Google Developers Group (GDG) Cebu Campus Talk Series 2016

Google Developers Group (GDG) Cebu, a non-profit group of amateurs and professionals (technology users, specialists, and developers) who are enthusiasts and daily users of Google technologies, conducted its “Campus Talk Series” event for the year 2016 as a major preparation for the upcoming Devfest on November 19, 2016. GDG Cebu Team aimed to be one of the most well-known communities in the whole region so that’s why we made this “Campus Talk Series” event possible.

The Campus Talk Series took place in four known universities of Cebu province. It started last September 17, 2016 and ended last November 12, 2016. This event aimed to assist the students to be fully equipped with the latest trend of technology developed by Google fundamentally focusing on the programming and development field. During this event, students were informed about the awesome flavors of Google technology which they could freely explore and use with their school projects or even their startups in mind. They were also encouraged to think and come up with amazing startup ideas that could help not only themselves but the whole community and the world as a whole.

The event has 2 categories:

1.      Talk/Sharing Session – This is where the talking and the sharing happen. Students are gathered as a whole in a big room wherein they get to know and hear the latest Google Technologies articulated by our best speakers.

2.      Codelabs Session – This is the hands-on period. Students apply what they learn during the Talk/Sharing Session with the help of selected best instructors. This is the fun part!

Why we target students?

Simply because young generations have all the time in the world to attend to our event, lol! Most professionals don’t have time for us; most especially this is a series of events, due to their family and work-related reasons. And besides, the young ones are the hope of our world. They have these lots of weird, crazy and awesome ideas. We want that beautiful ideas to be shared and become true! Of course, the older ones also do, we totally agree to that! And we also believe that students in schools and universties must be given attention first, tamed first! 

The four legs of GDG Cebu Campus Talk Series are as follows. 
These are all whole-day events full of fun and knowledge, plus gaining new friends (growing the friendship network) and being awesome altogether :)

1. Cebu Technological University (CTU)

Held last September 17, 2016.

2. University of Cebu (UC)

Held last October 1, 2016.

3. University of the Philippines Cebu (UP Cebu)

Held last October 22, 2016.

4. University of San Jose Recoletos (USJR)

Held last November 13, 2016.

Most pictures are owned by yours truly, taken by my Samsung Galaxy Note 5. I sometimes call my phone as the “GDG Cebu Official Phone” because the team keeps looking for it during picture-takings hahaha!

Our team who made this even successful: https://gdgcebu.org/team

Visit us on the following :)

Official Website: https://gdgcebu.org/

Facebook Page: https://web.facebook.com/gdgcebuorg

Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/gdgcebu

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Fixed: Flickering Lenovo Screen

I had this really annoying issue with my laptop - the monitor of my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro kept on flickering and it really bothered me. At first I just ignored it because I thought it would just disappear. Then, I somehow started to get used to it. 
But then, there’s this time when I was having the moment of my life feeling the love of Noah and Allie in The Notebook movie (I honestly watched it thrice already) or the funny-giggly story of Adam and Emma in the No Strings Attached film (watched it over 4 times), and this flickering thingy really sort of pissed me off.

I noticed that this issue started after I upgraded its operating system from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and fully updated the system and device drivers to the latest version. I have already asked uncle Google about it several times. Well, it told me that I’m not the only who suffered from it because there were also other folks that’s facing the same culprit. It also offered me really lots of solutions; the worst was to send this back to manufacturer or let the Lenovo company know about it then ask for advice. That were pretty clever advices I must say but nah, I just wanted my problem be gone in just a snap. I occasionally wondered if was there an issue with the hardware itself? Should I just let a technician see its condition or consider buying a new one? I came up with different solutions in order to fix it, but only the following helped me:

Disable Panel Self-Refresh:
1. Open Intel HD Graphics Control Panel.
2. Choose Power > On Battery > check "Disable" under Panel Self-Refresh.
3. Click Apply. Then confirm by clicking Yes.

Set Up Refresh Rate from 60p Hz to 48p HZ:
1. Open Intel HD Graphics Control Panel.
2. Choose Display > General Settings > check "48p" under Refresh Rate.
3. Click Apply. 

Your welcome!

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How to Become a Front-end Developer and Designer

One day of my life, I realized that I want to become a Front-end Developer. I searched the internet for tips and advises on how to become one and I came across this very cool yet frank advise by Dillon Grove. I really had goosebumps upon reading this and it seemed he was directly talking to me. Thanks Dillon for being such a motivation!

Here it is:  

Like you, I've found that there exist very little in the way front-end web development courses. And the courses that do exist leave a lot to be desired. As a result, it seems to me that most good front-end developers I've met are more or less self-taught. So if all we're trying to do is answer the question you posted ("How do people generally become front-end web developers?") we can stop right here. I tend to agree with your speculation that most of them are probably self-taught.

But I'm willing to bet that's not quite what you want to hear. By virtue of you asking this question, I'm guessing you're trying to find out how you can become a good front-end developer and if that's the case, simply saying "teach yourself" isn't useful.

Now, I could go on and on about what books you could purchase, or which technologies you should learn and in what order but to be honest, I've recently come to the conclusion that all of those things are pretty irrelevant. Sure, pick up a starter book if you want. I really don't think your specific choice of book will make much of a difference in the long run.

I could also start listing off what I think the qualities of a good front-end engineer are and hope that you might absorb some of those qualities. But I don't think that'll do much good either. If you're just starting out in the field, you probably have no idea how to apply those qualities to what you're doing.

Instead, I'm going to try to impart upon you a specific strategy for self-learning. This is the strategy I've used and I daresay it's worked pretty well for me. So here it is:

Stop trying to learn proactively and start doing things instead. Ask and answer your own questions.

Going out there and reading a book/blog about HTML/CSS/JS isn't going to do you much good if you don't know why you're reading it. If you're anything like me, you're going to retain maybe 10% of the material. You could read 20 books on the subject and you're not going to be much closer to being a good front-end developer.

Instead, just start a damn project. Set a goal of making something that you know you don't know how to do. Start writing code. At some point you'll run into a something you don't know how to do. Type what you want to know how to do into Google and figure it out. Then do it.

I should point out that this process can take hours even for the simplest thing. Especially if you don't know exactly what it is you even need to Google. But in 99% of cases, you'll learn something along the way. And the thing you learn will be relevant to what you're doingand because of that it will stick with you. 

You might read about CSS Floats in a book and you're going to forget it within a week. Try to create a layout that requires floats and spend 2 hours on Google until you figure out how to make it work and you're not ever going to forget that shit.

Then keep setting the bar higher. Make loftier goals. Force yourself to meet those goals. Sometimes you'll find out that the thing you want to do isn't possible. Great, you've now learned the boundaries and limitations of the technology you're working with.

You literally cannot go wrong with this approach. No matter what you do, you're going to learn something. 

This all sounds like an incredibly inefficient way of learning, I know. Why would you spend hours on the internet figuring out how to do things on your own when you could supposedly just read a book or two and learn everything you need to know? Because the latter doesn't really work, that's why. There isn't a shortcut to this stuff. You just have to do it. You have to bang your head against the wall until you figure it out. Keep chipping away.

Give it some time and you'll find that you have to consult the internet less and less. You'll run into a problem or a bug and remember experiencing the same bug in another project you've already done. You can then go back to that project, see how you fixed it, and apply the same fix to what you're doing right now. Eventually, you'll just know how to fix things. And then you'll begin to realize that you're getting pretty good at this stuff.

I'm not saying that you should never read a book. Often when you first start out it's good to read at least one introductory book to sort of get your bearings and learn some basic terminology. But don't expect books to do the learning for you. Ultimately, it's up to you.

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