ui-ux

What you missed in part one was mostly me explaining that I like old video games and I've lived a lot of places. Full steam ahead into part two!

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. In the time since the site was last refreshed, I've learned a great deal about design and development, changed my focus personally and professionally, and lived in a great many varied places, and that's something I wanted to reflect in my own personal webspace. Hence, this new alvies.org site.

My wife got a new car recently, a slick little 2016 Volkswagen GTI Autobahn. It's worth noting here that I will not-humbly claim that this is largely my influence - I've wanted a GTI since I was 20 years old, and now she's had two. She doesn't like me crowing about that influence, though, so don't tell...

A while back, I had a project in which I had a series of buttons that needed to be styled in a rainbow of candy colors, for a list of items that all lead to different spots in the same content hierarchy. The design mockups I was given for the project were detailed but did not appear to be internally consistent from color to color; the base colors were chosen from a brand guide, but the guide did not provide any detail for how to lighten or darken the colors for user interaction states. I started by developing CSS to match the mockups, but the problem kept gnawing at me. If these were solid...

The "Arkeg" is, as you might be able to suss out if you think long enough, a combination of a stand-up arcade game cabinet plus a "kegerator," another portmanteau describing a mini-fridge with a small keg of beer inside. This is, in fact, a real thing, and it's one that...