One thing that may not be evident from my web presence is that I’m into cocktails. I had the best Negroni of my life at Gin Palace the other night, and when I needed an idea for a project, naturally that Negroni came to mind. Enter the Negroni Awareness Coalition (the NAC). Quickie screenshot:
Some back story: I’m a newly minted facilitator for the company Decoded and, as my training, I participated in the Code in a Day workshop (which I’ll be facilitating). The premise of the workshop is a ‘web app in a day’. It’s so nice to have an excuse to just sit down and make something, blank canvas style. Decoded is doing super cool stuff, maybe a future post on that.
At the moment, the above just a snarky site that tells you how far you are from the Gin Palace, but I think it might be fun to continue working on it. Plus I showed it to the lovely bartender there … maybe it will become a bigger thing! A Negroni tracking system or something.
On side projects
I’ve had a rocky relationship with side projects. On one hand, of course I should have one (or three)! On the other hand, I spend so much time on the computer already…do I really want to add a bunch of unpaid work to my plate? At least I keep this blog relatively up to date, though I’ve definitely semi-abandoned some promising side projects in past.
That being said, side projects are a fantastic way to learn new skills. And, like many a front end developer these days, I’m feeling more and more pressure to sharpen my JavaScript chops and get my feet wet in the backend. So, time for a side project!
Another idea (of course)
Ideas are cheap, but I’ve got another good one in addition to the NAC.
Again in line with my cocktail fixation, I like to go to bars alone sometimes. However, not all bars are great for that, and I end up awkwardly peering through the window to see if it would be a fitting place. I’d love to have a list of the best go-to-alone bars, with relevant info that isn’t necessarily in a Foursquare tip like, what days of the week is it the quietest? Is it good for quietly reading or more a place to meet people? Are the bartenders chatty? Etc, etc.
It’s called Fly Solo and would live at flysolo.in/city (like flysolo.in/nyc, etc). And the domain is purchased! It would probably be more for my benefit than anyone else’s, but I think that’s a good impetus for side projects. Plus I don’t think it will be too difficult to make – I can probably adapt the little user system from this fantastic Node Tutorial for Frontend Devs and it’s sequel.
That’s all! As usual, I’ll post some updates if I’m organized enough.