to do. I would think I understand and when I actually try to apply what I think I understand, I feel like I am not understanding at all. It is all logic so it all makes sense but doesn’t at the same time. Does that make sense!?
The other thing that’s been kicking my butt is the humidity produced from the endless rain that we are getting. The streets in Kyushu are turning in river, mudslides, overflowing rivers, all this during a pandemic. My heart goes out to those that are affected and it makes me sad to see what is going on…
I guess I don’t really have any positive news… oh! I have a tree of a tomato plant. It is over 6 feet tall. I’ve never seen such a thing!
Mumbles 11 - July 29, 2020
All words and no images makes this mumbling site a dull site!!! I’m working on fixing that… It’s been an uphill battle trying to manipulate JavaScript so it works in my favor… I admit that I’m superbly rusty since I haven’t done anything like this since 2006…..
On the other hand, I think I have been doing pretty good with keeping up with the ‘once a month’ posting that I declared at the top of the page…not that I have much to write about. Temporarily being a housewife actually has been really busy, even without kids! The housewife position will end sooner than later since I am trying to pick up where I left off with my career in a new country, so I am trying to squeeze everything I want to do in as much as I can…talk about a headache every day!!!
The weather has been getting hotter and the constant rain will finally cease by the end of this week! Hooray! It was a super long rainy season this time.
Mumbles 12 - August 06, 2020
I’ve been on a hiatus from the online courses and worked on the photo and recipe page…. and is finally up! It’s still just a shell and I actually need to complete the online courses so I can manipulate JavaScript better but at least, it’s some progress.
Creating a flow for the web site is a lot harder than creating a flow for something on paper, i.e. pamphlet, and wanting the site to be minimalistic but with as much info possible, has been difficult.
On a completely different note, the covid-19 virus is on a rampage again in Japan. People speak of this “normal” regardless of where they live, and how we need that “normal” back… but why dwell on the past?? Why not create a new “normal”? I don’t understand why people are so closed minded.
That was my little rant.
Mumbles 13 - August 27, 2020
And… still on hiatus from the online courses. I’ve discovered that when it comes to photo editing, my computer is actually really really slow… with that said though, I am in no financial standpoint where I can just drop a G and invest in a new computer…
Oh, and the heat. 90+ weather with humidity has made this place feel like I am in a constant sauna.. it has been terrible for my eczema.
On to much lighter news.
PHOTOS FOR TWO OF THE TRIPS HAS BEEN UPLOADED!!!!
That is some exciting news because to have those trips uploaded, I have edited more than 150 photos, only to delete some after editing them. It really teaches the whole ‘patience is a virtue’ concept.
Also, the images from prior mumbles can be clicked on finally for an enlarged view!!! I’ve scoured the internet for tutorials and sources to do this without JavaScript since we seem to not get along… it’s a shame really. There will come a time where I will force JS to get along with me…but for now, I’m going to let it be.
If anyone wants to build a website from scratch and have enlarged photos without JS, this site was my life savior. https://perfundo.oberlehner.net/
Mumbles 14 - August 28, 2020
This is the last Friday of August 2020. The weather is still like mid-summer and looks like the forecast is calling for more heat this weekend. If I didn’t get headaches in the heat, I don’t think I would mind it as much…
We only have 4 more months left in this year so I’ve started coming up with an intricate but easy to use budget tracking sheet. It’ll be printable, hopefully with a graph as well so we can easily tell what is going on at a glance.
I’ve always been amazed with ‘bloggers’ and how much they can babble about whatever topic that they are trying to be informative on. Granted, when I’m searching for something, I find most information irrelevant and have fallen in love with the “find” function. I do not know what I would without that. With that said, I can honestly say my postings are all pointless and not informational. I’m just writing whatever I find interesting at the time I have a word document open and without any direction. I don’t have any photos to correlate with whatever I am posting so if anyone caring to read this has any ideas, please do let me know.
Translating all this to Japanese one day is going to be….interesting.
Mumbles 15 - October 25, 2020
I am missing a whole month of not writing anything on my site. I have been in a slump in a way; I am missing where I came from currently because of how automated my life is becoming. I have a new job (finally), passed my drivers license exam (yay), and I have a car with decent gas mileage to take me to my job of round trip of 132km. The repeat pattern of what we do, get up, go to work, come home, and then start that all over every day can be a depressing topic to touch upon if thought about deeply.
The reality of how this country still discriminates hard core against females is also something to note about. I mean, an age limit of being able to hire a female versus a male…seriously in 2020?? Even though it is not firmly written down in the books as a rule since it is technically illegal now, it is a spoken and applied rule when hiring. Does this country realize that their population is withering down and if this type of discrimination continues, then the companies will be stuck with just foreigners, which they still secretly (or openly) discriminate??
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I’m not too interested in writing any negative thoughts since this site is not for ranting but sometimes, the little voices of inequality or what I feel is unfair needs to be jotted down so I can reflect upon this in the future and hope that things have changed for the better. Hopefully, my next entry will be a much happier entry.
Mumbles 16 -January 03, 2021
So I mentioned that I’m missing a whole month of my random thoughts back in October… well, now we went almost 3 months…
First and foremost… Happy New Year to everyone! Hopefully 2021 will be full of more pleasant surprises and happiness, especially since we all just went through some dark times in 2020.
I finally went snowboarding!!! The snow was powdery and was still snowing when we went and it was surprisingly cheap! For comparison, it is cheaper to snowboard at this mountain I went to, a real mountain mind you, than going to somewhere in Wisconsin, and it is only couple hours away! Who would have thought, while living in a place that rarely sees snow, all we need to do is drive couple hours north and we have real mountains with powdery snow! I can’t wait to go back again!
Well, until next time!
Mumbles 17 - February 14, 2021
Happy Valentine’s day to everyone! I made some chocolate covered strawberries and “nama-choco” today!
We’re also at a pace of one blog a month for 2021 so far and I hope I can keep this up.
I have this little annoyance that’s been bothering me again as of late. I was having this conversation with a couple of people and they pretty have confirmed something I’ve always thought: I would not say all but majority of the Japanese people are super stuck on this ideology of people with “certification” equating to being a “great intelligent being” and assumption is made that they will apply their knowledge to their work and at times, even go as far as being specially treated. Unfortunately, just because someone is great at taking exams does not necessarily mean they are great employees. Yes, it means they are very good at studying and retaining that information for the exam and that is a respectable feature but that “talent” is useless if that knowledge can’t be applied in the workplace. Also those people are, generally speaking, a pain-in-the-neck to deal with because they end up with a chip on their shoulder; yet, they cannot complete even a simple task at work, which then ends up burdening the rest of the workplace. For those people out there with certifications, great work ethics, but lack the privileged attitude, I have more the respect for you since you probably are also very modest and super helpful to everyone around you.
So covid-19 is still haunting us and we’re back in the “state-of-emergency”… and now that I need the covid-19 information off of the prefectural website so we can communicate with the rest of the work team of what the procedure for covid-19 within our office place will be…I’ve been reminded that Japan is not friendly to foreigners. Dear Japanese government, I know you are not good at this but please use simplified clear English and not some super difficult to comprehend English. It’s super disappointing that I cannot just use the English version and that I actually have to go back to the Japanese version and translate the information myself. Maybe it’s just the prefecture I live in. I don’t know. Hopefully Tokyo is not like this.
Mumbles 18 - March 03, 2021
Happy March 3rd! February 22nd, is cat day and March 3rd is apparently ear day (mi-mi day) in Japan… today is also “hinamatsuri” which, I suppose can be considered “girl’s day”. I was able to put up the special dolls that is displayed for this day but I just found out that the I put the princess (queen?) and the prince (king?) backwards…
Spring is just around the corner over here and as exciting as that is, I cannot say the same for the miserable summer months that are coming up. The summers here really makes me miss the Chicago area summers… I don’t think I can ever complain that my hometown was ever “hot, muggy, and disgusting” anymore after experiencing the summer here.
On a completely different topic… I have been collecting crossword puzzles from the newspapers in Japanese in hopes that some day, I can learn more Japanese off of them… maybe creating an “online dictionary” for descriptions of Japanese words used for crosswords in newspapers may come in handy? At least for my quick reference, anyway. I know it already exists out there but it’ll be a fun project to do