Susanna Codes

 Girl and the Sea "I've seen where you would rather be" - The Presets, 'Girl and the Sea'. I'll leave the story to the end. I want to put the coding stuff first this time. But first of all, here's the real "Girl and the Sea" - qualified marine spatial planner, living by the sea in Brighton, and no.1 fan of all time of the extremely marine movie, "Whale Rider" - here's a photo of me that I sent to my colleagues back in Brighton when I went up to my head office in London last week!!!  Okay so moving on let's revise my absolutely chaotic and huge and yet somehow very realistically achievable TECH  to-do list... Revising My To-Do List So I'm not going to lie. I've had a tough day.  Just for personal reasons.  Even though I have been surprisingly productive I have also been very busy. So today, rather than writing loads of stuff up, my goal is to make a list of all of the things that I need to keep doing - and then to keep on...

Rebuilding Serenity Have you ever seen Firefly ? I have. Many, many times. What about the movie Serenity? I literally love them both. At the end of Serenity, the music  is literally too moving for words. I have always found it so so so so healing. And so that's what today's blog theme is focused around. It is called Funeral/Rebuilding Serenity.  But let's just focus on the latter part. And it's a beautiful memory. Because the name of the spaceship is Serenity, and they need to rebuild it. But Rebuilding Serenity implies, of course, rebuilding peace. And hey, it continues my space theme from last week!  If you haven't seen it already, I highly recommend watching the TV series and the movie. It is basically the most cult TV series of all time. At the end of the only season ever made, before it got cancelled, due to the episodes being aired at unhelpful times and in the wrong order, all of the characters will feel like your best friends. And the fans literally crowd-fu...

Cornfield Chase I love and harness the power and the energy of black holes "Cornfield Chase" is a song from the soundtrack of Interstellar , one of my favourite movies of all time. It's about a black hole, and I just love black holes so so much. I just love them so so fricking much!!! I just love them! When I think of a black hole for some reason then I just think of peace. I think of the peace and quiet that I just so desperately and so badly need. I love black holes. I love them so so much. I just love them. Another one I really love from that soundtrack is No Time For Caution . I love it at least as much if not more.  In fact I love it so so much that I even considered renaming this whole blog post "No Time For Caution". But that is a pretty ominous name for a blog post. I think I am going to do a bit more writing about black holes on this blog because I really just fricking love them so so so much. Part 1: Tech Security Okay so yesterday I travelled up to ...

Son of the Blue Sky Or, in celebration of Polish rock music... "Mm-mm, son of the blue sky..." - Wilki Son of the Blue Sky is a song by one of the coolest Polish rock bands, Wilki (= Wolves/The Wolves).  As a singer, let me tell you: there are few if any other songs, that it is so meaningful and so emotional for me to sing, especially the chorus bit. The fact that the English is, well, questionable at times, is forgivable. The subject matter of this song is really devastating if you read into it though. It breaks my heart a little bit every time I listen to it. But that just doesn't detract from the sheer, total and utter beauty of this song. And in a way it makes it more beautiful. Album Artwork for Wilki  - "Son of the Blue Sky" This song is older than me and so I grew up with it.  I always just remembered it and thought of it as one of the most beautiful songs ever. Other amazing Polish rock songs I would recommend are Good Day My Angel by Myslovitz and Jolka...

Over and Over, Honey You might remember my " Crimson and Clover, Honey " post from a month back. This was the day that I came back to learning JavaScript. This was the day that I CAME BACK. To REALLY LEARNING JAVASCRIPT. So "Over and Over Honey" is the rhyme to the song that I love after about 8 repetitions of "Crimson and Clover, Honey". So, so beautiful. I love that song.  So much healing power in it. So, so much healing potential to it.  ANYWAY so today's title isn't just a (yet another) tribute to Lana del Rey. I had an amazing chat with an AMAZING, extremely experience Software Engineer called Matt today. We share the same co-working space and he responded to one of my calls for help before Christmas. 😂 So around lunchtime today, we finally met up.  And here's one of the most important things that he told me: "A function is a reusable block of code". Sometimes, it's good to hear things again and again - and in simple terms. ...

For My Soul Sometimes it's really hard wanting to be a software engineer. It fell into my life from the sky in the course of last summer, dancing into autumn, this crazy desire. And it just wouldn't go away.  I tried so hard to ignore it, but it just kept coming back. There were just more and more chance meetings, more and more signs, more and more coincidences. I tried to get people to dissuade me. I even tried to get an EM from my team to dissuade me, telling him that I thought that people were just trying to stereotype me due to my neurodiversity.  I couldn't have been more wrong. This is what I'm meant to be doing. I have a passion for this, and I'm meant to be doing this. And sometimes it is really hard - and it's like at Uni, sometimes the working hours don't apply.  Sometimes, whether I'm at a restaurant, or in bed, or waiting for the bus at the corner in my marine part of Brighton, I have to whip out my notebook and write down the next steps for ...

Withstanding all the Time, Changes and Seasons When I realised in October last year that what I was meant to do was be a Software Engineer, then it was actually really hard. Because I'd spent so much of my life trying to always do the right thing and pursue the right path - and I just thought, how can it be, after all of these years of study, and a couple of years of work, that I have just realised this now? But I now know that it was all perfect. Everything I did up until now led me to here. My studies, and my career, led me to Product. And it turns out that Product can be a pretty amazing place to transfer into tech from. And plus now I have all of those amazing product and project management skills which are so precious in a tech job... So maybe it was all just meant to be anyway. 💓💓 Both the image and the title are references to Yosemite by Lana del Rey. All The Coding Stuff I have 3 most urgent coding goals going on but today I wrote a performance review, provided urgent fee...

Yosemite I'll never forget the first time I head the song Yosemite by Lana del Rey. I very nearly clicked away.  It was quite near the start of my Software Engineering journey, right near when I start learning the Front-End/Web Development. I was listening to Arcadia by LDR before, maybe twice, and then Blue Banisters came on. I nearly clicked away in the first 30 seconds but I forced myself to keep listening anyway.  I'll never forget how that song has made me feel. It became my song of 2022 even though I only discovered it in November. I can still listen to it every day and get that complete sense of wonder and of awe that I felt the first time that I heard it. That ending of the song is completely amazing, and it just completely just blows me away every time. "Withstanding all the time, changes, and seasons..." - LDR Concise Body Arrow Functions Why am I so bad at arrow functions? Whyyyyyyyyyyy?  Just kidding, I am beginning to get them. But why are they so hard? ...

Biking Home, Part III So if you haven't read my blog before then Biking Home is a song from the soundtrack of my favourite movie, "Whale Rider". The movie is really important to me and it really sustained me throughout my early-to-mid twenties. It's about a Maori girl called Paikea who is meant to be the hereditary leader of her tribe, but her grandad can't accept that it's a woman. By following her destiny, Paikea puts everything back into alignment, and saves the whales which her ancestors legendarily rode in on. This film keeps me going at every fibre of my being. I am such a big believer in following your destiny, no matter what it is, whatever everyone else thinks of you, and even when it is hard. As a woman in tech, with a definitely non-traditional background, and who is so passionate about software engineering, and feels very close to it, I love, love, love, love,  and need, that feeling of being one with, and following, your destiny. Arrow Functions ...

The Festival Gardens An introspective little bit about one of my favourite parks in Liverpool. I would like to say a little bit about my journey into Product. And, the inspiration for today's blog post, actually plays quite a huge role in this. I don't know where the story starts. I guess it starts back in 2018 when I went to do my first MSc in Marine Spatial Planning. I went to Liverpool but I couldn't really get out too much. So while I explored a lot of Sefton Park (which I will write about in a future blog post), I never made it to the Festival Gardens. (By the way, they have a rich history of having been built to attract tourism/please investors but this is not my area of expertise). A year later, in 2019, I went to do MSc number 2 at Manchester. I made some international friends and they wanted to see Liverpool. I hadn't been back so I agreed to join them and be their tour guide for most of the trip.  A part of it included a coach tour around Liverpool - and they ...