I haven't written much in the last couple weeks, but boy has there been a ton of site progress (not to mention a week in Montana which is probably worth it's own blog!):
Golf section finalized to have breakouts by year, course, and accompanying charts
Gaming section fully updated to capture all games completed betweek 2020 and present
Games, movies, TV, and Books updated so an overlay will show up on clicking. This makes is easy to cycle through these very quickly. Cherry on top is this makes it easy for me to drop in a review without having to create a new page.
New map section on the front page which links to all data on the site. Basically is a pin-board that updates when I add new stuff. This is something I want in real life!
With all that said, I'm running dry on what else I can capture here. It feels really good having this (hopefully) thoroughly thought out before really pushing in a ton of content. By having this integration and automation completed, the site should be WAY easier to update! It makes it way more likely I'll actually stick with this for a long time. It's also very intimidating thinking about how much work it will be to sort all these photo albums I want to make. But, as Christine says, I certainly have the time for it now...
Golf and Concert Data Finished?
The last week has been A TON of data entry. First I concentrated on golf, having to figure out how to make all my 18Birdies data useable here. That ended up being pretty darn manual, but it turned out wonderful. I have tons of data and reporting around it to really show how my game has changed (for the worse the last 24 months!!). Still really interesting to see this.
I started building out the Music section, but quickly realized I was most interested in getting concerts documented. Probably has to do with just seeing Foo Fighters and Arkells the last couple weeks. This led me down a wonderful rabbit hole of trying to find every concert I ever went to. I actually did pretty well here! From what I can tell, I have everything back to 2002, which is way more years back than I care to think about. This ended up being a lot of work. I really wanted to collate all possible sources - I figure I'll never put this effort in again. I documented setlists (with assistance from the Setlist.fm API), companions, seating, venues, etc. Made room for pictures and commentary.. it all looks pretty good!
I REALLY like how this came out. Feels like having a 30 year digital life leaves you with tons of information, but it's all scattered across various websites, hard drives, social media, and repositories without any cohesion, assuming they're even accessible. Maybe that's the point of all this?
JavaScript architecture restructured. Gaming Data Entry Finished to 2024. Golf section skeleton added!
Well the backend the website has been completely changed. Now a JavaScript file exists with the different data available almost as a database, and the website just pulls from that datasource. Makes it MUCH easier to update and re-organize webpages as needed. I decided to add a bunch of metadata to the games I completed, which means a large data entry job that's now done!
With the architecture migration completed, I was able to create the new Golf section in like 5 minutes which is fantastic. This means I can easily add / edit / remove sections whenever the need arises. I can also capture golf scores using the same JavaScript datasource (though admittedly this means I gave myself another large data entry job to capture old rounds..). That will make future data reporting on score trends at courses or year-over-year very easy to pull.
Really enjoying this so far!!
2020-2024 Gaming Updated
That took way longer than I wanted, but got the Gaming section in pretty good shape. At least the 2020-2024 game list is complete with box art and scores. I had some comments at the time I'd like to include as well, but that can be for another day.
Aug 13, 2026: Let's Get Started
Well, I'm six days off the job. Feels weird, but figured might as well start working on something I've wanted to work on for a decade of so. This is my first effort at making my own webpage since maybe 1999? Feels like a lifetime ago, and maybe it is since I have a daughter older than I was at that time!
I'm absolutely using AI to see how to write this as I haven't used HTML since high school, so we'll see how it goes!