Side Quests

Our only crime was curiosity… I’m not sure of the exact date, but it was the fall of my 8th grade year in 1995. There were maybe four or five of us out on a Friday night. Tickets were cheap enough that we could go in without caring much ahead of time which movie we saw… the only real currency that mattered to us was time, and even that felt endless at that age. I only remember two things clearly about that night: the film was “Hackers,” and my friends thought I was one (no, I didn’t correct them). Beyond that night, however, the film stuck with me in ways very few films have. ...

Like many designers, I collect art and design pieces! Also like many designers, that collection sat in cardboard tubes, reinforced envelopes, and cardboard boxes… tucked away until one day (some day, any day now) they would be framed on a wall. Well look what day it is… What’s on the wall… The film corner. ...

Seriously, what am I thinking? I just wanted a nerdy project to dork around with one day… …something separate from my portfolio site where I didn’t feel the need to be professional. …something “simple” to write out some thoughts occasionally. …a platform I felt like I owned and controlled. But why…? Because I miss the Internet before social media! We used to have stupid blogs and forums. People connected sites through web rings. When you found sites you liked, you would save them to your feed reader (RIP Google Reader) to see what was new. ...

As nerdy as I am, you’d probably assume I use my phone for everything. I used to be on the hunt for the best to-do app… the best quick note-taking app… the best, well, anything app. Turns out a lot of apps just didn’t do it for me. I was wasting more time dorking around with my phone than actually using these apps as tools. More than a few apps were discontinued. Some moved to subscription models. Others would change their interface and I’d lose that muscle memory needed to do things quickly. ...