Welcome

This site is hosted on GitHub Pages. See this post on transitioning to a custom domain with GitHub Pages.

Below are my most recent posts. Please explore some of the one-off posts, as well as some longer running series that I've started recently (updates as I have time). Check out the projects section for interesting work I've been creating (Completed series will be collected here as well).

Also check out my work on GitHub!

File Paths in Node

How Path Resolution Can Be Confusing

 Posted on June 9, 2018  |  4 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

This week I had an interesting discussion with another new developer who was getting started working on an Express-based project and was frustrated by their static files working one day, and seemingly without provocation, not working the next. I knew from experiencing the same feeling when dealing with static files both in Django and Express that a static file loading problem is difficult to resolve, and how often the problem is often a simple one that is nonetheless opaque to a new developer unfamiliar with file systems and path resolution. [Read More]
post  blog  express  javascript  node  filesystem  debugging 

Exercise Tracker Full-Stack App

Free Code Camp (v2) APIs Challenge 4

 Posted on June 8, 2018  |  4 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

This project involved setting up a couple MongoDB collections and then building a responsive frontend for user interaction. This app allows adding users by name, then using that user's ID to add activities. The API allows for querying for user activities by user ID as well.

The UI uses a pug template and bootstrap for most styling, and some custom css rules to fine tune elements.

This was actually the first project that I completed out of the new Free Code Camp curriculum, and replaced the previous Google Image Search Abstraction project that I had already completed previously.

[Read More]
sample  javascript  freecodecamp  mongodb  express  pug 

Code Editors vs. Word Processors

Why I think code editors are so much better

 Posted on June 6, 2018  (Last modified on June 7, 2018)  |  2 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

Word processors are great for creating documents with a lot of rich formatting, but all that stuff can be a huge distraction. Code editors on the other hand are amazingly good for writing - the writing where the only thing that actually matters is the content, and not the format. While it's probably been hashed out and written about a lot by other people, the one thing, the killer aspect of it for me, is the ability to scroll the page down, so that whenever you want, you can always return to that feeling of having a blank canvas to write upon. [Read More]
post  blog  nonesense 

New Free Code Camp Cert

Certified Fresh

 Posted on June 5, 2018  (Last modified on June 7, 2018)  |  3 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

I got my back-end (now API and Microservice) cert today from Free Code Camp! https://www.freecodecamp.org/certification/shadowimmage/apis-and-microservices Hooray! It's been a year since I started working through the Free Code Camp curriculum, and it feels good to finally have finished the API work. I feel like I have a pretty solid grasp now on how to build and arrange an API, which I hope will help me in the future when I try to do more API work. [Read More]
post  blog  update  certificate 

RTTApp

A Solution for Tracking Repair Tasks

 Posted on May 30, 2018  |  1 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

Repair Task Tracker RTT is a full stack app that addresses the needs of a computer hardware management process, allowing the tracking and resolution of issues/problems with the hardware, as well as the configuration and components of each major hardware item. RTT is meant to be a back-of-house tool, replacing paper tickets and spreadsheets. The goal of this project was to implement a GraphQL app, with useful data, allowing a seamless user experience as they operate through the app, and data is downloaded and uploaded in the background. [Read More]
project  python  heroku  vue  javascript  postgresql  graphene  apollo  graphql 

KeysApp

A Solution for Tracking Brass Keys

 Posted on May 30, 2018  |  1 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

The Keys App was my first major project that sought to solve a problem with managing key checkouts without requiring a cumbersome customer database / sign up form. This would target an institution that mostly catered to internal customers, such as a university's AV department and it's instructors. It largely replicates a paper-form-based system, with an added layer of data validation and control (emails, phone numbers must be in a valid format; keys can only be returned by their original owners; keys can't be checked out twice; etc. [Read More]
project  demo  django  python  postgresql  heroku 

Logo Design

Designing and implementing a new logo

 Posted on May 18, 2018  (Last modified on May 19, 2018)  |  3 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

I spent my sick day today designing a new logo for the site using Inkscape. I knew that it had to be something that was unique, so I went online looking around for resources on designing and producing a logo. I know that SVGs are great, because you will never have scaling issues - if you need a larger version, you can simply export it at higher resolution. Or lower. Or whatever. [Read More]
post  hugo  update