If you read Georgie’s web development/conference posts, you’ve heard of Una. If not, she’s this web dev with a unicorn on her page, and that makes her awesome in my book. She also created CSSgram, which I used in my Perfectly Posh review post. Anyway, Una mentions having creative side projects, and I decided to share mine and ones I wish to have in the future.

Online projects

I wasn’t gonna, but I decided to split my projects into two categories.

Hope Fades

I’ve had Hope Fades since May 2012. It’s come a long way since then, what with the layouts going from complex and colorful to simple. I didn’t make any of them; I collected freebies from Creative Market for the latest three. I may have bought the original (if not, it’s from Creative Market freebies). I don’t know anymore. I have shit memory. You shouldn’t even trust anything I’ve said about its layouts. 😂

I’d like to expand this project in the future and possibly have an app for it created, but the idea probz won’t come to fruition of any kind for several years.

…on the other hand, though, I often feel like there’s no point. It’s just a static site racking up space, time and money for the most part.

Effy’s ____

I registered a new domain for my online trading card game (oTCG or online TCG) activities. I had otcg.club, but I wanted something generic-sounding that didn’t stuff me into a box. I like effys.space ’cause it reminds me of MySpace, in that my name is Effy, and it’s my space. 💁😏

I consider oTCG stuff at least one side project, because it encourages me to keep practicing HTML, CSS and PHP. I may not be Georgie Luhur, but I have contributed code to the online TCG community that has helped, and is still helping, reshape it. To be a part of something bigger than myself reminds me I’m important.

I’m low-key working on two hacks for easyTCG, an oTCG trading post manager (i.e. a software for players), so players can 1) post updates to their trade posts and 2) update their trade buddies list from the software.

WordPress plugin for “link in bio”

I don’t know if this exists yet, because I’ve not looked, but I’m guessing it doesn’t because I feel like I’d have seen it by now if it did.

It’s going to take a while, but I’ve finally decided to make this project a WordPress plugin instead of a) a PHP/MySQL tool with its own login or b) a similar tool with an Instagram authentication login. I’d rather have fewer logins and the page already be on my blog, though I did consider it being in its own directory. I’ve had so many projects in the past with all their logins, though, and moving forward I’m trying to automate and simplify projects as much as possible.

This project will be the hardest, methinks, because I need to learn WordPress plugin development, plus how to integrate Bitly for link tracking/automatic shortening.

I want(ed) to have links on my own blog because

• other sites, new or old, eventually start charging for their service or place ads on profiles;
• I wanted to be able to use affiliate links and include a welcome message before [all] the links, plus link back to my own site; and
• I try to use as few third parties as possible.

I may also be able to turn the error page into a page template for the links page, so it’ll not have the noise of my sidebar.

I don’t know if anyone else would use it, but I will share it once I finish it. I do plan to use a shortcode to display the links list, if only for convenience.

Offline projects

Matcha Ways

IT’S FUN TO SAY. Matcha Ways started because I like the idea of consuming matcha powder, which sounds poser-like, but whatever. Before I left skeazy AF Tomoson, a company sent me a pouch of matcha powder as a gift (I’d said why I was leaving, and they wanted to send it regardless). So, naturally, I searched for recipes online to use it in, and…they all suck. It’s horrible.

I tried, like, three smoothie recipes before I gave up and decided to develop my own with it. I’m not a fan of wasting food. I grew up in a family where we ate leftovers until they were gone.

I’d like to try it in other things, so I started “Matcha Ways”, a project in which I challenge myself to develop my own recipes.

Thus far, I’ve just made a strawberry-banana matcha smoothie, which takes the general idea of a strawberry-banana smoothie and adds matcha powder, rolled oats and honey, plus seeds if desired. I just…can’t have it at night or else I’ll stay up until the next afternoon. 😅

I will post it eventually. I want to get cute props for my food photos. 😳

Themed recipes of the month

I hate how I don’t have a great name for this, but the gist for themed recipes is that I want to develop recipes of the month—oh, my GOSH THAT’S IT (*edits*)—that I would release on a monthly basis depending on the theme for that…year?

That’s as far as I’ve gotten. Themes would be the dishes type, thus they’d all be related to each other. This one is further off because recipe development takes time and energy…and also spoons.

Themes I’ve thought of this far: trail mix, granola bars, smoothies and/or smoothie bowls, soups.

The origin of the idea is another thought: if I were a food company releasing a new flavor for a limited time, what would it be?

And at the end of the year, it’d be like, “Granola Bars of the Year” or something. Probably a project that won’t come to light until next year, but I guess we’ll see?

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I try to keep playing around with ingredients, because I dislike following others’ recipes or having to follow them at all, hence why recipe development is the basis of my offline side projects. I think I get experimenting in the kitchen from my dad, because he isn’t big on sticking to the fine print on recipes, either.

Do you have any side projects? I’d love to hear about them! 😁