About Me
Hello world! I'm Sasha. I'm an English Literature graduate, 29, who has found herself writing fundraising materials for an international development charity. I'm happy that I'm able to use the writing skills I developed at university in my job, but am ready to try something new.
Prior to Febuary of this year I had absolutely no experience coding. I was always very good at maths and English, and significantly less good at art and design - that's why for my F&C application I decided to turn the CSS aspect of my website into a challenge - rather than spend a long time trying to figure out what my website should look like, I tried to replicate the look of the first computer I ever used - my Grandpa's Windows 98.
Computers and technology have always been of interest to me, both from a purely surface-level perspective (they're fun to play around with) but also because of the more theoretical questions that they raise in regards to gender and identity. The internet is for many queer people of my generation a formative space to explore gender and expression; you can 'try out' an alternate gender presentation or sexuality in a virtual space without fear of real-life backlash. However, as with other marginalised groups, tech can be used to make the lives of LGBT people more difficult that speak to a culture of privilege within the industry. Web forms are frequently guilty of asking poorly worded questions around gender,or make assumptions about sexuality. The most egregious example of this I've seen was an energy provider, who could only make a joint account for two people if they were a straight couple - They once sent out a letter to my downstairs neighbours (both men) addressed to Mr and Mrs Mr Smith
I was the first openly LGBT person at my current workplace, and I went back and forth with HR for a while because they couldn't understand that it wasn't appropriate for my sexuality to be displayed in my intranet profile. They didn't mean anything by it, they just hadn't considered what my user experience might be: That's why I feel so strongly about diversity in tech, because it doesn't just affect people who work in the tech industry, but people from all walks of life who use technology on a daily basis.
I first became aware of Founders and Coders through one of my friends, who I'd previously worked with until she quit to join one of your cohorts in 2018. When she told me about your intention to widen the presence of underrepresented groups in tech I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of. I'm a huge fan of how committed F&C is to upholding the use of inclusive language, which I've seen on the Discord (and the Slack before that) both from the Discord bot and the FAC team. I've found the Tuesday and Thursday coaching groups an absolute delight, specifically they've turned DOM manipulation from a total enigma to something manageable.
My Interests
I'm a huge fan of making things with my hands and I'm extremely reluctant to spend money. Most of my hobbies are reflective of this. I've been baking sourdough more or less daily since 2018, and in 2019 I began making my own soap, and I started brewing beer in 2020 using locally sourced ingredients. I find the amount of packaging that all of these products come in to be totally ridiculous, and much of the hobby industry is similarly wasteful, so I learned wherever possible to use unprocessed ingredients rather than (for example) a pre-assembled beermaking kit.
I like to think of this website as having a similar ethic, apart from the classic windows 98 icons I've tried to make everything using CSS, so I can take full credit for the page, limitations and all.
Contact
You can find out more about my coding by checking out my
Freecodecamp profile,
Codewars account,
and the
Github repository
for this site.
Sourdough Hydration Calculator
This tool lets me calculate how much water to put in my bread - put in how much flour and starter you're using, and how hydrated you want the dough to be and it will tell you how much water to use. Try it out!