When I was 16 I launched my first blog. I creatively called it The Experiment and hosted it on Blogger.com. It’s still online here, which surprises me every time I stumble back upon it.

I had just started to get serious about learning to program thanks to a brand new website called Codecademy, which my accounting teacher in high school had introduced to me, a moment which changed my life. I fell in love with programming, spellbound by my burgeoning ability to write JavaScript incantations right in the browser and see the browser enact my will. I loved the act of creation and familiarity with the arcane world hovering keystrokes beneath the surface of the everyday world, to which nearly everyone around me was oblivious. The Experiment contains my first programs, which are nothing more than alert() and prompt() driven text manipulation widgets that I fiddled into life right in the JavaScript console through trial and error.

Five years later I had returned from my LDS mission and enrolled at BYU. Like almost all other freshmen, I enrolled in Writing 150. For one of my projects I started another blog, again a Blogger website, called Think More. It lasted for even less time but had more posts as I completed the requirements for the course. Again, writing was an important part of my learning, but this time purely by requiring me to think more deeply about subjects that mattered to me, like finding peace through the gospel of Jesus Christ or the dangers that technology poses to our long-term happiness.

A decade later, here I am starting another website. I hope that it will fulfill the roles of both of my previous blogs, by giving me a platform for my technological learning and to think carefully as I write my thoughts and opinions for the world. I would like to believe that I have learned a lot about programming, technology, and life since I last published online — and I promise to not include any alert()s this time!

Publishing today

I can’t promise to have any content that is well-thought-out, consistently posted, or relevant. In the last few years, I have created several attempts at a new personal website, only to let them languish and die, never to see the light of day. The main reason for this is that the site was never “done,” never “good enough.” I never clicked publish on that first blog post, was never willing to release that first design.

This time, I’m not letting that stop me. I’m going to click publish, even if I think the language is still clunky, or I don’t like the design, or I haven’t had time to add that feature I dreamt up.

I’m just going to start.

What to expect

This post is the first step on a journey leading into the unknown. I expect that I will mostly post about my software philosophy, my side projects, and my faith, including the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And whatever else I may be thinking about at any given time.

In the spirit of POSSE, I intend for this website to be my main platform for my public voice. I have grandiose visions of expanding the website to include a taxonomy of post types (post, note, link review, etc) and separate RSS feeds per category and post type. For now, I have a single RSS feed for all content updates to which I invite you to subscribe to get notified as my journey unfolds.

Thanks for reading!