TechLatte: Cheryl Marquez

Learn how AI can help you create a month of content in a few hours

Unlock Your Inner Artist: AI Art for Beginners!

Have you ever wanted to create stunning and unique art but were limited by your drawing abilities or intimidated by digital drawing tools like Procreate? Do you dream of expressing your creativity without the frustration of trying to create a masterpiece by hand? You don’t have to be a skilled artist to create fantastic artwork. With artificial intelligence (AI) tools like Dall-e 2 and Midjourney, you can unlock your inner artist and bring your creative visions to life. I was overwhelmed with the features of Procreate and wanted an outlet to be creative when I found AI art generators. Now our only limitation is the imagination.

Dall-e 2: Creating Images from Text 

Dall-e 2 is an AI tool that can create imaginative images from text. To use it, you need to describe the image you want to make, and Dall-e 2 will generate a visual representation of your description. The tool is handy for generating abstract or surreal renderings that might be difficult to create by hand, along with photo-realistic images. 

Quickstart guide for Dall-e 2

  • Sign up for an account on OpenAI, and you can start creating art from your browser.
  • Start by writing a simple description of the image you want to create. The more specific your description, the better your image will be. You can even create art in the style of anime.
  • Use descriptive language to capture the color, texture, and shape of the object or scene you want to create. As a bonus, you can ask it to make in an Impressionist style or pixels like Minecraft.
  • Once you have written your description, submit it to Dall-e 2 and wait for the tool to generate an image based on your description.
  • If you’re not happy with the image, you can tweak your description and submit it again until you get what you want.
  • When you are happy with your image, you can download it for your creative projects.
  • Experiment with Dall-e 2 by using different descriptions and prompts to generate various images. With practice, you can create stunning and imaginative artwork using this AI tool.

Tips for using AI art tools 

While AI art tools can be powerful for unlocking your inner artist, you must know how to use the prompts to create, experiment, and play with the tools to generate the most creative designs. 

How to use Dall-e 2 prompts

  • To create an image in the style of an impressionist artist, use descriptive language that emphasizes color and texture. For example, you might say, “a field of wildflowers with soft pastel hues and a gentle breeze.” 
  • To achieve a modern art style, focus on geometric shapes and bold colors, such as “a series of sharp, angular lines in contrasting primary colors.” 
  • For a specific art style, like a Japanese woodblock print, use cultural references and descriptive language, such as “a mountain landscape with misty forests and a red sun in the background.”
  • To create cyberpunk images that are both clean and detailed, use precise and detailed descriptions of the technological elements in the picture. For example, you might say, “a futuristic cityscape with gleaming skyscrapers, hovering drones, and sleek, neon-lit cars.” 

By experimenting with different prompts and techniques, you can unlock your inner artist with AI tools and create stunning, unique artwork.

My early AI art experiments

Next up: Midjourney – Turning Sketches & Text into Masterpieces 

Midjourney is an AI tool that can turn simple sketches, text prompts, photos, or existing artwork into intricate, Detailed images. This tool is helpful for artists who have played with Dall-e 2 and want high-definition (HD) professional-quality artwork. It will include an overview of using Midjourney and examples of beautiful artwork created using the tool.

Burning Man Gifts & Book Club

Do you ever hear your friend’s talk about an experience and think, “I want to do that too!!” And I had that same reaction when my friends were talking about Book Club, hard pass on going to Burning Man.

TL;DR

  • Find my friends at burning man, they will have lip/body balms
  • Book club read: High Achiever by Tiffany Jenkins, a true story about addiction

Burning Man Principles

Assorted lip and body balms
Homemade Balms Flavors: Calm, Peppermint, Orange made by Tanya & Patricia, the metamorphic, butterfly burners

To be a fly on the wall as your friends plan for Burning Man is fascinating. You get to see the practical aspect of packing what they need to survive and the creative side of what they’ll share and wear.

The playa has a gifting economy, to help people stay moisturized, they’ve made 150 tubes of a lip and body balm with “secret messages” in the colored letters. If you are going to Burning Man, I hope you find my friends at the red lampshade creperie camp. They have surprise food gifts and these lovely balms in 3 flavors.

Burning Man (remote)

My ideal Burning Man experience is one I can enjoy from the comfort of home while navigating through the playa via an iPad controlling a drone or GoPro’s live streaming from my friends camelbacks or bikes. I would love to tune into different cameras and be a commentator for the artwork and experiences. To be able to turn on sights and sounds from different neighborhoods like you were flipping channels on TV. I finally understand why kids watch other kids play video games on YouTube or Twitch.

Why Book Club?

Along the lines of living vicariously, I joined my best friend’s Book Club to be exposed to books I wouldn’t ordinary select and to explore topics that make me uncomfortable, to continue learning and growing. The first book, definitely hit my book club goals.

LIGHTWEIGHT BOOK REPORT

The book we read was called High Achiever by Tiffany Jenkins. The book was a difficult read because it dragged you painfully into the main character’s addiction and withdrawal. It brought me to a dark place and sadly, made reading incredibly unpleasant because I tend to experience the main character’s feelings as the story progresses. While it made me uncomfortable, I empathized with the struggles reading from a junkie’s point of view. Even though it wasn’t a fun read, I’m grateful for the chance to discuss such a difficult subject with intelligent women. I was impressed with how open people were with personal experiences which paralleled the book. I loved hearing everyone’s opinions and how the book affected them.

I love reading because it allows you experience life outside your comfort zone; to travel, to be rich or poor, see life through different ethnic lenses, and learn from the journey in the book.

This book taught me empathy and patience because you never know what people are struggling with. You often don’t know the pain they are recovering from or covering up. You never know how your words or actions can uplift or crush the people around you.

Eats

First Course

  • Assortment of 5 cheeses and 3 crackers
  • Spicy Fig Jelly
  • Red Pepper Jelly
  • Habanero Pork Rinds
  • Spread (ramen, Szechuan beef, flaming hot cheetos, jalepeño Fritos)

Second Course

  • Jasmine Brown Rice
  • Zoodles with Crushed Tomatoes, Corn, & Cilantro
  • Dry Rubbed Chicken Thighs

Dessert (not pictured)

  • Berry Trio
  • Homemade Whipped Cream (heavy cream, vanilla, cinnamon, & coconut palm sugar)

Technology Used

  • Samsung Galaxy S8
  • Evernote to write and edit
  • WordPress app to layout and publish

No excuses, use that little computer in your hand to blog. I wrote and edited this post after book club, while watching stand up comedy on Netflix.

If you must watch TV, create while you consume. ~Cheryl

Managing Imposter Syndrome in a New Role

Managing Imposter Syndrome (lego office)After the excitement of a new job wears off and you embark on new projects, you have to figure out what processes to follow and how to use new systems. For me the easiest part is figuring out the system and the hardest part is learning how people prefer to work within defined processes.

At the end of my second week of work, I was covering for my teammate while she was on vacation. During the handoff meeting everything sounded pretty straightforward. During a 1:1 with my manager, I mentioned I was going to cover completing the updates to a landing page and she said, how will you do that when you haven’t started training in the content management system (CMS)? Oh damn, she was right, I haven’t done one thing in the system. A cold vise gripped my heart when I realized, I was so new, I didn’t know what questions to ask. While part of me was afraid I didn’t know how to do my new job, there was a little voice inside that said, you’re good at learning new systems, it will eventually fall into place.

Fortunately, in my notes, my teammate who is super amazing, suggested that I work with our project manager to create the new components and have her walk me through making the updates required. As I worked on the updates, I was hit with imposter syndrome because it took much longer than I expected, mainly because I was new to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). Part of my learning was that each component needed to be activated separately to be visible on the page. Instead of beating myself up for not knowing what I didn’t know, I messaged teammates to ask how they did things and asked for feedback to review my work before sending it outside our team for approvals.

When imposter syndrome hits you have the choice to go down the rabbit hole of running through the “I’m not good enough” scenarios or you can read documentation and ask questions to learn how to get things done.

Tips for Managing Imposter Syndrome

  • Reframe the trigger that caused you to feel like you’re less than capable and ask questions.
  • Ask yourself, have I done something similar in the past?
  • Can you leverage something you’ve done before? If not, is there a tutorial or documentation you can follow?
  • Is there someone familiar with the process who can walk you through it or get you started?
  • As you learn, take notes and create documentation as if you are explaining the process to a new hire. The act of creating the documentation will help you learn the system or process. They say you learn twice when you teach.
  • When you are unsure of what to do, ask questions to get started and follow-up questions on any terms you’re unfamiliar with.
  • Create a glossary of acronyms in the new organization.
  • Review your notes daily and add context if needed or links to documentation or templates.

Technology Used

  • Samsung Galaxy S8 (it’s old and I still love this phone)
  • Evernote to write and edit
  • WordPress app to layout and publish
  • Pablo by Buffer to find images

Avoid This Rookie Mistake in JavaScript

After taking 3 months off from learning JavaScript as part of the FreeCodeCamp front end development certification program, work finally slowed down to tackle some exercises during lunch. The topic was “Multiple Identical Options in Switch Statements”. While I successfully added a case statement for each number in the range, I made a simple rookie mistake.
I jumped right in by creating all of the cases and break statements, making sure to add the semicolons where appropriate. Before adding “switch(val) {“ to start the switch statement, added that then ran the tests.
The error I got was “SyntaxError: Unexpected end of input”. I googled the syntax for a switch statement and read through the documentation on StackOverflow. Then a lightbulb lit up in my head to check if the code had closing curly braces to match the starting curly braces. You’ll see in the screenshots, how I fixed the problem to successfully execute the switch statement.
Make sure your functions have matching closing curly braces.
some(code) {
return “Did you check for closing curly braces?”;
}
SyntaxError: Unexpected end of input
Solution: Check the code to make sure all curly braces have a matching closing curly brace.

Turns out I forgot to close the switch statement, you’ll see the missing curly brace below.

Successful execution of switch statement with the multiple versions of the same option.

Lessons Learned From My First Facebook Live Stream

Over the last couple years, I’ve been talking about live streaming cooking tutorials and haven’t made it a reality until Facebook Live made it super easy. It was easy to hit the “LIVE” button and go for it. My plan was to use YouTube Live for the live stream instead of using Periscope because I wanted to embed the video on my blog, along with any notes or recipes.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES WITH YOUTUBE
After updating the YouTube app, it turns out my phone didn’t want to live stream from the app. I read that you could live stream using the YouTube Game App, including showing live game play from your mobile device, it turns out you could only live stream if you were showing a game or another app. Next, I downloaded another app whose main function was to live stream to YouTube but it took forever to initialize a connection. Then I remembered a commercial for Facebook Live which is what I ended up using.

PRO TIPS

  • Do a test run.
    • During your first live stream, set the audience to a handful of friends who will be online to give you feedback as you do your demo. They can help you frame your shot, tell you if you need to speak up, slow down or tell you how many times you say ‘um’.
    • Don’t do what I did, which was to turn on FB Live to the public without a limited test run. The good news of doing that is if you are a procrastinator, you can get your first video posted before you have a chance to chicken out.
  • If you are live streaming from your phone, Facebook Live should have the phone vertical, if you tilt it sideways, it will tilt your videos horizontally, like in the video below.

  • Make sure your audience can see what you are doing during your test run. If you are using the front-facing camera, what you see is what your audience sees, double check this before you get started or make adjustments as you go. In my second video, I thought my audience could see the kitchen island where I was preparing spaghetti squash, they couldn’t and I didn’t learn about it until I watched the playback and read the comments.
  • Read the comments as they appear so you can make adjustments and answer questions during your video. Get in the habit of responding to your viewers during your test run because this is how you engage with your audience. It makes it more fun for them and for you! The more fun you and your audience are having, the more likely they will return for future live streams.
  • If you are moving your camera rig when you are not filming, mark where to set up the tripod and lighting with painters tape to make sure you have the same angle each time you shoot, this will save you tons of time.
  • Make the videos between 2 – 4 minutes long. Until you have a ton of content, it’s easier to break your videos into segments under 4 minutes long. This gives you a chance to get all the items and talking points ready between segments.
  • Make sure you have enough lighting so you don’t cast shadows on your face and your audience can see what you are doing. My kitchen doesn’t have enough lighting so I’m ordering lights, tripods, and softboxes for my future videos.
  • If you are planning to grow your audience or embed the videos to your blog, export it from Facebook and upload it to YouTube. I’ll create a tutorial on how to do this in a separate post.

Day 2 count: 649 words

My 500 Words: A Writing Challenge

Do you ever start questioning your life when you have something big coming up? Leading up to a surgery I foolishly scheduled the day before Thanksgiving, I kept asking myself, what if today was your last, would you have done everything you wanted to do in this lifetime? Did you express love? Did you show appreciation for your family and friends? While I’ve done a lot of things I wanted to do like travel, go to concerts or sporting events, I feel like I’ve been holding back in my daily life. Not fully expressing my feelings, showing appreciation or treating everyday as an adventure like before or not making time to pursue the some of my goals.

500 Words a Day to a Better Blog

I’ve wanted to build my blog but have been inconsistent with writing because I was afraid to be judged for sharing where I fell short. Even though I would never know you were judging unless you wrote a comment. You see all these perfect people who manage to juggle everything with their families, write blog posts, take beautiful pictures, make homemade everything while exercising regularly, ugh…exhausted just thinking about it. Then as I was waiting to be admitted into the hospital, I saw this 31 day challenge to write 500 words a day. No editing, just writing and publishing to get into the habit with the hope that the daily habit will improve your writing skills in 31 days. It was the perfect challenge to push myself to write and publish regularly.

Where I Write

Cheryl Marquez – Learning how to code, lessons learned about blogging, marketing and live streaming
Bombchel – Recipes, fitness and yogi journal
Medium – Life without a car and Pokemon Go

The Hero’s Journey

One of my clients has done a great job of documenting her journey from learning to code, attending a dev bootcamp to getting a role as a junior developer on CodingOver40. While she struggles with letting go of her old identity and settles into being a developer, she has been an inspiration to women of all ages through her blog. You have to develop a thick skin when you write, live stream or share your journey with the world. When she got started, I suggested she write everyday and post a different theme for the month. One of my favorite themes was 30 days to a Dream Job. You can identify with the struggles of a job search, she let’s you in on what it’s like to have the added challenge of changing careers while you are working on your technical skills.
In hindsight, I should have done the writing challenge at the same time, so we could go through our journey’s in parallel. As I sit here, I am tempted to put together an editorial calendar but that’s not the goal for the next 31 days. The goal is to write 500 words a day to get into the writing habit and choosing which blogs to post the content I’ve written. Does this mean I’ll publish daily? Not sure, all I know is I’ll be writing 500 words a day. The content will be published on my blogs, including cooking tutorials on Facebook Live. I would love your feedback on what you would like to learn about and I would be happy to write about it. Let me know in the comments. I’m going to use any suggestions as writing prompts.

Day 1 Wordcount: 567 words