Year One

It is hard to believe it has already been a year since starting this new site. I kicked off with a reflection on writing, websites, and social media in an digital age. Re-reading that one lap later and it holds up. Hell I’ll double down on it. Social media sucks. I want to own the thoughts and words I share.

Taking in the past year I’ve accomplished a few of the goals I set for myself and fallen short on others:

• Write consistently. Not my great American novel, but just a little something at least once a week. I ended up averaging 1.7 post a week, for a total of 92.
• Embrace the spirit of SaMCast. Mike and I put out the last episode on the 10 year anniversary, just two days before my first post here. Safe as Milk let me share the things I was enjoying (check), inspired me to try new things (check), and let me hang out with my friend (not check, but Mike and I still get coffee 2-3 times a month). I miss it a year on, but it had it’s day.
• Start new projects. You don’t need a website to start projects. My garage and office closet are a graveyard of old projects no website will ever see. But this is a good place to keep up with them. I can share, but also have some self inflicted accountability to progress them. The ABC Challenge, 50 Best Games, and Travel Logs are my favorite web specific projects from year one.
• Build my design/code skills. I have day dreamed for years about building interactive visualizations, games, and experiences on the web. What I landed on with this new site does not allow me to scratch that itch and by extension I have not progressed it much in 365 days. I am tinkering with Gemini and Claude Code occasionally, but nothing that is ever ready to surface and share.