32bit.cafe Community Code Jam #3

Okay... now what? You were running on empty, so it's not like you've freed up much energy, but your brain itches to be creative.

You were doing a web development certificate; after a 4 semester break to work on your health, you managed to finish the final class by pushing yourself into crashes and skipping the main project. You'd been planning to get a job in web development or accessibility, but now that you've accepted you're not well enough to work it feels like it was a waste of money.

• read a post about being weird online

  You've been following Chris Ferdinandi for a while; you like the way he advocates for simplicity in web development, educating folks about things like vanilla JavaScript and progressive enhancement. In October he posts The Indie Web and the joy of being weird... and you start going down a rabbit hole.

  • read about digital gardens

    You start with an article that he linked, A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden by Maggie Appleton. She writes about digital gardens' history and their resurgence and outlines the design patterns that she sees, linking to a wide variety of articles:

    • read Hypertext Gardens

      Hypertext Gardens is a site made over 20 years ago by Mark Bernstein with winding paths. It prompts you to wonder about how this organizational structure (or lack thereof) interacts with cognitive accessibility; it's all very intriguing, but it's also hard to get your head around when you're tired.

      You put a pin in that question to come back to later...

    • read about Gardens and Streams

      Next is The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral (content warning for references to gun violence and suicide). It explores the idea of a personal wiki, how it can be used to create connections and new understandings, and elaborates upon the idea of making a digital garden with branching paths in contrast to a stream of linear information (such as found in blogs and social media).

      You think about the millions of ideas swimming in your head, and the connections you might be able to make between them.

      • research Obsidian

        Maggie Appleton references Obsidian in her post. You'd heard of it before, even downloaded it once to try out. The simplicity of linking between markdown files definitely appeals to you. You watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials on personal knowledge bases (PKBs).

        • try out Obsidian

          You download it again and start putting in notes. You can see the potential, but it's tiring work getting thoughts out of your brain and then making connections between them. There's something here, and it's worth exploring later, but for now it doesn't keep your interest.

  • read about the IndieWeb

    You poke around the IndieWeb website Chris Ferdinandi linked. You really like the concepts of owning your content and data and POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere), but some of the details get a bit technical for you, at least for now.

    What are other people doing in this space?

    • search for the small web

      There's so much. Neocities of course pops up; you'd heard of it in passing and seen websites hosted there, but when you look closer the variety of sites is astounding. You still can't handle some of the ones with animations (which had initially turned you off the platform), but there's a lot more to see.

      You also stumble across a lot of manifestos, posts about why you should make a personal site or blog, how the small web is beautiful, what's wrong with the commercial web. The internet used to be fun by Rachel Kwon collects a bunch of them, and you spend your free energy browsing them and finding folks to follow.

      • discover 32-Bit Cafe

        You saw references to Yesterweb in various places, but by the time you'd started your search the community had come to an end. Somehow you stumble upon 32-Bit Cafe. You have fun browsing tutorials, trying their different CSS themes, and eventually join the Discord server. But larger Discord communities are a bit tricky for you to keep up with...

        • join the 32-Bit Cafe forum

          A few months after you join the Discord server, the mods announce a new direction — a new forum with a focus on website discussions. You join as soon as it's fully open to new members, and soon you're chatting with people about web development and making accessibility suggestions in the Help section.

          You hadn't realized how much you missed the slower pace of forums. It's so much easier to get caught up with new posts, to follow threads of conversation, and to take your time writing a response.

          Now when you pick up your phone, you usually open the forum first, before checking places like Discord and Mastodon.

          It's really nice.

• scrap your professional portfolio

  You had plans to make a portfolio of projects when you finished your web development certificate. You've got lists of potential features and pages, thoughts about how to implement them in Eleventy, links to JavaScript resources, CSS snippets...

  Maybe one day in the distant future (with a magical cure) you'll be well enough to need a portfolio, but right now there's no point.

  It feels bad to let all that work go to waste, though.

  • browse people's personal sites

    As you explore the personal/small web, you encounter so many fun and unusual sites. People play with CSS and JavaScript, create digital collections, share projects and art, write about their lives.

    You begin to see how websites can be a form of creative expression, rather than simply blogs or portfolios. You remember the websites you used to love exploring in the early 2000s, with hidden easter eggs and image maps of people's desks.

    • read 32-Bit Cafe's "Ideas for Your Personal Website"

      You encountered 32-Bit Cafe earlier, and somehow you end up back there on a particular page, Ideas for Your Personal Website. You see how the ideas you had for a personal portfolio could be adapted, and you realize the freedom that would come from having a site under your internet identity, not your real name.

      • plan a website

        You take your portfolio plans, copy them, and start editing them. The projects section can expand from websites to include things like embroidery and zines. The blog can talk about anything, including disability. You create a new section devoted to creative, experimental pages (like this one).

        You sketch wireframes in your notebook next to your old portfolio designs, reading Eleventy tutorials to figure out how best to generate the pages and website structure.

        You remember Maggie Appleton's third pattern of digital gardens, "Imperfection & Learning in Public," and create a timeline for developing the website out in the open. HTML and Eleventy first, with minor CSS. Then CSS and pictures. Then JavaScript (if needed).

        • start coding

          You start small, with a few pages and a blog. It's just text, influenced by the elegant designs of websites that you've seen while browsing as well as Seirdy's Best practices for inclusive textual websites. (Although there's so much to absorb in the latter, it will probably take you years to fully comprehend the recommendations and apply the ones you want.)

          Working on the site or brainstorming ideas helps keep you from doomscrolling social media. And it gets you excited about your physical hobbies, thinking about how you can eventually display them.

          • publish your website

            After about a month of tinkering (and resting from medical tests and appointments), you publish your bare-bones site. It's up! It exists!

            You exist.

            • continue working on it

              You have so many plans! You feel excited about the future, about the potential for being creative and sharing yourself with the world. You start writing blog posts and working on various features. You come up with ideas for new websites.

              You do too much. (Oops.)

              You'll probably never be finished, but that's part of the fun. And that's also a reason to take it more slowly, despite the rush to finish blog carnival posts or code jams. If you crash and have to rest, it'll always be waiting for you to return. (But better to take it easy and avoid crashing in the first place.)

              This is going to be fun!