Diagramming the Dev
Sure it’s creative. But what does it do?
If you’ve never just created something — combined ideas, built a project around a single concept, acted on a whim — I highly recommend it. My latest creation, a parody version of The 1975’s “Love It If We Made It” combines my love of coding and music. It took me longer to create my page and write this blog than I wanted. But as it turns out, May marks a year since my first Fresh Perspective post “When Worlds Collide.”
So what the hell, that’s an accomplishment. And I’m celebrating à la Weird Al.
My parody song page for “I’d Comment But I’m Lazy” features my lyrics — scrolling or static. There are other CSS enhancements too, like a button set, limited responsiveness and a groovy webkit background.
Stop quantifying, start embracing creativity
As I pondered whether my mashup-meets-front-end-magic was interesting enough to share, I was reminded of the sheer joy of creating and how endangered that process is by a LinkedIn question about books that shaped my professional life. “Orbiting the Giant Hairball” by Gordon MacKenzie came to mind. It’s a celebration of creativity-slash-cautionary-tale of the hairball’s power to suck the life from everything in its vortex.
Here’s to never forgetting the power of creativity to set us and our work apart. And steering clear of that hairball. Amirite?
Viva honest error
My new page is imperfect. I already mentioned it’s not uber responsive, because I’ve been trying to learn CSS Grid and Flexbox instead of relying on Bootstrap. There are other flaws too.
But rather than dwell on shortcomings, it seems like a good time to reiterate my personal motto. I truly believe there is hope in honest error; some of the effects I experimented with here will no doubt pop up again in my work. And because it was honest, what mattered wasn’t the polish and detail of an app destined for public use. What mattered was seeing how far I could carry an idea.
My next project is going in an entirely different direction, depending on what I decide to study next. PHP, Webkit, and TypeScript are in the running. I’m spending a few days in Seattle before I decide what’s next … maybe I’ll come back with a completely new idea. Or a tattoo. :)