standingwater.io v1

Note: This refers to the previous iteration of this site

I developed this portfolio site and the accompanying blog using GatsbyJS, which I've come to increasingly love for quick static site generation. The GraphQL is, while not the most intuitive, at least pretty useful. Especially the dynamic image processing.

The main portfolio site is built from a modified HTML5 Up template called Dimension, that was ported to Gatsby as gatsby-dimension-starter by codebushi. I have modularized it a bit, like this projects section that uses markdown files and images for each project and an array for ordering, inclusion (there are some projects I don't display for NDA reasons, unfortunately).

HTML5 Up makes some beautiful templates, but their code is often way too tightly coupled and difficult to work with.

The blog I built from the default starter.

The style is inspired by my childhood home in Tampa, Florida. I initially wanted to use a background of palmettos, but it proved too visually difficult a background. I went with a swamp, instead, of which we have many. The site name is a reference to a joke name we gave to the 5 1/4 acre "estate" I grew up on. It puddled quite a lot. Almost looked like a lake.

I also used The Noun Project to purchase the heron icon used in both sites as representative of the area. I'd prefer an Ibis, since they're lousy in the area, but a good one was hard to find.