I Updated fredlambuth.com!
Five years ago I started leasing the fredlambuth.com domain. At that address, I put up a rarely updated Wordpress blog hosted on a cloud server I was renting. That server was my training ground for my system administrator job at the time. Even though the blog was a byproduct of learning how a web server works, I smirked when I said out loud, "check out my blog at fredlambuth.com".
About a year ago, the site changed to a single static page with all my contact info and a link to my resume. It was a 'hello world' of web development that taught me a lot about that style of application and how to organize a large collection of Python files. Fredlambuth.com changed to a static one page "here's my resume and contact info" format in aid of a job hunt that officially only lasted a few days. However, I neglected to update fredlambuth.com with a new format, or even revert to the one-post-a-season blog I had backed up. It remained that way well over a year after I landed a job.
Lately I have been doing a lot of personal data collection using the Spotify API, so I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone? Why not hook up all the back-end work I've done with my music-listening data to the Django app I use to serve my resume?
Developing and testing all this together on my desktop PC was a pleasure. Deploying it to the cloud server where I've been hosting fredlambuth.com for years now was a nightmare. I was intrigued for a moment by some services that will deploy your app to the web without the hassle of managing your own web facing server. Doing so would have cut the potential deployment frustrations down to a fraction of doing it on my own. The former Unix admin in me recoiled at the very thought. Although being your own IT guy means every error is something you, and only you, will fix, it provides carte blanche. Full directorial control of what is being served at the domain with my name on it! If it were a movie, their would be one name in the credits. The artist in me could not resist that offer.
There is a mountain of my listening data sitting behind the few hastily designed pages I created. Right now it's two personal top 20 charts, grouped by song and artist. I hope to keep a steady update schedule publishing views into that data. I’m not sure which will be next. I develop on impulse. At the very least right now I have a better answer than most to: "what kind of music do you listen to?"
P.S. Thanks to Stuart H. Sutton for guiding me along the SSL certificate process.