April 1, 2013, 5:07PM (Pacific Standard Time) marks the first day of Jennifer Dewalt’s imaginative project 180 Websites in 180 Days. As a fine artist, computer programming wasn’t Dewalt’s first language, but in an effort to improve her source code literacy she took a Jules Verne-like approach to reaching a goal, by coding 180 websites in as many days.With no background in computer science Dewalt started simply: Day 1 is a basic list template where she logs the access points and names of each new work. The websites steadily evolved as her skills expanded and now, currently on Day 123, Dewalt keeps a running blog to guide the curious through the evolution of her coding skills—those looking for a quick-fix can scope out some of these: Drying Paint, Text to Braille, No One Is Watching, and Splodin Bacon! (above), where you get to shoot falling pieces of bacon out of the sky.
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The Creators Project reached out to Jennifer to find out what projects from the existing 123-and-counting are her personal favorites and also to discover what her creative process has been like through it all. Read below to find out.Day 8: More Drop Shadow
Jennifer Dewalt: “This was my first big fail day. I had a grand vision of how I wanted this site to turn out and I just could not for the life of me get it out of my head and into code. At the end of the day I was super frustrated and a little discouraged. But when I showed it to some friends, they really liked it, even though it wasn’t pretty and when I look back at it, I think it’s a really nice example of where I was at in my learning process.”More Drop Shadow is simple enough. Basically, a fun way to poke at the internet’s propensity for drop shadow effects by making as much drop shadow as your little heart desires.Day 30: Silly Kitty
JD: “This was my first toward making objects in code, though it was made primarily with CSS. I was super excited to make something you could interact with and feel like it was interacting with you. It was a pretty tough project and I was disappointed I couldn’t get as many features in as I wanted but it’s definitely what inspired me to move to object-oriented programming.”Silly Kitty is Jennifer’s whimsical play on Tamagotchi of old.Day 55: Paratroopers
JD: “This was one of the first sites where I felt like I had [gained] some control over all the new skills I was acquiring. In the earliest days of the project, it felt like I was inhaling new concepts and spewing them back out as quickly as possible and success was simply being able to make something—anything—happen. Rather than feeling like I succeeded by not failing, making Paratroopers felt more like I was using the tools I had developed to execute an idea.”
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Paratroopers allows you to play God and gravity to some hapless stick-figured troopers who need to reach an island for safety.Day 72: Make A Dude and Day 36: Little Dude
JD: “Little Dude was my first serious exploration of object-oriented programming. When I made the original Little Dude, I compared learning object-oriented programming to writing with the wrong hand. You know what you’re supposed to be doing but it feels all wrong. Later I started working with Rails which gave me the ability to let people save information. I thought it would be neat for people to customize their own Little Dudes. Now there’s an army of Little Dudes. Some are funny, some literal, some are spam, some are NSFW but they almost all have a unique personality.”Little Dude, like Silly Kitty, allows a user to interact with a character of Jennifer’s creation. As an extension of Little Dude, Make A Dude—or the Day 72 project—lets you create your own version of the dude, and we don’t mean Jeff Bridges.Day 86: Snare
JD: “Around this time, I started feeling comfortable enough with my coding skills to start thinking more specifically about how we engage with websites. It was the last day of a long weekend I spent in Los Angeles and I was pretty short on time so it seemed like a good opportunity to explore something less technical and more conceptual. I’m really happy with how well it addresses the relationship between image and functionality.”
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Snare feels like a wacky ode to Alfred Hitchcock.Day 93: Swivel
JD: “I really like Swivel in part because it was actually [part of] a ‘fail’ day. I intended to make a chain reaction game, and the logic was a little complicated, so I sketched it out in my notebook and started coding. I got all my Swivelers drawn and swivelling and everything seemed to be working. When I thought all I had left were some finishing touches, I realized the Swivelers weren’t actually working right at all. I spent hours pulling apart the code and putting it back together, but finally I fixed it.Even though I didn’t get to add the game part, I still find Swivel really engaging. It starts as a field of random Swivelers and after a few are clicked the field tends to becomes much more organized. It’s like the Swivelers are all calling out ‘Help fix us!’ and I just can’t stop clicking until they are all happily the same color.”Swivel is just as Jennifer explains it: an engaging board game-esque activity where the game pieces have a mind of their own but you can’t help but convince them to all take on the same identity.Day 104: Emergency Off
JD: “This is the only website I have made that lures me in. The original screen is a big button with a title that says “In Case of Emergency, Press This Button“. After pushing the big button, what looks like a shutdown procedure is initiated. When the alleged shutdown has finished, all that is left inside the browser window is a black screen. I always forget that nothing has actually shut down which causes me to feel lost for just a moment. I find this brief moment fascinating. Shortly thereafter I come to my senses and realize that all I need to do is press the back button on my browser to continue on my merry way.”
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Just like Emergency Off, another great website in the project to get lured into is Infinite Descent.Day 117: Trees for the Forest
JD: “I've never been a math geek. I disliked math in high school, and I still harbor some bitter feelings toward it. But when the beauty of nature is reflected in the simple drawing of a mathematical formula, how can you not become enraptured? That is one of the more interesting aspects of coding for me. That you can take the real [world] and represent it digitally. I really think these generated trees are beautiful and I spent way too long making trees just to see how the next one [would] turn out.”Perhaps Jennifer’s most beautiful execution. Trees For The Forest lets you paint your own Amazon on your monitor and the results are printable.If you want to explore the rest of Jennifer Dewalt’s ongoing project, take a look at the Day 1 Homepage.
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JD: “This was my first toward making objects in code, though it was made primarily with CSS. I was super excited to make something you could interact with and feel like it was interacting with you. It was a pretty tough project and I was disappointed I couldn’t get as many features in as I wanted but it’s definitely what inspired me to move to object-oriented programming.”Silly Kitty is Jennifer’s whimsical play on Tamagotchi of old.Day 55: Paratroopers
JD: “This was one of the first sites where I felt like I had [gained] some control over all the new skills I was acquiring. In the earliest days of the project, it felt like I was inhaling new concepts and spewing them back out as quickly as possible and success was simply being able to make something—anything—happen. Rather than feeling like I succeeded by not failing, making Paratroopers felt more like I was using the tools I had developed to execute an idea.”Paratroopers allows you to play God and gravity to some hapless stick-figured troopers who need to reach an island for safety.Day 72: Make A Dude and Day 36: Little Dude
JD: “Little Dude was my first serious exploration of object-oriented programming. When I made the original Little Dude, I compared learning object-oriented programming to writing with the wrong hand. You know what you’re supposed to be doing but it feels all wrong. Later I started working with Rails which gave me the ability to let people save information. I thought it would be neat for people to customize their own Little Dudes. Now there’s an army of Little Dudes. Some are funny, some literal, some are spam, some are NSFW but they almost all have a unique personality.”Little Dude, like Silly Kitty, allows a user to interact with a character of Jennifer’s creation. As an extension of Little Dude, Make A Dude—or the Day 72 project—lets you create your own version of the dude, and we don’t mean Jeff Bridges.Day 86: Snare
JD: “Around this time, I started feeling comfortable enough with my coding skills to start thinking more specifically about how we engage with websites. It was the last day of a long weekend I spent in Los Angeles and I was pretty short on time so it seemed like a good opportunity to explore something less technical and more conceptual. I’m really happy with how well it addresses the relationship between image and functionality.”Snare feels like a wacky ode to Alfred Hitchcock.Day 93: Swivel
JD: “I really like Swivel in part because it was actually [part of] a ‘fail’ day. I intended to make a chain reaction game, and the logic was a little complicated, so I sketched it out in my notebook and started coding. I got all my Swivelers drawn and swivelling and everything seemed to be working. When I thought all I had left were some finishing touches, I realized the Swivelers weren’t actually working right at all. I spent hours pulling apart the code and putting it back together, but finally I fixed it.Even though I didn’t get to add the game part, I still find Swivel really engaging. It starts as a field of random Swivelers and after a few are clicked the field tends to becomes much more organized. It’s like the Swivelers are all calling out ‘Help fix us!’ and I just can’t stop clicking until they are all happily the same color.”Swivel is just as Jennifer explains it: an engaging board game-esque activity where the game pieces have a mind of their own but you can’t help but convince them to all take on the same identity.Day 104: Emergency Off
JD: “This is the only website I have made that lures me in. The original screen is a big button with a title that says “In Case of Emergency, Press This Button“. After pushing the big button, what looks like a shutdown procedure is initiated. When the alleged shutdown has finished, all that is left inside the browser window is a black screen. I always forget that nothing has actually shut down which causes me to feel lost for just a moment. I find this brief moment fascinating. Shortly thereafter I come to my senses and realize that all I need to do is press the back button on my browser to continue on my merry way.”Just like Emergency Off, another great website in the project to get lured into is Infinite Descent.Day 117: Trees for the Forest
JD: “I've never been a math geek. I disliked math in high school, and I still harbor some bitter feelings toward it. But when the beauty of nature is reflected in the simple drawing of a mathematical formula, how can you not become enraptured? That is one of the more interesting aspects of coding for me. That you can take the real [world] and represent it digitally. I really think these generated trees are beautiful and I spent way too long making trees just to see how the next one [would] turn out.”Perhaps Jennifer’s most beautiful execution. Trees For The Forest lets you paint your own Amazon on your monitor and the results are printable.If you want to explore the rest of Jennifer Dewalt’s ongoing project, take a look at the Day 1 Homepage.