DEC 2024 | A Short but Substantial Update

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My name is Saachi and today is December 31st; I’m 8 months into a 12-month sabbatical. If you’re new here, I’m taking a break from work - data viz analytics for a financial institution - to focus on a research and communication design project. The aim of this project is to: 

1. Understand the current sustainability of urban waterfronts and their future potential to address food insecurity at a community level
2. Upskill in communication, data visualization, coding, and 3D modelling
3. Combine points 1 and 2 into a visual portfolio that doubles as speculative fiction about sustainability on an urban lakefront and four shared meals

I remember life in both industry and academia at the ‘end of the year’. It was hectic, trying to get everything done in time for the Christmas and New Year holidays. If you took the time to read this blog, then I hope you also took time to slow down, spend time with the people you like best, and eat way more than you should have. Because there’s no point in us working so hard, if we can’t at least have these end-of-year moments to ourselves. 

In that spirit, this month’s blog post update will be short.

This month, I completed the copy (or written content) and code for the main spine of my website, and 20% of the art and data visualizations. 

Swipe through images below (generated from my website).

Admittedly, the main body of my website has gone through a few iterations. After multiple failed attempts, I avoided working on it and focused on other areas of the website. They were more like games or creative writing, and so were more fun to learn how to build. I thought my main website had to be more serious and informative as the user blandly scrolled through a timeline of speculative events.   

A previous version of the main website. Video credit: Saachi Sadcha

Then I realized I was writing about a speculative city, so the main page could be interviews of fictional citizens of WateryTrees. Through these interviews, I could offer a more interesting story of "what life was like between 2020 and 2039". What was boring became exciting and I very quickly wrote a full script of these interviews. Then came the code, sculpting, painting, and my first data visualization made with D3.js.

Image credit: Saachi Sadcha 

There’s a lot left to do. But what’s hard to visualize here is that the foundation is mostly complete. One hundred percent of the research is done (although I keep hoarding articles), 90% of the code is complete for all pages, and I feel like I’ve gotten past the beginner’s learning curve on both ReactJS and CSS - the main languages for this website. 

Speaking of which, I completed the CSS course by Ramzi Bach, which I started last month. I still highly recommend it. Just like with Bruno Simon’s 3JSJourney course, I didn’t just learn about the language. I learned best practices, how to better think like a coder, and how to problem solve front-end visual problems in a formulaic way. 

Anyway, most of what I have left is art for the main page and writing for non-main pages. And of course, troubleshoot as I add more content which will definitely impact performance. 

I’ll continue working on my website, but I don’t want to rush this project just to finish before May 2025 (the end of this 1-year sabbatical). I want to take my time on the content so that it’s worth revisiting for a long time to come. But I need a fully complete section for networking.

And so in January, I’ll build the interactive ‘About Me’ page. I even have rules to help me gauge how much I’ve learned in the last 8 months:

1. In January, build the page from mockup to deploy
2. Cut down on production by only using 3D models I've already made
3. Include at least one D3.js data visualization
4. Limit coding help from ChatGPT unless absolutely necessary
5. Track changes properly in Git

We’ll see how it goes. 

Thank you kindly and Happy New Year,

Saachi