Josh's Brain Archive

Project in Detail: Caves of Narshe Logo Redesign (Part 1)

Submitted by Josh on

This is the first "Project in Detail" blog I've done about something that wasn't either explicitly web code, or heavily web code with some design enhancement along the way. This time around, I'm documenting the process involved in revamping the logo for Caves of Narshe to celebrate the site's 20th anniversary (on July 31, 2017).

Don't Forget the Rubber Duck

Submitted by Josh on

As someone who works remotely, I find that it can be easy to forget the rubber duck. Being alone in an office all day and not one particularly given to talking to myself, I find that it can be hard sometimes to not fall into a gap in my thought process which precludes the rubber duck situation.

Automated Backups in CPanel

Submitted by Josh on

I'm a middleman when it comes to my own webserver. My sites collectively are too large to exist as separate shared hosting with a webhost, but I also want to keep them all organized together and have the flexibility of managing each individual site that would come with a colocated or private server. If you're familiar with non-enterprise web hosting at all, you've probably just said to yourself "he must be on a VPS, then," and you're exactly right.

The Light-Blue-Collar Programmer (with Apologies to Clive Thompson)

Submitted by Josh on

A couple months back, I read in Wired (in hard copy, no less, because I'm one of those weirdos) Clive Thompson's column "The Next Big Blue-Collar Job Is Coding". It resonated with me at the time, but I sat on the article until I could also link to it, and now it's too late to really weigh in on it, because as soon as it hit the web it blew up. The post has nearly 125k shares on Facebook as I write this, in fact, and way more Facebook comments than any of their recent posts that don't involve America's President.

Only You Can Prevent Data Fires

Submitted by Josh on

Keep your cloud backup in case of true disaster, but also keep as much around locally as possible. The most likely issue you face as a computer user or your family's IT tech is a busted or corrupted hard drive, and the more you have locally the faster you can recover and not feel the data-loss-nausea that I had for most of the last fortnight.

The New Alvies.org, Part Two

Submitted by Josh on

In this second post discussing the current design of the website you're on as you read this, I go more into detail about how I drew out the art assets for alvies.org and built it all to go together. Of course, by the time you're reading this, the technical details are out of date, but I probably won't write much more about that.

The New Alvies.org, Part One

Submitted by Josh on

I hadn't done a whole lot with my eponymous website in a decade; not as if the thing gets a boatload of traffic, but as someone who makes his living and has his major hobbies all connected to the web, it was a bit awkward to have something quite so stale.