Hey there! My name's Leslie Swan, and this is the first blog post to my website. Being honest, it feels kinda weird to introduce myself by my real name since I often go by Person Meetup online; Even this website is named that! I guess I want to get in front of the name before anything happens, making sure it's clear that Person and I are the same person.
Speaking of this website, its purpose is to give me a space to show off my work and give me a way to publicly discuss things that come to mind. This will mostly consist of reflections on finished projects and different ideas about design, but I may throw in a wild card occasionally.
How did we get here?
I included an about section on the index, but I want to go deeper regarding how I got into my main interests. It also serves as a jumping off point for my past, which I'm sure I'll end up mentioning in the future.
Much like other kids in the late 2000s, I spent my time on the Internet. I stayed within the closest thing to an Internet safe zone, however, as my web activities consisted of playing Poptropica and Miniclip. It also included watching and making my own Zimmer Twinz episodes, which begins a theme throughout my childhood of digital creation. I enjoyed making my own house in Everybody Edits, and took advantage of the creative potential that Minecraft offered. I spent my free time creating for fun, and many of the friends I met at the time came from a passion to create as well. (Shoutouts to Blue, Sam, and the rest of the ol' Minecraft gang!)
For YouTube videos what I watched was much like the rest of my web browsing, with old Gumby and Pythagora Switch episodes making the bulk of my viewing. Other videos I watched at the time were from Joey Turner's Tomy Thomas and Friends series. Besides being my introduction to Internet Culture, the series ignited my interests in video making, as it inspired me to spend countless hours recording my own train set with a cheap flip-out camera. Another thing I discovered on YouTube was Portal, a series I instantly fell in love with. It was the main reason I got a Steam account in the first place, even if all I could play at the time was the demo. It would be late 2014 before I played Portal 2 myself, after having watched it so many times before. I would soon play around with the Perpetual Testing Initiative, which served as my gateway into the world of level editing and game design. As of writing, this is my main goal that I'm working at right now!
There are other areas I'm interested in like music, programming, or competitive gaming, but what I've brought up is the origin point for everything I do these days. It all comes from a childhood passion to create that has stuck around to this day, something I really do appreciate.
I initially planned to launch with a few more posts, but I spent all my time on a tutorial about streamlining web development that I'm still working on. It's an application of things I learned about Markdown and Eleventy to a more general audience, and I'm looking forward to finishing that up. I also have other ideas that I hope to write on soon, so if I've peaked your interest at all I hope you stick around!