Hi! Thanks for joining me at the starting line. All things need a beginning, which only makes them that much more intimidating. Perhaps, one day, this first post will be buried in a backlog so deep that no one will ever read it. But for now, it exists singularly, written by an author with conflicting desires that many people and also no one at all will care about what I write here.

Building the Website

With half a dozen blog posts in different states of completion before I even had a functional website, it became a very real possibility that I would lose steam and abandon the whole project if I did not launch the site and start posting soon. I chose to host this site on GitHub Pages because 1) it is free, 2) I can employ version control as I learn, 3) there are abundant online resources for troubleshooting, and 4) I would like to develop some GitHub competency. There are many great tutorials online about making a GitHub page (example linked below). So rather than sharing my entire process, I will focus on my key takeaways as someone who has never designed a website or used GitHub.
  • Zero Github knowledge is needed to launch a simple website if you follow a tutorial video. However, a GitHub crash course video was very helpful to learn some GitHub fundamentals, including navigation, basic vocabulary, and best practice for writing commit messages.
  • The GitHub Pages documentation was a helpful resource, especially when the menu options or code shown in tutorial videos were out of date.
  • Depending on the language you choose to build the website, you can learn some “bonus” skills such as Markdown, HTML, and CSS. I am mainly using Markdown, but with a couple of HTML workarounds (e.g., changing image size).
  • The free version of GitHub pages does not allow a website to be hosted from a private repository.
  • I am using the Beautiful Jekyll theme, created by Dean Attali. This is just about as easy as it gets to create an attractive blog in minutes. Free use of the theme requires leaving an ad on the site, but for my purposes, this is not an issue.

Logo Design

With the website launched (though still a work in progress), I designed a simple logo, building off the theme of this website as a “playground” for me to fall in love with learning again and to make data fun for everyone! Aesthetically, a slide is an easily identifiable playground staple, and the shape requires only a few lines, making for a clean design. Conceptually, playing on a slide involves a climb, followed by a rush of exhilaration as you slide down. Then all the effort to get to the top is forgotten immediately as you run back to slide again. The process is reflective of how I view developing new skills, especially coding. The joy of success—solving a problem, building something, learning—makes the climb worth it, and you cannot help running back for more with a smile on your face. After drawing out few iterations on the backside of a draft copy of my Master’s thesis (glad to see it repurposed for good), then a digital recreation in GIMP, and boom, our first logo is live.


Learning Roundup

New Skills Refresher Skills
GitHub Markdown
GitHub Pages GIMP
HTML Creative writing (feeling a bit wobbly after years of solely academic writing!)


Resources