The Simulation Internet Basketball Association (<a href="/code/siba">SIBA</a>) had really taken of since its official launch in August 2020. It started out as a simple hobby for family and friends but has grown to 14 members in the professional league and 12 members and 21 teams (a member can manage up to three teams) in the college league. As our second season is coming to a close, we're gearing up to transition to the latest version of the Draft Day Sport Basketball programs by <a href="https://www.wolverinestudios.com/" target="_blank">Wolverine Studios</a> and to the influx of newcomers looking for an active multiplayer league.
<h2>The Problem</h2>
During our recent growth, I noticed a problem when new people expressed interest in joining the pro or college leagues. The join form was short, only asking the bare minimum information: name of the interested person, their email, their team choices in a text box, their reason for joining (optionally), and how they found the SIBA. From there, an email was sent to the commissioner, my dad, and he would email the person back for the team and coach information that would go into the Draft Day Sports program. Some of that was the name, looks, and outfit of their coach, skill points, and sometimes even a specific team. Some would say something like &quot;Doesn't matter&quot; or &quot;Anything Virginia&quot; in the team textbox, so it was necessary for my dad to list all the available teams that met the criteria.
It was a lot of email back-and-forth between Dad and the potential new member. And sometimes, the email would get lost in the person's spam or junk folder or the person would not reply at all. We couldn't add the person to the league since we didn't have everything we needed. The current join process was not working.
<h2>The Plan</h2>
I talked with Dad and we decided to redo the join page so that the email back-and-forth would diminish—or better yet, cease completely. I would create a new join form that asked for the basic information of the interested person as well as all the information for each team they were going to manage. That could be one team or up to four (one pro team and three college teams).
The person would be able to see all available teams, no matter the league, and could preview what their coach would look like in game. After filling in the information, a confirmation email would be sent to them providing helpful instructions about the graphics for the players/teams, our Slack community, and the upload process.
Validation would be a requirement as well. This would include checking required fields, making sure that at least one team was created, and verifying the ability points of the coaches. There is a maximum amount of points that a person could spend on their coach's skill in offense, defense, etc. Each category also had a minimum and maximum for itself.
The college league also required additional and complex validation due to the rules Dad and I implemented in the league. As mentioned above, each coach had a maximum number of ability points to use. This maximum sum would change depending on the ranking tier of the selected school. A Tier 1 school could have up to 325 points for their coach, Tier 2 had 240, and Tier 3 had 150.
While a member in the college league is able to manage up to three teams, each team had to be in a different ranking tier and recruiting region. For example, a person could not manage the Kansas Jayhawks, the Creighton Blue Jays, and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish since all three are considered Tier 1 schools based on the <a href="https://siba.averyincorporated.com/college/rankings" target="_blank">pre-season ranking</a>. Kansas and Creighton also share the same recruiting region, the Great Plains. Yet, the North Carolina Tar Heels (Tier 1, Atlantic East region), the Texas Tech Red Raiders (Tier 2, Great Plains region), the Charleston Cougars (Tier 3, Southeast region) as teams selections would work since all are of different tiers and regions.
<h2>The Struggles</h2>
There were two major struggles during the update. The first one was handling the validation of the entire form: the required fields, the college validation, the at-least-one-team rule, and the skill points validation. All of these needed to work together. When I first started, I did not realize exactly how complicated the logic was going to be. The more I created, the more I had to break up the code into smaller, more manageable pieces.
<img src="/images/posts/join-page-structure.svg" alt="The hierarchy of the Join Page: Join Form contains Teams Selection and multiple team cards and communicates with the popup Add/Edit Team Form." />
<ul>
<li>
Join Form: This contains the entire form and is the source of truth for the data that the interested person has entered. That would include their own information as well as the team information. This source of truth would be used in the college tier/region validation as well as the at-least-one-team rule check.
</li>
<li>
Teams Selection: The Teams Selection component is where the currently selected teams and their information live. This component is more of a display component rather than actively changing and maintaining the data. There are two sections, one for pro and one for college, and each has their own &quot;Add Team&quot; button. However, if a pro team or three college teams are already selected, the add button disappears.
</li>
<li>
Team Card: This is another component that does more displaying than changing of the data. This actually takes a team's individual data and creates a simple info card of the team and its coach. Each Team Card has the option to edit or delete the team, just in case someone makes a mistake or changes their mind. Multiple Team Cards can reside inside the Teams Selection component, depending on the number of teams that the person creates.
</li>
<li>
Add/Edit Team Form: This form is where majority of the changing of the data occurs. A team can be added or an existing team can be edited. The ability points validation also happens here. Communication between the Join Form and Add/Edit Team Form is the main way the source of truth data stays updated and accurate.
The main code that handles that communication is the submit function that, after validating everything, it sends the newly created or updated team data back to the join form to construct a new source of truth.
<pre class="language-js"><code class="language-js">const handleSubmit = (event) => {
 //stopping any and all form events since we're handling the submit ourselves
 event.preventDefault();
 event.stopPropagation();

 const form = event.currentTarget;

 //check if any of the team selection rules are broken, if so set teamError
 validateTeamSelection();

 if (form.checkValidity() === false || teamError) {
 setValidated(true);
 } else {
 //building the team object
 const team = { ...current, basics: {}, coach: {} };

 //adding a custom (temp) id mainly for telling teams apart for editing
 if (!team.id) team.id = `team-${Date.now().valueOf()}`;

 // Loop through the form and fill out the rest of the team data
 const formData = new FormData(form);
 for (const [name, value] of formData) {
 if (name === "team") {
 const selected = typeahead.current.state.selected[0];
 const teamInfo =
 typeof selected === "string" ? { name: selected } : selected;
 team.basics = { ...team.basics, ...teamInfo };
 } else if (name === "password") {
 team.basics.password = value;
 } else team.coach[name] = value.toString();
 }

 //send new team to main form to be added to source of truth
 handleClose(team);
 }
};
</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
By breaking up the join form into smaller parts, I was able to handle the data much easier before sending it off to the backend, where the next major challenge lied, the confirmation emails. Two emails would be sent, one to the commissioner and one to the new member. Both emails needed to show the entered information but the one for the new member had to include some tips on the best way to get started in the league.
At first, I thought creating an HTML email would be very simple. Yeah, that was not the case. All the modern CSS and HTML was thrown out the window. Divs, nah! CSS stylesheet, nope! Instead, tables and inline styles are king when it comes to HTML emails. Apparently, different email clients support different amounts of HTML and CSS, so the safest way to make sure that your email appears the same no matter the client is to use the most basic HTML and styling. There are a lot of posts and articles available on creating HTML emails, but <a href="https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/build-an-html-email-template-from-scratch--webdesign-12770" target="_blank">this post by Nicole Merlin</a> had an easy step-by-step. I also looked at the source code of the marketing emails or newsletters that I get myself. I won't show you the code since it's an organized mess—emphasis on the mess—but I'm pretty proud of the end result.
<h2>The Results</h2>
<img src="/images/posts/join-page-final-result.jpg" alt="Three college teams and coaches selected on the join page and a test confirmation email that a new member receives when joining the SIBA and its college league, the SICBA." /> 
From the join form on the website to the member's email, the join process is better streamlined.
After some testing, I pushed the new changes to the live site and waited for people to start using it. I didn't have to wait too long since Dad had recently advertised our league on the Wolverine Studio forums. The email back-and-forth had significantly decreased. People found our Slack, got the correct files, and had nearly all the information that they needed to get started. One hiccup was that the Slack link would timeout after awhile. Thankfully, I was able to find a solution that kept the link valid for basically forever (like 1000 years or something).
Otherwise, it was very smooth. The efficiency of the league caused certain members to join the pro league after originally only wanting to join the college league. It's been quite the experience seeing something I've created with Dad actually gain traction and receive praise. While I do receive plenty of kudos at work, there is something different about seeing a project of your own succeed.

The simulation basketball league created by my dad and I had grown significantly in popularity, revealing a problem in our join-up process. This post describes that problem as well as the struggles and results of the fix.

Code Fix: The SIBA Join Page Update

Recently, my sister asked if I wanted to join her Spotify subscription. Google had just decommissioned my previous streaming service (RIP Google Play Music) and so I was in the market for a new one. I figured &quot; Why not?&quot; To my surprise, Spotify contains dozens upon dozens of video game soundtracks from personal favorites as well as unheard gems.
Hollow Knight, Stardew Valley, NieR:Automata, and Celeste were some of the foundation blocks of my video game soundtrack collection on Spotify. However, the more I explored and discovered, the more I realized how much of an impact video game music has had on my life, from childhood to now.
There is probably a tie between the Tetris theme song or the Super Mario Bros theme song on which was the first video game track that made an impression on me. I hummed the theme songs as I played Tetris on my GameBoy or Super Mario World on our Super Nintendo. I wasn't very good at Mario, but Tetris was my jam. Even to this day, I enjoy a quick game of Tetris and use my skills to place food in our tiny freezer. 
<img src="/images/posts/donkey-kong-country-dk-and-cranky.png" alt="From the opening cut scene of Donkey Kong Country where Donkey Kong kicks Cranky out of the trees with his boom box, blasting the heavy beat from the game's theme song. Cranky shakes his cane in disgust since his calm, country music was interrupted." /> 
The switch between old-timey country and modern hip-hop as well as the antics between Donkey and Cranky Kong are part of the classic start to Donkey Kong Country.
Donkey Kong Country was the first soundtrack where I actively noticed the various songs as we entered each zone or level. Starting up the game and hearing the fanfare transition into the country-start and heavy-beat-finish always got me excited to play. The music on level selection, <a href="https://youtu.be/1qDEpkHmAX8" target="_blank">&quot;Simian Segue&quot;</a> (aptly named), is happy and bouncy. <a href="https://youtu.be/xkLt4DqyijQ" target="_blank">&quot;Cave Dweller Concert&quot;</a>, obviously music for some cave levels, gives off an ambience of dampness, mystery, and a bit of spookiness. The bonus game <a href="https://youtu.be/CRpeFCtMA_w" target="_blank">music</a> was fast but lively and encouraged you to collect all the random golden animal tokens. <a href="https://youtu.be/wAPpVplHiDE" target="_blank">&quot;Aquatic Ambiance&quot;</a> made water levels much more tolerable, even enjoyable, than compared to other games. *cough* <a href="https://youtu.be/QJFcfHO8uHE" target="_blank">Sonic the Hedgehog Drowning Music</a> *cough* <a href="https://youtu.be/xENK5k48a0Q" target="_blank">&quot;Mine Cart Madness&quot;</a> created the frantic atmosphere perfect for quick reflexes and absolute timing. The start of the final boss' <a href="https://youtu.be/7e2bD_wVXsc" target="_blank">music</a> has a very appropriate pirate theme that sets the mood for a fight on an old ship. A YouTuber that I regularly watch and his friend decided to play through Donkey Kong Country on the Switch and just hearing the music brought back so many good memories of my siblings and me playing together.
The next influential soundtrack was from NBA Street Vol. 2, possibly one of the best game soundtracks ever, or at the very least, one of the best fits to the style of its game. It perfectly captured the sound of the street with <a href="https://youtu.be/42QQrufiaPs" target="_blank">&quot;Chief Rocka&quot;</a> by Lords of the Underground and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4k9EkhkFZY8Bk41Qi0Ob7P?si=2fb73bd4309a43a9" target="_blank">&quot;The Choice Is Yours&quot;</a> by Black Sheep. That soundtrack was one that I heard on near repeat while playing the game during one of the vacations we took to Florida. The rental house we stayed in had its own screened-in, private pool. We went to Disney World and Universal Studios. Yet, my fondest memories of that vacation were staying up late and building my custom player to become a league of the street.
<img src="/images/posts/jet-set-radio-future.gif" alt="An animation showing two of the main characters, Gum and Corn, dancing at the base of the GGs, the hub for the game." /> 
Music and dancing are a huge part of the Jet Set Radio series.
Probably around that same time, my siblings and I were attempting—albeit quite badly—to beat Jet Set Radio Future. We skated around a futuristic Tokyo while rocking out to some of the best music I've heard in a video game, having a mixture of techno, hip-hop, electronic, and pop. I grinded on rails, buildings, billboards, and cars while rocking out to <a href="https://soundcloud.com/hideki-naganuma/guitar-vader-remixed-by-hideki?in=hideki-naganuma/sets/remixes" target="_blank">&quot;I Love Love You&quot;</a> and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4SkaqNVkYf79qdIUQM5nMs?si=25219539ce1c4d3c" target="_blank">&quot;Funky Dealer&quot;</a>. Trying to beat Rapid 99 in a game of Capture the Flag on 99th Street, a crowded shopping center filled to the brim with neon lights, was a challenge. The upbeat and bobbin' music like <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4R46pDOqpFIY13Xb24RNrV?si=70f38315620b4cd3" target="_blank">&quot;Sneakman&quot;</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0mN1eD9kHVvmyPP1WzdJot?si=14730323c1244da1" target="_blank">&quot;Let Mom Sleep&quot;</a> kept the frustrations low...or at least lower. I still listen to the soundtrack today, it almost always uplifting my mood.
It wasn't until I got into more indie PC gaming that I started to once again take notice of the incredible scores of video games. <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3FgfhcCkKKsaXfSGgeLvbQ?si=384d770138244cb0" target="_blank">Hollow Knight</a> was probably the first to resurge my love of video game music. Seeing how Hollow Knight is called 2D Dark Souls, I stayed away from actually playing it. I do not wish to be punished like that. Also, I believe my hands and wrists would kill me. Instead, I watched a playthrough of the game and just fell in love with the simple story yet extensive world-building. You play as a little bug trying to save an old kingdom by exploring it and attempting to undercover its dark past and fall from glory. You travel through lush greens, a fungal wasteland, a terrifying underground packed with jump-scares, and the capital of the kingdom, Hallownest. Each location brings about its own sounds, most including unique music that only adds to the intrigue.
<img src="/images/posts/hollow-knight-mantis-lords.png" alt="The player character of Hollow Knight, the Knight, stands before the Mantis Lords and challenges them to a duel." />
When the Knight challenges the Mantis Lords, the music begins with a dramatic flourish as they stand to face their latest opponent.
Yet, I would say that the most distinguished tracks in Hollow Knight are the songs for boss battles. <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4p6GbcE3GjJs7JzhVBv2uT?si=c7be8f390dda46e2" target="_blank">Hornet</a>, (usually) the first boss with unique music you'll meet, has a very fast pace and string-heavy track that matches her quick moves and use of a needle and silk as weapons. The song for the <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/7uIyzCZKGk9K2EXnb3BtrR?si=c4d599377b4b4993" target="_blank">Mantis Lords</a> has a very strong beginning with quick and somewhat repetitive chords ( I'm not a music person) that mimic the beginning of the battle, which tends to catch the player off guard and forces them to stay on beat with the Lords. <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/5JWnXDqHFgGJZFIZ3PZh8G?si=99de7c8d81da4737" target="_blank">Dung Defender</a>'s song has a heroic and jaunty tune which easily combines with his shouts of &quot;AAAAAA THUNDAAA&quot; and &quot;DOMA DOMA DOMA DOMA&quot; as well as his playful laughter.
From there, I searched for games that I have personally played and found the music enjoyable. <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2UO7yBh1fHwwR6y5yrqSP0?si=de10774eefcd4c8e" target="_blank">Stardew Valley</a> was one, though the music doesn't play consistently through the game. Whenever a song popped in, especially during Summer, I was pleasantly surprised. Having the soundtrack on Spotify is a great convenience for those silent times during the game.
Through various YouTubers or streamers, I have found other soundtracks that I thoroughly enjoy. Some of my new favorites are from the Outer Wilds, Far: Lone Sails, Ghost of Tsushima, and Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!. Go listen to <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/6eeMtIN2kIzR0HnQeOKgBk?si=30374cb0e8c54f86" target="_blank">&quot;It's Dangerous to Go Alone&quot;</a> from Jonathan Geer, the composer for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! It is one of the most upbeat, feel good songs I have listened to in a while and has a simple chorus that begs to be sung.
I've been going through a bit of a change in that I am often not wishing to watch YouTube. Video game and pop culture news can be depressing (like Star Wars being run into the ground ), there aren't too many games I'm interested in watching, and I usually don't have time to play too many games myself. I'm running <a href="/code/siba">SIBA</a> with my dad, which is really taking off. I have Book II to finish. And most importantly, I must keep up with my spiritual routine. Listening to videos or music allows me to focus and get important things done. So lately, it's been music, particularly video game music.
It's easy to find the right type of music for the occasion. Super chill instrumentals are perfect for coding or studying. Whether I'm writing a fight scene or an emotional scene, I can choose music that captures the spirit of it.
Do you have any favorite video game songs or soundtracks? Any recommendations for me, games that I
desperately need to check out for their music? Let me know!

Exploring the vast library of Spotify, I found songs from games of my childhood and it reignited my love for video game music. So I took a trip down memory lane, rediscovering songs and opening myself up to some new favorites.

The Beauty of Video Game Music

In the world of <a href="/book/element-unknown">Element Unknown</a> and its upcoming sequel, elementology is the science that brings sense to the fact that people can shot fire balls out of their hands, read the thoughts of others, shift into shadows, and even fly. The best definition of this science is found at the beginning of chapter nine of Element Unknown:
<blockquote>
Elementology, the study of the classic elements, and their effects on sentient beings, is a relatively new science. The classic elements of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air were considered the building blocks of the world until the discovery of chemical elements. Yet, despite being discredited as critical for life’s existence, these four classic elements have played vital roles in entertainment, literature, and pop culture for centuries. It appeared as if that pattern would continue for as long as sentient beings remained on this planet. But the Great Cataclysm, the event during which myth became reality and fantasy creatures became our everyday neighbors, changed that for all.
—The New Science of Elementology: The Discovery, the Research, and the Predictions.
</blockquote>
Breaking down the four main elements into their corresponding personality traits is pretty simple.
<ul>
<li> Water: Just like a river flowing peacefully, Waters are calm, soft-spoken people. They tend to pick artistic occupations (usually in the visual or literary arts) or selfless and giving occupations. Emotions are both their strength and their weakness, allowing themselves to be easily hurt or taken advantage of. When hurt, they turn cold-blooded and hold some of the harshest grudges.</li>
<li> Earth: There is a common saying among various cultures of Element Unknown: &quot;If you want the truth, ask an Earth.&quot; Earths are the rational, impartial deep thinkers, always standing with truth. They are naturally shy and only are placed in leadership positions when no one else will step up. Yet, they do not make the best leaders, usually being indecisive and socially awkward. They also aren't the quickest to make changes. Rather, they tend to resist change, especially if they deem it unnecessary.</li>
<li> Fire: The line between lover and fighter is pretty thin for Fires. They love hard and are full of passion, which can sometimes get them into trouble by being too flirtatious. They're natural leaders and physically and mentally durable, making them perfect for politics or the military. Yet, they can be quick-tempered, impulsive, and rather blunt. There isn't a lot of checks and balances with Fires.</li>
<li> Air: These are the social butterflies of the four, loving to be the center of attention. They tend to be natural performers and often seek occupations that allow them to interact with others. In friend groups, they are almost always the bubbly, energetic friend. Some of their negative qualities are their flightiness and narcissistic nature. With an Air around, there is rarely a dull moment.</li>
</ul>
The process in creating this system took time, research, and feedback from close friends and family. It went through some iterations through the first draft of Element Unknown and has only evolved further during the writing of its sequel. I hope to shed a little bit of light onto the inspiration and creation of elementology.
<h2>Quizilla, Mood Rings, and True Colors</h2>
I have been fascinated with personality types since I was little. I believe that this interest was fostered by online quizzes, mood jewelry, and the <a href="https://truecolorsintl.com/personality-assessment/" target="_blank">True Colors</a> personality typing program.
During my youth, a frequent pastime of mine was taking quizzes on the old site, Quizilla, which contained quizzes such as &quot;Which Disney Princess are you?&quot;, &quot;Who is your perfect anime boyfriend?&quot;, and the like. I would spend hours taking quizzes and comparing results with friends. This was one of the first experiences I had in seeing personality typing. Granted, these quizzes used a very rudimentary way of typing personalities, but it piqued my interest in learning more.
Mood jewelry, e.g. mood rings, were all the rage during my late elementary and junior high years. It wasn't until much later that I realized the jewelry went by the body temperature of a person rather than the actual mood. Despite that, I loved looking at the different colors and moods relationships, such as blue for calm, red for anger, and green for curiosity.
The final influence from my school years was True Colors, not the song by Cyndi Lauper or its various samples (my personal favorite being <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnvr5HQjp5o" target="_blank">Fredro Starrr and Jill Scott's</a> rendition), but the personality typing program that my high school introduced. Taking the assessment was part of the class called Pathways, an introductory class required for all ninth graders. The Pathways class was split into two different curriculum. One focused on soft skills and was held in a traditional classroom. The other focused on more technical skills like typing and computer aided design (CAD). I believe that the True Colors assessment was taken during one of the special lab days for the soft side of Pathways. It was mainly used to determine what sort of occupations would best suit us. I loved taking the test and seeing my results, getting a better sense of me. I remember being a mix of blue and green, usually more blue than green. The suggested careers for me involved science, medicine, or the arts. It was an unusual mix since most of my classmates only had one dominate color. Gold and Orange were the most popular, so even back then, I realized that I was a little different. However, it wasn't until I really grew interested in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that I realized just how rare I was.
<h2>MBTI</h2>
Around 2013, I had found some new friends who shared my love of theoretical discussions and detailed analysis. They introduced me to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and reignited my interest in personality typing. I found a free test to determine my type. At first, I got INTJ (Introvert-Intuitive-Thinking-Judging). Reading the description of the type, I found that it sounded very similar to me and had accepted it as my type. However, a friend of mine suggested that I found another test and retake it. He said that he couldn't see me as an INTJ, which he had intensely studied (it was his type after all).
I decided to take up his suggestion and found a new site that had a free assessment, <a href="https://www.16personalities.com/" target="_blank">16 Personalities</a>. I was drawn to the cute illustrations of people representing types and the friendly and educational tone the website had. With this new assessment, I learned that I was an INTP (Introvert-Intuitive-Thinking-Perceiving/Prospecting), a type making up only three percent of the population. The more I read, the more convinced I was that this was my correct type. The strengths of being imaginative, original, honest, and open-minded definitely matched what my friends enjoyed about me. Yet, their complaints of my very private and withdrawn nature also matched the weaknesses of INTPs from 16 Personalities.
Once I typed myself, I studied the rest of the types to try to find my parents, my siblings, and other friends who weren't too interested in MBTI. Eventually, I became well studied in the subject, which I am sure, aided in my creation of the science of elementology.
<h2>Complications of Creation</h2>
There was a part in the draft of Element Unknown where I knew that I needed to fully flesh out elementology. Meenal was doing a bunch of research on the topic and it wouldn't be very informative for the reader if I as the author didn't really know the science.
The beginning of the development was pretty easy. Thinking about it now, I am sure I pulled from the ideas of my youth for the colors/elements and their corresponding traits. The ocean is filled with soothing blue waves. Fire is bright, energetic, and potentially dangerous. Mountains are unmoving and consistent. Wind is unpredictable. However, I did run into some trouble, even contradictions, when getting the fine details together about the elements.
One example of this was when I was finishing up Earth. I originally had Earths being family-oriented as well as very introverted. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something didn't add up. While one can be family-oriented with a shy nature, that wasn't what I attended for Earths. Fires were already strongly attached to their friends and family and I didn't want characteristics to repeat too much between the elements. After discussing the Earth element with some friends, we finally figured out that Earths were just assumed to have strong family bonds because they seriously took the responsibility of caring for their own. So while some may have had strong familial bonds, most were around their family only because of obligation.
Elementology has gone through many different versions and with the sequel nearing its completion, this will be the most researched it has ever been. Will I add to it later once Book II is complete? Maybe. I have a very, very loose plot for a Book III (that may not happen once I officially finish Book II) and a somewhat more defined plot for a book in the same universe. I might even code a &quot;What's your element?&quot; quiz on the website as a callback to my past and current loves of personality typing.
Have you figured out your MBTI type or even your element? I'm curious to know! Until next time.

Elementology, the main science and plot driver within my Element Unknown series, was born from a love of psychology, personality tests, and mood rings.

Elementology 101

Welcome to the new and improved website of Brittani S Avery! You may be thinking, Wait, didn't we do this already? In a way yes, but this time is a bit different.
My previous website was hosted on <a href="https://wix.com/" target="_blank">Wix.com</a> and for the time, it worked. However when updating my site to its new look and adding blog entries, I noticed some limitations. The wix editor would lag when dragging and dropping things. Formatting would be weird when copying/pasting my blog entries from LibreOffice or Google Docs. Code syntax highlighting in blog posts was minimal and non-customizable. For awhile, I also couldn't upload .svg files, which are great at maintaining their crisp look no matter the size.
As the number of limitations grew, I started to look into coding my own website. Creating websites is the main task of my day job and I have created plenty of hobby websites on my own, so coding one wasn't the biggest challenge. The challenge of development actually came from getting SEO to work, learning the MailChimp and AWS SES APIs, and integrating Typescript into my personal programming toolbox.
<h2>SEO is easy to learn, hard to master</h2>
One of the really nice things about Wix, especially when blogging, is that it handles all that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) stuff for you. SEO does have great importance for businesses that want to have higher rankings on Google. But for me, I just wanted to have my blog post or website page show up in a preview if someone shares my link on social media. Thankfully, after doing some research, it isn't as hard as one might think. Most social media uses the <a href="https://ogp.me/" target="_blank">Open Graph protocol</a>, but Twitter has to be a little different and uses its own tags. So now if you share this blog post or any of my other ones, you should get a little preview, just like Wix did before.
Regarding SEO, this is only the beginning. During my research, I found so much that I got a bit overwhelmed and thus decided to stick with the basics. I can understand why businesses have SEO experts on their teams.
<h2>MailChimp, AWS, and emails</h2>
On my Wix site, I had already dabbled in the <a href="https://mailchimp.com/developer/" target="_blank">MailChimp API</a> in order for people to join my newsletter. You might remember the form being in the footer. That took so much time since Wix has a very specific way of adding your own code to its platform, which I am sure is for security reasons. Once I finished the form, I was satisfied with it for awhile; however, making any updates almost required me to relearn their coding framework. Not my idea of fun.
When recreating the newsletter signup, I looked more into MailChimp and saw that they have an <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@mailchimp/mailchimp_marketing" target="_blank">official Node.js client library</a>. That made things so much easier to add new members to the newsletter and update existing ones.
I also needed to recreate my autographed books order form, which is currently only on the project page for <a href="/book/element-unknown">Element Unknown</a>. I wanted to keep this version of the order form simple since I only have one book available for purchase and I knew that I wanted to change it later into an actual online store front. So, I decided to use <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/ses/" target="_blank">AWS SES</a> (Simple Email Service) to send an email to myself whenever a person places an order. Something that's a little new to this site from my Wix one is that a person can sign up to the newsletter while ordering books. I manged to combine MailChimp and SES APIs relatively easily with a single API call from my own site. The Next framework makes adding an API as easy as creating a folder and naming it &quot;api.&quot;
I'm looking forward to creating a real store front and adding the ability to take online payments. For now though, the little form will work.
<h2>Typescript and all its hype</h2>
Typescript is a strictly typed version of Javascript and it has become very popular among my fellow Javascript developers. I have often asked my coworkers why Typescript is so beloved and I have never really received a satisfying answer. Most told me that it helps in finding bugs during development rather than in the live production environment and it can even prevent certain bugs from even happening due to errors and warnings in the IDE.
Okay fair, but the few times I have used Typescript at work, I found it more tedious than helpful. So, I decided to use Typescript, along with Next.js and Bulma CSS, when creating the latest version of my site. I wanted to see if I have full control over the project if I would enjoy Typescript more.
I will admit that I do see some of the benefits in using Typescript. I have especially enjoyed the autocomplete. <code>Ctrl + Space</code> is my friend when coding and using Typescript actually makes that viable again. Yet, the feeling of tedium still remains at times. I am writing more code and sometimes, the errors are not helpful. I'll have to Google what in the world the error is talking about and then scour StackOverflow, Github, and other blogs just to find out the meaning of an unclear error. I realize Typescript is constantly evolving, so errors will become clearer with time. But I am torn if I will add it to my main preferred stack of development.
Those three technologies were the big challenges in the development of this site. But I am proud of what I have created. I actually really like the simple and clean design. The <a href="/projects">projects</a> page is probably one of my favorites. While I am done with the main pages of the site, there are still some things I would like to add like the online store and share buttons at the end of each blog post. So, there will probably be more challenges in the near future. Learning is a pastime of mine; I look forward to them.

Wix.com is a great tool for creating websites without any coding knowledge, but as I tried to make changes and add to my site, I noticed a growing list of limitations. So, I decided to redesign and rebuild it from scratch.

New Year, New Look: Round 2

Thirty: The end of one's youth, the official age of true adulthood, an accomplishment for some, and a dread for others. I know friends that have stressed over their turning 30, frantic about their lack of [insert random societal status symbol].
I turned 30 this August. My sister had asked me how I felt once I hit that infamous age. I shrugged and said, &quot;Same as yesterday. My wrists hurt, my back hurts, and my knees randomly crack.&quot; In all seriousness though, I did not feel any physical difference from my years 24-29. However, I certainly am not in the same mental state as I was five to six years ago, for which I am grateful. In the latter half of my 20's, I have learned a lot about myself, my family, my friends, and the world in general. Here's my 30 for 30 in no particular order.
<ol>
<li>
Owning a house is a huge accomplishment as well as a huge burden. When I purchased my house before the age of 30, many congratulated me on this achievement. However, I didn’t view it as a such a big deal. It was simply a financial decision. Now that I have been in my house a few years, I understand the hard work it takes to maintain an entire house. I have actually missed apartment living where I only concerned myself with the interior of my space. The exterior (lawn care, snow removal, etc.) was not my problem; I miss that simplicity.
</li>
<li>
Friends can be from different neighborhoods, cultures, or even generations. I have always had a wide variety of friends, but I would say that my most recent circle of friends has been the most diverse: some are wives, mothers, or single like me, many come from different countries and speak different languages, and even one graduated high school the same year as my grandmother. As I’ve gotten older, my circle has only extended.
</li>
<li>
Space and time alone to detox from social interactions is a necessity. The older I get, the harder it becomes to be &quot;on&quot; for long periods of time, meaning becoming the outgoing, personable, and engaging young woman that I am expected to be. I especially noticed this during my time in Gabon. I’m a quiet person who enjoys her time alone. I feel drained whenever I don’t get a chance to rest from socializing.
</li>
<li>
Siblings aren't guaranteed friends but they can be some of the best. Sadly, quite a few of my friends do not have good relationships with their siblings, which I had previously thought to be unusual. Now rather than looking at the relationships of others with their siblings, I simply treasure my own, happy to call my sister and brother friends.
</li>
<li>
Pulling all-nighters are a thing of the past. I recently pulled an all-nighter finishing up a coding assignment for a job interview. I was absolutely dead the next day. So no more all-nighters for me. 
</li>
<li>
Romantic relationships can be (and usually are) overly complicated. I am the first to admit that I don't understand romantic relationships. I have never had a successful courtship and my taste in men tends to border the line of questionable. I prefer things that make logical sense and romance doesn’t seem to be one of those things, so at least for now, I’ll stay happily single.
</li>
<li>
Being laid-off does not state your worth as an employee; it's just business. I have been laid off twice within the past three years. It can start to make you question if you are a good employee. I know I did. Friendly reminder: it's just business and business will whatever it can to make money or stop from losing it. 
</li>
<li>
Failing the obnoxious interview process of big name companies is not a sign of your ability as a developer. Most developers know about the crazy hard interview process from companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and LinkedIn. People study for months in order to even make it past the first round. For whatever reason, these companies have approached me multiple times asking me if I would like to interview with them (more than likely as a diversity hire). A few times I did interview with them and I only made it to the second round once. Yet, I have had a very successful career as a developer, even currently working on Microsoft websites. Sometimes you don’t have the thought-process those companies are looking, but you can find a company that will appreciate your unique skills.
</li>
<li>
Saving money early opens up grand opportunities for later. My mother told me early to save at least 20% of every paycheck. Those savings helped me to beat out others when making offers on my house. Save now and benefit later.
</li>
<li>
A dog is a girl's most loyal companion and will be there for her when others cannot. Meshach, my olde English bulldog, has been by my side for over seven years now. He knows when I’m not feeling the best and refuses to leave my side. He's a good boy.
</li>
<li>
Hobbies do not dictate one's gender. I have traditionally masculine hobbies: software development, sports, video games. I am still a woman though. I just like different things from what others think girls should like. 
</li>
<li>
Get the feelings OUT! Holding feelings inside is not good, so get them out in a healthy way: writing them out, talking them out, dancing them out, whatever works for you. Just don’t let them settle.
</li>
<li>
Sometimes it's better to leave old, close relationships behind. Friends come and go. People change. Relationships morph for better or for worse. If things change for the worse, it's best to leave people behind, even if you both were much closer in the past.
</li>
<li>
Take advice with a pint of salt. Advice is usually given with the best of intentions. However, that advice might not be good for you in your current set of circumstances. Always listen but don’t be quick to activate the advice. Consider it and either follow directly, make adjustments, or ignore it outright.
</li>
<li>
Set goals for yourself, not because of others. Similarly to the one above it, you may have others such as your family, boss, friends, or even society itself give you goals that you should reach by a certain age or whatever. Goals are a great way to mark your progress, but you may not want to determine your progress by another human’s standards all the time. Sometimes it could be an impossible goal for you but quite achievable for someone else. Set goals for yourself and define the type of person you would like to be. And if that definition matches with what others want, then great! But that doesn’t always have to be the case.
</li>
<li>
Contentment doesn't come from what you have but from what you think. Jesus' words at Luke 12:15 is the inspiration for this lesson: &quot;Keep your eyes open and guard against every sort of greed, because even when a person has an abundance, his life does not result from the things he possesses.&quot; Some of the most miserable people are also some of the richest and/or most famous. Material things, fame, and the like are not what bring true and lasting happiness. So, I try to keep a simple life and do my best in following Jehovah's laws. This has worked for me and I’m pretty content with life.
</li>
<li>
Getting professional help can lead to gaining a form of normalcy. Mental instability had been a staple in my life for years. Thankfully, I found a good combination of treatment from professionals and I am finally mentally healthy. I definitely encourage seeking professional help. You can always start small with just one therapy visit.
</li>
<li>
Self-care can be low-key laziness and that’s okay. Self-care for some is stretching, yoga, and meditation. For others it could be retail therapy or hanging out with family and friends in a low-stress environment. Though, for me at times, it's just sleep and being lazy in bed or mindlessly watching YouTube. And that's totally okay if it helps you get out of the funk you're in. 
</li>
<li>
Being an adult is much better than being a high schooler or college student. This is one on which many may disagree with me. I did not enjoy my high school experience and college was a means to an end. As an adult, I get to do what I want when I want for the most part. I have so much more freedom as an adult and would never go back to being a student in long-term schooling.
</li>
<li>
Small things make me happy. A new package of pens, a custom notebook for the next large assembly, windows-down car rides, warm puppy cuddles...I like simple things. They make me happy.
</li>
<li>
Emojis are necessary for text-based communication. Sarcasm and other emotions are completely lost in text-based communications. Emojis help to fill in the missing information.
</li>
<li>
Crowds are scary. While I love gathering with my spiritual brothers and sisters at the assemblies of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I have terrible social anxiety and despise the large crowds. I still try to meet new people at each assembly, so my go-to trick is find someone with a relaxed expression not surrounded by a bunch of people. Older folks are usually a good pick for this trick.
</li>
<li>
Publishing a book is easy; making money from it is hard. Self-publishing a book is actually not that hard. Maybe a bit time-consuming (going through an editor, getting a custom cover, checking and double-checking for typos) but once it's on the web, that's it. Now the real test begins: making people know about it and getting people to buy it and hopefully review it. If you like Young Adult Science-Fantasy, you might enjoy Element Unknown. You can buy an <a href="/book/element-unknown">autographed paperback</a> from me or head over to <a href="http://amzn.to/2vSpcxR" target="_blank">Amazon</a> for the eBook.
</li>
<li>
Journaling is a great way to relive awesome memories and to review hard lessons. I have been journaling for years, my earliest typed entry being from 2008. I like to reread some of my old entries and smile at the good times and cringe at the bad.
</li>
<li>
Family dynamics will change as you age. Most know that the relationship with your parents will change when you get married. However, I have noticed that my relationship with my parents have changed despite my single status. While I am still their child, I am not a child and thus, they treat me as a fellow adult—most of the time. 
</li>
<li>
Invest in a good chair and a spacious desk. If you work from home or spend a bunch of time on the computer, invest in a big desk and a comfy chair with back support. I have no room on my little desk but I recently got a lightly used gaming chair from a guy on Facebook Market and it has saved my back. 
</li>
<li>
Your diploma means nothing, but the mastery of Google-fu is critical. I have a Bachelors in Computer Science and learned much about computing and math. Do I use much of the knowledge I gained during college? NOPE! Do I use Google nearly everyday to overcome coding issues? YEP!
</li>
<li>
Someone's facial expression (or lack thereof) is not always a good indicator of their current mood. I have a strong case of resting-mean-face. When others ask me if everything is okay, I usually answer back, &quot;Yes, I'm fine. It's just my face.&quot; Sometimes, a person is not upset. Sometimes, it's just their face.
</li>
<li>
If I don't like the way a website works, I can probably make something that better suits my needs. My website currently uses <a href="https://www.wix.com" target="_blank">wix.com</a> and it served me well enough until I extended my website's focus. Wix unfortunately has slowed down significantly and makes updating my blog a bit painful. I will be moving away from it soon to something I build. In the long run, I think it will be easier for me.
</li>
<li>
Be willing to take some well researched and calculated risks; never know how things will turn out until you try. Switching congregations, changing jobs, buying a house, traveling to Africa...all were risks but many turned out well. Wouldn’t have known if I didn't try.
</li>
</ol>
Coming up with 30 things was hard! What are some things you've learned about yourself recently? See if you can do a 20 for 20, 30 for 30, 40 for 40, 50 for 50, etc. Until next time.

I recently turned 30 and I have learned much about myself in the last few years. Here are 30 things for 30 years.

30 for 30

In between starting a new job, supporting the web design needs of a local non-profit, <a href="https://www.hallinscorp.com" target="_blank">HALLINS Corporation</a>, and even dealing with a surprise paperback purchase (which was awesome once I realized the email wasn't spam ), I've haven't had much time to write for me. Granted, I have not been the most inspired to write creatively, as mentioned in my last post. However, I decided to open up the file where I keep all my poetry, mainly to fix some formatting issues. The seemingly absent-minded task transformed into a trip into my past as I reminisced on the topics, styles, and quality of my poetry.
The earliest poem that I have saved was from 2002 entitled &quot;Today is the Day.&quot; I don’t have the month or day unfortunately, but I do remember being in school, starting my first year of junior high (7th grade). I originally shared the poem with my family during dinner or right after it and they liked it, encouraging me to continue writing. It's about a runner training, winning, and remembering a race they entered. Looking back at it now, it isn't the best poem. But, it was a start.
For the last 18 years, I have written at least one poem each year. Some years only have two or three poems where others contain dozens. Seeing how poetry was my main source of de-stressing for years, you can easily tell when life got a bit crazy. Some of my best poems were between the years of 2013-2015 where I was dealing with difficult changes in my friendships and romantic relationships. These poems are quite personal and only a handful have been read by others. Those poems I didn't write to share but to release the turbulent emotions dwelling inside me. I'm not the best at verbally expressing my feelings, so written word it is then. 
One of my favorite poems from that time is &quot;Returned Jackets&quot;, a tribute to the men, or &quot;jackets&quot;, that a friend and I had left behind without continuing onto marrying them, i.e. the final purchase. My friend loved it at the time and despite its age, I think it still holds up pretty well.
<blockquote>
We've returned our jackets, my friend and I. 
We both changed our minds right before the buy, 
or rather the jackets somewhat forced our hands. 
See, further research revealed some things about the brands. 
Her former brand was great with her shape flaunted and caressed, 
until the poor thing started unraveling due to being highly stressed. 
Mine was pretty nice too but with some spots here and there, 
but despite washing, the spots became far too big and ugly to wear.
So, we are free, happy, and jacket-less. 
Window shopping is actually fun again. Oh yes! 
The styles of jackets have all sorts of colors and sizes 
and the availability changes with the sunrises. 
We admire the pretty ones, the cool ones, and the slick, 
careful to avoid the pricey ones who would weigh us down like bricks. 
Sometimes, my friend hopes her old favorite becomes free again. 
But me, we both deserve better, especially now compared to then. 
I sometimes doubt I will ever find one that actually fits. 
But then she reminds me of Jah, saying on him to never call quits. 
Nevertheless, until we both receive our personalized rewards, 
we have each other, jacket-less and never bored!
</blockquote>
The one thing that I find ironic is that I have only written five poems this year even though life has been a dumpster fire for the past few months. I have missed writing poetry though and my sister gave me a suggestion of writing a poem a week, whatever subject or styles I want, as a way to jumpstart my creativity again. It's a good idea, one that I'll be starting this month. Feel free to take it if you feel like you're in a creative rut. If you have gotten out a rut recently, what worked for you? The more ideas, the better for me. Until next time!

Having written poetry for 18 years, my skills as a poet have improved greatly. I take a trip down memory lane discussing some of my poems from the past.

Past Poet vs Present Poet

My personal-coding-project kick is still in full swing! Currently, I have been focusing on one project, the lineage database for my digital dragons (Dragon Cave Lineage Database or DCLDB for short). It's actually up and running at <a href="https://dc-lineage-db.vercel.app" target="_blank">dc-lineage-db.vercel.app</a> if you're curious. I recently completed authentication with <a href="https://swoopnow.com/" target="_blank">Swoop</a> and <a href="http://www.passportjs.org/docs/authenticate/" target="_blank">Passport</a> (which I might do a blog about later) as well as the ability to add and view lineages. I'm still working out the kinks on searching, mainly displaying the results. Tables are hard to get right, especially when trying to make a site mobile-friendly. 
I'm making good progress on my site, I'm staying motivated to finish it, I'm learning new techniques, and I'm even getting some use of it now despite the work-in-progress status. So why do I feel a huge pang of guilt while working on this project? A recent comic from <a href="http://instagram.com/chrishallbeck" target="_blank">Chris Hallbeck</a> sums up my feelings perfectly.
<img src="/images/posts/big-project-full-comic-smaller.png" alt="The &quot;Not Done&quot; Comic by Chris Hallbeck, originally posted on 14 Sep 2020" />
In the comic, one guy is working on a small project and a friend comes along and says that it's looking pretty good. But the one working on the project says he could do better. The friend asks, &quot;Are you sure you aren't just using this as an excuse to avoid working on something else?&quot; The question is ignored as the guy keeps working on the small project, saying &quot;Just. A. Few. More. Tweaks,&quot; all the while a huge, badly damaged and barely patched-together rock labeled &quot;BIG IMPORTANT PROJECT&quot; looms over him. Upon seeing this comic, I immediately showed it to my sister, telling her that this is how I feel whenever I work on my coding projects instead of working on the sequel of <a href="/project/element-unknown">Element Unknown</a>.
Friends and family who are excited to get the sequel have asked me how my book is going and I say that I'm nearly done (which I am), but that it's been tough to stay inspired (which it has). I am about 85% done. Just about every important event is already written and now I'm just going back to add detail or to clean up some awkward sentence structure. I am just as excited to finally see the words &quot;The End&quot; on draft number one. But I feel a sense of overwhelming dread each time I think about opening up the draft on my computer. I just kinda nope out of it and start coding instead. Hence why I have a nearly functioning database in 3.5 months despite not knowing the framework beforehand and only working a few hours each week.
While my desire to type the sequel has basically vanished, my desire to write the sequel remains, albeit in limited quantity. I have written some scenes by hand in a notebook. Just a little here and there. Having the idea of where I want to story to go clearly in mind definitely helps (new pens help too). I can picture the scenes playing out in my head. The words themselves are having difficulty leaving my brain and transferring themselves onto the page. 
I originally had the goal of finishing the first draft by the end of this year. At this rate, I have no idea if that will happen. I'm going to keep trucking along in writing the sequel as well as coding my projects. Maybe one creative process with bleed into the other.
How have you all been during these turbulent months? Is your motivation or inspiration zapped? If so, you're not alone and hopefully soon, we'll be able to get out of this blah mood together.

While my inspiration for coding has been free-flowing, my writing muse vanished. A comic from Chris Hallbeck perfectly portrays my feelings on my lack of writing.

Juggling Projects, Managing Guilt

Nerd was once an insult of high disregard. Glasses, braces, expertise in math and science, consumer of all books fantasy and science fiction. That description fitted me perfectly during my youth and while I wasn't always the first to accept it, I have been a part of nerd-dom pretty much since 7th grade.
Role-playing, the text-based collaborative writing as mentioned in a previous blog, was a very nerdy and unpopular hobby of mine. While I didn't dress up as my characters, I did often create pixel drawings of them and created one-shot side stories between them. Whenever I explained it to others, I got the same &quot;Yeah, okay weirdo&quot; look from most people.
Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Men (especially the old 90’s cartoon) were just some of my favorite franchises, though two of them leave a lot to be desired today. I'm just not a fan of the new Star Wars or Star Trek. I'll stick with the stuff from my younger years.
I love pens, from the super fancy ones that you only use to sign things all the way down to the regular black ball point. Currently, I've recently discovered <a href="https://amazon.com/gp/product/B000J09CO6" target="_blank">Paper Mate Flair Felt Tip Pens, Medium point (0.7mm)</a>. The bright colors and smooth writing always puts a smile on my face. (This is not sponsored; I just really like these pens.) I jokingly say that people should just give me gift cards to Office Depot. No but seriously, easiest way to make me happy is to give me a good pen or set of pins.
I get excited when I find a new font from <a href="https://fonts.google.com/" target="_blank">Google Fonts</a> or <a href="https://www.dafont.com/" target="_blank">DaFont</a>. I like making custom notebooks for the large conventions I attend with my spiritual brothers and sisters. I enjoy fiddling with new technologies or packages in my personal coding projects.
There are plenty of times when I am rambling on about some new thing I found and my family would call me a nerd. It used to irritate me, but I’ve learned to accept and embrace it. After all, normalcy is overrated.

I've been a nerd for years, despite me not embracing the title for awhile, and this post gives a brief introduction to that side of my personality.

Introduction of Me—Part 4: The Nerd

I have been on a personal-coding-project kick lately. Two projects are currently in the works and one is muddling about in my mind. The project discussed in this blog post will be a database for the lineages of my digital dragons from the site <a href="https://dragcave.net/" target="_blank">DragCave.net</a>. It is as nerdy as it sounds. You collect pixel dragons and can breed them together to create all sorts of lines and combinations. The reasoning for this project is that I was tired of using a Google Sheet that took forever and a day to load. Also, searching for anything more complex than name or breed was hard.
I decided that I would also make this a bit of a learning opportunity, so I picked a new React framework to use. I decided to go with Next.js, an apparently developer-friendly framework that supports server-side rendering out of the box. It’s easy to get started using create-next-app with npm (or yarn if you prefer).
<code>npx create-next-app</code>
I made progress on my site, setting up pages and adding routes. Eventually, I needed to style the app because things need to be pretty. I originally went with Material UI since I have enjoyed using it for work. It has a wide variety of components, which can be easily customized. Normally to use Material UI, you only have to include the <code>@material-ui/core</code> package to your React app, add a ThemeProvider around the start of your app (normally located in <code>app.js</code>), and you're good to go. However, there is a bit more needed to get Material UI to render sever-side with Next.js. You have to add the following to the <code>_document.js</code>.
<pre class="language-jsx"><code class="language-jsx">MuiDocument.getInitialProps = async (ctx) => {
 const sheets = new ServerStyleSheets();
 const originalRenderPage = ctx.renderPage;

 ctx.renderPage = () =>
 originalRenderPage({
 enhanceApp: (App) => (props) => sheets.collect(&lt;App {...props} />),
 });

 const initialProps = await Document.getInitialProps(ctx);

 return {
 ...initialProps,
 styles: [
 ...React.Children.toArray(initialProps.styles),
 sheets.getStyleElement(),
 ],
 };
};
</code></pre>
Once I added that, things went smooth enough. But then as I kept building out the app, I ran into a more and more errors, like console warnings and npm errors when adding other packages or starting the development server. Eventually, I got frustrated enough to restart building it with a different styling solution.
I found <a href="https://bulma.io/" target="_blank">Bulma</a>, a free, open source CSS framework based on Flexbox. It was included in the template I used for the second personal coding project I'm working on. I like how it has variables to easily customize it, has components similar to Material UI, and it works seamlessly with Next.js. I added the necessarily packages and the <code>.scss</code> file for customization. And...that's it.
Since it has been easier to work with Bulma, I've been able to change the colors and fiddle with the wording a bit, but here's the home page in the two different styling frameworks.
<img src="/images/posts/materialui-bulma-compare.png" alt="A comparison of the home page using the Material UI Framework and the Bulma Framework" />
If you're a non-coder and made it to the end, thank you for reading my complaints of software development. Let me know which home page you like. Until next time!

I've been working on a new coding project and ran into some issues when using Next.js and Material UI but thankfully found another solution using the CSS framework, Bulma.

Next.js & Material UI: A Disagreeable Pair

Video games have only been recently pushed into the mainstream, but they have been a major part of my life. During my early childhood, my dad was heavily into video games. My first gaming console was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES. My cousins, siblings, and I would spend hours playing Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kong Country, and Tiny Toon Adventures: Wacky Sports Challenge. Yoshi's Island was ridiculously hard and the crying baby Mario always made me so frantic. Donkey Kong Country was my favorite. Awesome music, funny characters, and mine kart mania, what more can a gamer ask for?
Despite Daddy saying that we had a Sega Genesis, I don’t remember it. I honestly remember playing the Sonic games at my god-brother's house rather than my own. The next console I actually remember having at home is the Nintendo 64. We had a wide variety of games on the 64: WWF WrestleMania 2000, Pokémon Stadium, Ridge Racer 64, Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt. One of my favorite memories was Daddy finding the character customization codes for recreating Eminem, probably my favorite rapper at the time, in the wrestling game. I was so excited he managed to find that online. The original wrestler I made and Eminem were tag team partners and won the championship in the campaign mode. Being a close second is the bragging and smack-talking between my siblings and me while playing the mini-games in Pokémon Stadium.
Next up was the Sega Dreamcast, a system ahead of its time. Sonic Adventure 2 is the best 3D Sonic game, hands down. And I cannot begin to count the numerous hours I spent in the Chao Garden, raising chao and unsuccessfully figuring out the competitions they could enter. Space Channel 5 created my love for rhythm games. My sister and I would switch off levels and imitate word for and word and pose for pose as we played. Crazy Taxi brought the arcade stands found at restaurants home but kept the same wild fun. Tennis 2K2 (also known as Virtua Tennis 2) is the best Tennis game, allowing for creating your own custom characters and playing with and against the best tennis players. So many memories created by that beloved system and I really wished it didn't get snuffed out by the PlayStation 2.
But speaking of the Playstation 2, we had both the original Xbox and the Playstation 2. I have never been picky with my systems. I'm more partial to one that has the better games. Favorite games during this generation were Need for Speed: Underground (the soundtrack and the speed! ), the Dead or Alive series, Burnout, SSX Tricky and SSX 3, Tony Hawk's Underground, Dance Dance Revelation (especially MAX2), Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii, and Rock Band. My cousin Isaiah screaming &quot;Living on a Prayer&quot; and being banned from singing in Rock Band, tricking out my car in Underground, pulling all sorts of crazy tricks while snowboarding or skating, and finally beating some of the harder songs on Standard in DDR are just the beginning of the memories built playing the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Wii.
Around this time, I started to become more involved in computer gaming. Most of it was spent playing Sims and creating long generations of families. I did become bored with Sims and wanted to branch out and try some of the games by smaller or independent companies featured on the YouTube channels I watch. Recently, I have been playing Stardew Valley with the newest update of 1.4. I've also been playing Into the Breach and Autonauts. I got my eyes on an early-access game called Space Haven, a colony management simulation set on a fleet of spaceships.
I'm looking forward to PlayStation 5 and the new generation of games. But I'm just as excited for the next update of Stardew Valley, a game made by one guy. From humble beginnings to the advancements made in the industry, it's awesome to have grown up together.

In Part 3 of the Introduction of Me Series, I talk about growing up with video and computer games and seeing the changes in the industry.

Introduction of Me—Part 3: The Gamer

I have gone through plenty of interviews, especially in the last few months. With the loss of my previous job, I was interviewing with several companies two or three times a week. I do not recommend this. Even if you are desperate for income, I strongly advise breaks. Interviewing is tiring work.
There is one interview that sticks out from the rest, one that I really enjoyed doing. It was my first interview as an author, promoting my books and discussing my writing process. My interviewer was VS Holmes from the Amphibian Press Podcast. We are a part of a pair of Facebook groups for fantasy and science fiction readers. She advertised interview openings for authors that belonged to the groups and so, I signed up. 
March 10th, the day of my interview had finally arrived and I was nervous! I've never been one for public speaking. My preferred form of communication is text-based. But in the end, it was just a nice conversation. Holmes is an excellent host and made me feel at ease. We talked about Element Unknown and its sequel, programming and its effect on my creativity, and the what-ifs in fiction. The interview actually lasted longer than anticipated since the conversation just kept flowing!
If you're curious to hear the full interview, check out the <a href="https://podcast.amphibianpress.online/episodes/element-unknown-and-parallels-of-programming-with-brittani-s-avery" target="_blank">podcast</a>. Until next time!

In March, I had my first author interview, which was hosted by VS Holmes from the Amphibian Press Podcast! It was a fun conversation.

My First Author Interview

When someone calls another &quot;creative,&quot; what specific skills come to mind? For a lot of people, creativity is first and foremost aligned with the traditional visual arts such as drawing and sculpting. Others think of performing arts like singing and dancing before anything else. While visual and performing arts are indeed creativity, they are but a small beginning. Creativity is &quot;the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas&quot; or &quot;the use of the imagination or original ideas.&quot; One's imagination is only limited by oneself. An experience from my software development career clearly demonstrates this.
I was interviewing with different teams at one of my jobs early in my career. Around the middle of one of these interviews, my potential teammates asked me why I enjoyed programming or something to that effect. I explained that I enjoyed the creative process of coding, using different techniques and styles to solve problems. I loved seeing each developer's unique coding style, like a sort of signature. The interviewers laughed at my answer and moved onto their next question without any acknowledgement.
That team seemed to only view coding as a means to an end rather than the creative work it is. Their imagination was limited to the fact that imagination is required in the making of websites, programming languages, software applications, databases, etc. They all started out with an idea. After all, creativity is &quot;the use of the imagination&quot; and &quot;the ability to produce original or unusual ideas.&quot;
Every activity has the potential to be creative. Find the more unusual or non-traditional forms of creativity. Explore them further, either with others or by yourself. If you do or have already done so, let me know! I would love to hear about it. Until next time.

Can creativity be more than drawing and singing? This post explores how imagination and its limits affect what's considered a creative work.

A Definition of Creativity

My imagination has been brilliantly creative probably since birth. One of my parents' favorite story from my toddlerhood is how I entertained myself while in timeout. Apparently, I did not realize that it was a punishment. I took off my shoes and socks, placed the socks on my hands, and held conversations with my new sock friends. I was thoroughly entertained as well as my parents despite their choice of discipline failing.
Playing secret agent in the living room, traveling through portals with ancient keys at my grandmother’s house, and creating soap operas with my stuffed animals and toys continued to feed my imagination throughout the years. Eventually, the stories found their way onto paper. The inspiration for one story I wrote in fifth grade came from anthropomorphic characters based on a How-To-Draw book. I actually never followed the directions of how to draw them. I just traced the characters and then gave them personalities based on their appearances. 
Prior to entering high school, I didn’t share my writing often, usually only cringey poems dedicated to crushes. While my family always encouraged me to express myself, they thoroughly admitted not being very creative in a literary sense. I didn’t have a safe place to share my work or experiences with other writers. Thankfully, I found two places where I could express myself and further develop my writing skills and creativity: the Fine Lines Writing Club and various online role-playing forums.
Fine Lines was my high school’s creative writing club and it introduced me to some of my closest friends during those tumultuous years. It also validated my talent as a writer. The host teacher encouraged me to enter a writing contest. A poem of mine was printed in the school’s creative writing magazine. During readings, my fellow student writers commended my unique stringing of words and vivid descriptions. I enjoyed writing, but I finally had the confidence to declare myself a good writer.
The text-based role-playing community provided me the fanciful and fantastic worlds of others to play around in. I could be a half-fairy/half-human with healing powers, a former child solider from 1987 transported to a mysterious land where time stood still, a huggy, redheaded mathematics student who can transform into a Canadian Eskimo Dog, a nerdy, pale, and square engineer and his birth-bonded guardian, a big-boned mahogany-skinned woman with bright golden hair and eyes and a loud personality to match. The possibilities were limitless. With role-playing, I took chances with different types of backgrounds and personalities, learning how to research to build more relatable and believable characters.
I graduated from high school and thus Fine Lines. Free time became more scarce and so, I had to give up role-playing as well. I found different ways to keep writing, creating new characters, stories, and even what-if scenarios between my former role-playing characters. One of those what-ifs actually turned into my first novel, Element Unknown.
I don't have major aspirations with my writing. It is more of an outlet for my emotions and imagination. Though, it would be cool if one of my novels gained popularity and had its own fandom. It would be awesome if the world was so engaging that others made a role-playing forum after it. But a published novel with a solid positive rating is definitely something to be proud of.
What's your favorite type of writing to read: poetry, novels, short stories, plays? If you write, what's your favorite to write? Let me know! Until next time.

My imagination has played a huge part in my growth as a writer. In Part 2 of the Introduction of Me Series, I'll describe how the stories in my head found an exit.

Introduction of Me—Part 2: The Writer

I'm currently finishing the first draft of my second novel, the sequel to <a href="/book/element-unknown">Element Unknown</a>, also known as Book II. I have the entire story written. I am rewriting certain sections due to changes made earlier in the book and timeline issues. I was making good progress, working little by little after the day's responsibilities were done. I was excited to write and see what happens next. I wanted to finish it, print it, and read it for myself from start to finish.
BOOM! Corona hit. I lost my day job at a place where I enjoyed the work, liked my teammates, and worked from home. It happened on a Thursday and so, I decided to take a tiny vacation to visit family and forget about my current troubles. However, that following Monday I hit the ground running so to speak: applying, researching, coding, and interviewing. My main concern was finding a new job. I had little motivation to write much, not even poems which are usually my go-to during turbulent times.
I did eventually find the inspiration to continue working on Book II. Can you guess when? When I accepted a new job and signed the paperwork, nearly three months later. I think I wrote about two chapters. Were they good chapters? Maybe. I definitely liked the rewrite I did for a pivotal point in the novel. Have I written more of Book II since then? Nope! Anxiety due to what has happened in Minneapolis and Omaha, two cities close to my heart, has zapped away my desire to write creatively.
The fact of the matter is motivation can be affected by circumstances outside of your control: the loss of work, the betrayal of a close friend, the stress of life, etc. Don't feel bad or beat yourself up if you're not up to doing something creative, even if it is something you love. Muse is a fickle thing.
If you've experienced something similar, I would love to hear about it. Until next time!

Sometimes the motivation of a creative person disappears out of nowhere. Here is a recent personal experience and how none should worry even if inspiration is a little unreliable.

Muse is a Fickle Thing

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and all around social media, one can see various corporations, celebrities, and influencers posting about the importance of mental health. But as soon as May ends, most of the conversations stop. The next big holiday or theme becomes the new focal point.
Mental health complications have affected me personally, not just in some specific month out of the year but many months in many years. Eventually after getting professional help, I was diagnosed with chronic depression, allowing me to finally put a name to the nothingness I felt on a daily basis.
I know that my situation is not unique. A study from 2017 estimates that 792 million people lived with a mental health disorder during that year, which is slightly more than one in ten people globally*. I can only imagine that number has gone up in recent years, especially given the current global pandemic. I look forward to the near future of when no one will say, &quot;I am sick.&quot; (Isaiah 33:24) But until that day, there are little things that anyone can do to help those affected by dealing with mental illness. These can be done at any time, not only during Mental Health Awareness Month.
How you can help:
<ul>
<li>Be open to discuss mental illness, therapy, and related topics in a non-threatening environment</li>
<li>Let others know you will be there for them whenever they’re ready to talk</li>
<li>Research and learn more about mental illnesses, especially ones that affect your loved ones</li>
<li>Endorse professional help</li>
</ul>
Stay healthy. Stay safe. Until next time! 
<hr />
*Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2018) - &quot;Mental Health&quot;. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health" target="_blank">https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health</a>

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and while I am glad that mental health gains some more exposure during the month, it is important throughout the entire year. I detail how common mental illness is and how simple actions can help those who suffer.

Mental Health Awareness 365

In 2012, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), specializing in Internet Technologies. Basically, that means that I have a piece of paper that says I know how to make computers do stuff. I didn't really need that as proof for myself; I've been working with technology since childhood.
Some of my earliest memories of technology include watching my father build computers by hand. I played around with the motherboards and pretended they were miniature cities. I would go to work with my mother and she would walk me through some of her email liaison work as a business analyst. I mastered typing and 3rd grader knowledge through the JumpStart computer games. I made spray-can masterpieces and pixel dolls in Microsoft Paint.
I don't remember my first created website. One of my earliest had to be my BlackPlanet page, which was a Myspace for Black folk. If you’re too young to know what Myspace was, just Google it. It was a customizable Facebook with music and glitter everywhere. It was great, trust me.
Using the tools I had on hand, I kept playing around with websites and graphics. I even created multiple websites with different personas or topics. One of my favorites was Brown Eyes Looking, a website based around the pixel dolls I had created throughout the years.
<img src="/images/posts/brown-eyes-looking.jpg" alt="Home Page of Brown Eyes Looking, website created in my youth featuring my pixel dolls" />
For my senior year in high school, I decided to take an actual computer programming class. My memory is fuzzy as to exactly why, but I think it was suggested by a counselor as a complement to the computer graphics class I wanted to take.
Mr. Thyden, my programming teacher, noticed a natural talent within me and invited me to join the school’s competitive programming team. I accepted since it was another extracurricular activity, a plus on scholarship applications. Though, I must be honest. I was not good at the contests. The puzzles didn’t click with me (still don't). I hated the restrictions in time, eating, and restroom breaks. Despite my mediocre performance in the programming contests, Mr. Thyden still encouraged me to strongly consider a career in software development.
Since I actually enjoyed coding, I took his advice and did some research on the industry. I saw that the demand for developers would be high for years and the local university, UNO, had a very good computer science program. Getting a full-ride scholarship also helped in cementing my choice of university. So, in August 2008, I started college with a major in computer science and never looked back.
I have been in all sorts of different sub-industries (manufacturing, transportation, insurance, etc.) and I have worked on all parts of the stack, meaning I can build a complete website and manage any databases associated with it. If you have any website questions or projects you need a hand in, I do freelance work. 
Would I ever change occupations? Probably not, unless it was to be a full-time writer, a well-paid full-time writer. I'm already a starving artist when only counting my book sales.
What do you all do for a living? Have you changed industries or occupations? If you haven't, why not? If you could, would you and why? Just curiosity speaking. Until next time!

In the Introduction of Me Series—Part 1: The Coder, I will discuss how my background led me to become a software engineer, i.e. a coder.

Introduction of Me—Part 1: The Coder

Welcome to the new and improved website of Brittani S Avery! With this comes a new design, a simplified menu, and a weekly blog.
You may be wondering why I decided to make all these changes in the first place. After all, my previous design and layout accomplished its goal of informing people of my books and myself as an author. But that's just the thing, I am more than an author. I'm also a software engineer and graphic designer. A website bearing my name should show all the different hats that I wear and that's what I did with these new changes.
The catalyst for the changes was a photo, specifically a selfie from a special (and virtual due to COVID-19) event, <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/memorial/" target="_blank">the annual commemoration of Jesus Christ's sacrifice</a>. My sister had done my makeup, creating a beautiful sunset effect around my eyes, and my new glasses gave me quite the sophisticated look. This latest photo was much more reflective of my appearance and personality than my current professional photo. This got me thinking if my website could give a more accurate picture of me.
<img src="/images/logo-initials.svg" alt="A feather and the initials 'BSA' between greater-than and less-than symbols, the Brittani S Avery logo" />
I started with the logo. I wanted to combine two big parts of my life: writing and coding. Many associate writing with a book, a notebook, a pen—or better yet, a feather pen! Thus, one part of my logo was complete. The second part comes from a common symbol used to represent a code snippet, <code>&lt;/&gt;</code>. Also, html tags have the following format: <code>&lt;example&gt;random words&lt;/example&gt;</code>. So, I decided to replace the slash with the feather pen and use my initials to create my new logo.
With the new photo and logo in place, I continued to look for ways to reflect my whole self. I maneuvered the About page into the Home page, reworded the Books page to Projects, included my current software projects, and finalized my newsletter. The new and improved website was complete!
So, what can you expect topic-wise? Mostly writing, coding, and the mixture of the two. I might relate some of my personal experiences regarding mental health and being a Black woman in a predominantly male field. This will be a healthy mix of personal and professional.
Sign up for my <a href="/newsletter">newsletter</a> to stay up to date on blog posts. There will also be sneak peaks on upcoming projects like the sequel for <a href="/book/element-unknown">Element Unknown</a>. Let me know in the comments below if there is anything specific you would like me to write about. Until next time!

I am a multifaceted woman, yet my website only reflected one side of me. I decided to change that. Here's the why and how of that process.

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