destroytoday

After a week in Iceland, I returned to Brooklyn on Monday. Knowing I leave for Portland on Sunday, I didn’t want to get back into the thick of things with Cushion just to have any work broken up and left for after the trip. Because of this, I decided to spend this week cleaning up and tackling long overdue to-dos.

The “Experiments” section of my website was highest on my list. It existed in the previous version, but slipped through the cracks in the redesign. I can’t clearly describe this section, but all of the projects within follow a common theme—they don’t bring in money. I made them just because.

The first project is a rewrite of an old one—Uptime. Back when I was first learning Ruby, I thought I’d make a dead-simple app that did one thing—track the uptime of my website. That on its own is a bit boring, so I designed it in the style of warehouse injury signs.

With absolutely no experience with Ruby, I wrote the single-page app on Rails, which is the equivalent to building a LEGO house with a construction crew. This time around, with a few years of Ruby under my belt, I spent an afternoon and rebuilt it on the lightweight Sinatra framework. I’m also now hosting the source code on Github, in case anyone wants their own uptime page.

At some point, I stopped experimenting. Over the next few days, I plan to add a few more of my older “experiments” and continue posting more as I make them. I’m hoping it will bring more variety into my work schedule, allowing me to take the occasional afternoon to focus on a random idea.