Definitely a meaningful project for me as we set out to put together an online retail shop (le bleu!). 💃 💃

With regulations to limit social interactions implemented nationwide, businesses have been adversely affected and many saw declines in the number of customers browsing and shopping at physical stores.

Le bleu, a store at Takashimaya, is pivoting to begin displaying and selling women’s clothing online!

What a joy it is to explore solutions to meet a need! There could be many different routes, and we never really know till we’ve tried. 🤣 😂 🤣 

If you have ANY comments or suggestions for the website / model / photography do let me know!

Stay tuned! ⚡

I was thrilled to begin teaching coding at the public library over the weekends this year!

Scratch is a free free programming language for users to create interactive stories, games, music/art, and animations. Scratch was designed by MIT in 2007 as an introductory coding language with drag-and-drop features for easy learning.

Through the class, students learn about variables, movement, coordinates, loops, conditionals, etc. to create sprites that interact in environments of their design.

We made a shooting game a few weeks ago!

With the new monthlong heightened measures implemented in Singapore to curb the spread of covid-19 from May 16 through June 13, classes are shifted online for the next 4 weeks.

WeLL. Looking forward, still! Will do what we can & let’s see what occurs. :—–)

For the past few months, app development was put on hold and I began volunteering with a ground-up group to help charities build websites! Particularly with safe management measures in place that limits large-group social interactions, charities face challenges interacting with their communities. Instead, harnessing tech, we hope to mitigate these inconveniences &&& do what we can to move operations online!

Frontend web development

I worked with an experienced volunteer who was Tremendous help! New to html, css, javascript, and especially javascript, I’m thankful for fellow volunteers who pitched in readily to direct me to different resources.

HTML

HTML provides the basic structure of sites, which is enhanced and modified by other technologies like CSS and JavaScript.

CSS

CSS controls presentation, formatting, and layout.

Javascript

JavaScript controls the behavior of different elements.

Vue.js

“Vue.js uses an HTML-based template syntax to declaratively bind the rendered DOM to the underlying Vue instance’s data. All Vue.js templates are valid HTML that can be parsed by spec-compliant browsers and HTML parsers.”

Directives

Directives are special attributes with the v- prefix. Directive attribute values are expected to be a single JavaScript expression (with the exception of v-for). A directive’s job is to reactively apply side effects to the DOM when the value of its expression changes. Examples include:

• v-for
• v-if
• v-bind
• v-on

Well! Am now moving on to back-end web development for the next 2 months .. . . .. . Let’S do ThiS ~

Fishie, Friend requires a device with TrueDepth camera i.e. iPhone X or newer. Fishie, Friend is available on the App Store!  Check it out here: https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/fishie-friend/id1522183470

Fishie, Friend was particularly fun to make for three reasons-

1. Fishie, Friend received inputs from very helpful folks at the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore, who had shared statistics on marine litter and provided more information about our shored. It was with their assistance that this simple game could include nuggets of information! TQ!

2. I smiled sweetly, I cajoled- I asked (and with roaring success!) my sister to design the Fishie! Oh, oh, oh it is a very cute Fishie with an upturned mouth. It animates, with tiny, paddling fins. TQ!

3. Some say this is where I lose you . . .. . it was a real party (on my screens) learning about TrueDepth APIs! Augmented Reality (AR) Kit is able to manage x,y,z coordinates to identify movement. With the TrueDepth camera and ARKit face mesh, code could be written to detect facial expressions.

Get your face mesh on! (Fishie is ready!)

(Smart Scan is available on the App Store! Check it out here: https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/smart-scan/id1510121324)

In the third week of Singapore’s national response to COVID-19 aka ‘Circuit Breaker’ or ‘CB’, two of my family members expressed trouble having had to work from home!

1. My sister had to scan documents and upload its PDF (trivia: portable document format) but the scanner at home was not working.

The mobile apps she tried to use were not working for her as the application would try to helpfully identify the region to crop and convert to PDF, without providing the option for the user to adjust it. Eventually, it only wanted to select a portion of the page, and would omit the rest. Simple code to fix, I thought. I will make the margins adjustable ~.

2. My mother had to make changes to documents, but the soft-copy was saved in the computer at her office! She lamented having had to re-type pages of work.

My recent obsession with machine learning kicked in! CAN’T I JUST TRAIN MY MODEL to recognise letters and it could identify it! I read up more and learnt about optical character recognition and excitedly began a new project on Fri night and, and lo and behold… (my tenth minimally innovative mobile app name) SMART SCAN!

Over Zoom last night, someone remarked that she felt happy too because she could see how I was overjoyed. That made me think about how fortunate I was, to be able to learn and apply something I enjoy.

As Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) had put, ‘You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.’ To be able to be in a position to now (albeit at times more faintly than others) agree, is something I am thankful and glad for.  

:—-)

Rachel out.

iOS development has been quiet the past 5 months or so (until today!) because I had been busy with

(a) work- I started work at a new office in Sep! and

(b) React Native- new year, new plan of exploring development in Android ! !

Development for Android has been confusing && I am taking a mini break by slipping in an iOS application – yay!

Minutes came from an idea to develop an application that transcribes audio at meetings/workshops/seminars so I could refer to the transcript and not.miss.anything.wow!

/* Key points about the code for people who may be interested hahaha:

(a) Request authorisation of use of SFSpeechRecognitionRequest and through info.plist– You can read the documentation here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/speech/sfspeechrecognizer/3152604-supportsondevicerecognition

(b) Set a timer!

func startTimer(){ timer = Timer.scheduledTimer(timeInterval: 1, target: self,   selector: (#selector(SecondViewController.updateTimer)), userInfo: nil, repeats: true) } @objc func updateTimer() { if (seconds<60) { seconds += 1; timerOutlet.text = “\(seconds)” } 

(c) Implement speech recording and recognition.

let node = audioEngine.inputNode; let recordingFormat = node.outputFormat(forBus: 0); node.installTap(onBus: 0, bufferSize: 1024, format: recordingFormat) { [unowned self (buffer, _) in self.request.append(buffer) } audioEngine.prepare(); try audioEngine.start(); recognitionTask = speechRecognizer?.recognitionTask(with: request) [unowned self] (result, _) in if let transcription = result?.bestTranscription { self.updateUIWithTranscription(transcription) } }

(d) Save content via customised email via MessageUI and UIAlertController

*/

Too long; didn’t read ? ?

–> Check out Minutes here: https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/minutes/id1498211420

For ANY suggestions or queries to build your own simple app –> rachelchng_@hotmail.com *~*

…

Bye!

Updating on an earlier-published app …!

Over dinner, a friend who had heard about my new interest in mobile apps shared that her centre at work purchases a licence for a mobile app that enables children who are nonverbal to communicate.

She described the app: children who were nonverbal would type the words they would like to communicate, and the app would read it out. Her centre was looking for cheaper options.

I PUT ON MY THINKING CAP . . . .

Follow link to check it out! https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/voice-assistant/id1478582318

For suggestions or feedback: rachelchng_@hotmail.com ! *~*

It’s a sunny yellow banana day!

To help me with my laundry lists of unending things to complete, I have created TO-DAY – a handy to-do list coupled with motivational messages to daily inspire me ^^

If you’ve tried TO-DAY and would like to offer feedback/suggestions or if you have any queries or require any assistance OR are interested to know how TO-DAY was created, FEEEEEL FREEE to contact me: rachelchng_@hotmail.com :—)

https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/to-day/id1475214577

…

B y e !