A Website of My Own
I decided to start this website after reading about D3.js in the Data Visualization* Society magazine "Nightingale". I had just finished my job as a medical writer, and, with a view to moving towards my desired career path, wanted to both: refresh my visualisation skills, developed during my PhD; and do a fun project in which I could begin to learn new skills in visualisation, programming, and design. As a simple place to start, I thought that exploring my personal dataset of first-time album listening would be a great option because I'm fully familiar with the data (and indeed have visualised it previously).
After making a static image that I was happy with, using my favourite programming language R, I wanted to make it interactive. To challenge myself, I set about making this interactive plot in D3.js. Being inherently web-based, once the page was working I needed a place to host it. After having taken a while to get to grips with javascript an D3, I spent another while getting to grips with HTML, CSS, and static site generators (I went with Eleventy). I want my site to look exactly how I want it to look, so I also spent a considerable amount of time investigating layout design and colours, to try and create a cohesive whole.
I intend for this site to be a home to more projects in the future, and musings on the behind the scenes work that went into creating those projects. For the moment, I'm very happy to be getting my first project out there, and I'll be following this up with another, and hopefully another after that!
My next post will be a more in-depth look at my First Listens project, and I hope to see you then!
*It's an American society, though, being English as I am, I'll be using an 's' rather than a zed.