A couple months ago I resolved to build my own website.
I had built a few apps for WAR On Ice and authored some articles they were kind enough to host on their blog. When it was announced Andrew Thomas and Alexandra Mandrycky, the site’s remaining co-creators, had been hired by the Minnesota Wild and would renounce their engagement with WOI, I was among those who volunteered to help take on responsibility. I had ideas and was keen to learn what I could about what was under the proverbial hood from Andrew and Alexandra before their new duties put an end to their involvement. It was evident to me I simply didn’t have the chops for taking charge of maintaining the site and any role I assumed would be auxiliary in nature.
I had ideas. I’ve always had ideas. Some, I believed, didn’t belong on WAR On Ice. Some were experimental. Some were plain crazy. I set to work on building things before the idea struck me that they’d need a home. Having a site of my own I could use to consolidate these things I’d built and share them with anybody with an interest wasn’t a terrible concept. To this point, I had relied on data sourced from WOI – something I knew would have to change if I was to manufacture tools and content for public consumption. Ethics aside, I sought self-sufficiency with respect to raw data and building my first ever scraper would be a fun challenge. Continue reading “Hello World: A Mission Statement”