a new home and direction

You know, it was over two years ago when I said I wanted to post updates on my (previous) website more regularly. What happened? ...

... Life, procrastination, (COVID), and a lack of direction. A lot has happened in the last two years, but I am happy to say that I have a new home and a new direction for my online presence.

I wanted a central place where people could find all of my content: pixel art, development projects, and updates. My last website was a dedicated web development portfolio, but it felt like more of an obligation. Really, I felt like it lacked any soul. I’m hoping this new website — which I created to encompass the entire pxlnic persona — remedies that.

The website is broken up into a few parts, each highlighting a different side of this persona. The majority of the site houses my pixel art, web design, and development content, and I have a post for each piece/project in their respective sections (art and dev). The next major portion is the updates page, which will primarily serve as a blog. I’ll post updates about what I am working on, cybersecurity and technology (my profession), and my hobbies and interests. Lastly, there is the about page, which will give you a little more insight into me as a person. My hope is that having this new place to centralize all my content will keep me focused and help me to stay organized.

Website Plans

I developed this site on and off over the last few months and made a big push to bring it over the finish line in the last couple weeks.

It was built with Nuxt.js and TailwindCSS and is hosted on Heroku. I am using Nuxt’s Content module, which provides a headless CMS, that is easy to update and maintain by committing changes to the GitHub repository. This may change in the future, but it makes posting content a breeze.

Currently, I have all my prior updates from my previous site and all my development projects loaded in. I’m still working on loading in all of my prior art — since there is a lot of it, that will continue to be added over the coming weeks.

I plan on adding new features over time as well. I want to add lazy loading for all the main sections, as well as filtering and sorting, since I know the art section can take a while to get through without these. These will bring some quality of life improvements to navigation and make it easier to find the content you want to see. As time goes on, I’ll post any updates to the site here as well.

Pixel Art

My plans for pixel art are to get back to posting regularly. I'll still post to Twitter, Instagram, and my Ko-fi page, but everything will be here as well. I want to do another series, like my fanart series from last year, but I am still working on some ideas there — I’ll have more to announce at a later date. Pixel art is one area where I am wanting to branch out, and I’m excited to see where it goes from here.

Web Design & Development

Aside from finishing up this website, I also repurposed my previous domain as my "Little Link" site. You can find links to all the sites I'm active on there, as well as my email, and (soon) resume. I plan to start another 100 Days of Code Challenge soon and try to get into the habit of coding at least an hour a day. I have a few ideas that I'm fleshing out for projects but nothing to announce at the moment. I want to branch out a bit more, as I’ve mostly done either traditional static sites with some PHP on the backend or more recently Nuxt.js applications. My overall goal is to broaden my toolkit.

Cybersecurity & Technology

I spend a lot of time with technology both professionally and personally. I work as an Information Security Specialist for a state agency, and I’m in the process of fleshing out a proper “homelab” (and homeprod) environment. I want to share what I am learning about or areas where I’m already proficient in ways that I think people may find helpful. These types of posts will be as much for me as they are for anyone reading the content.

It’s true that things really stick when you can teach it to someone, and I want to use this platform for that purpose.

Hobbies and Interests

Lastly, I want to share my hobbies and interests with the communities I am a part of, and this site will provide the central hub for those ideas. I plan for this content to be a bit more casual, as it will deal with video games, movies, tv, music, gadgets, etc. I am a heavily introverted person by nature, and I want this site to help me “come out of my shell” a bit more.

I’m going to try and make 2022 the year that I truly find balance in my life, while devoting time to all of my interests. It has been a hard fought struggle the last few years, but I really feel like this is the year to make it happen.

I hope you’ll come along with me for the ride. Until next time — stay safe and keep creating.