I reported some time ago that
a publisher was talking to me about writing a very quick "issues
guide" for new voters, to be published in the fall. They actually
sent me a contract, which I decided to sign, and then they withdrew
the offer because of qualms about marketing. So now I’m considering
writing the same material and giving it away on a website. I think I
could persuade friends in the civic-engagement business to publicize
the site, and the resulting traffic would be enough to justify my labor.
I’d like the website to be quite interactive. In particular, I’d like
visitors to answer a bunch of questions and see an initial political
profile, which they could then modify in the light of the information
and perspectives presented on the website. The progamming for this quiz
would be a breeze for someone who know what she was doing. And it would
be a fairly cheap application to buy from a programmer. But I don’t
know what I’m doing, and I don’t have any money to pay for custom code.
I spent quite a bit of time this week finding and downloading "freeware"
that was almost right, but not exactly. In the process, I figured out
that a Java script would do the trick: no need for a database. I also
decided that I could learn how to write the script without pouring my
time into a sinkhole. So I bought a Java script manual and I’m busy
learning it. The last time I wrote code was about 1984; the language
was Basic, the computer was an Atari, and I was in high school. I wasn’t
especially into it (I was always a humanities kind of geek, not a techie);
but it had an appeal then and it has an appeal now.