Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to the DJames Network

Well.

That escalated quickly.

A few days ago I was sitting here with one functioning arm, not sleeping much, recovering from shoulder surgery and looking for something productive to do.

I decided to work on my website.

Apparently I misunderstood the assignment.

Because somewhere between cleaning up a few pages and asking myself, “What else could I build?”, one website turned into three sites, several applications, a security lab, a certification-training platform, and whatever the hell this is becoming.

So, ladies and gentlemen:

Welcome to the DJames Network.

The idea is pretty simple.

I already had DJames617.com, HDJames.com, and NerdDual.com. They existed, but they felt like separate things.

They aren't anymore.

The goal is to turn them into different parts of the same ecosystem—same identity, same general design language, different jobs.

DJames617.com

This is home base.

DJames617 is still the personal site. Music, technology, security, education, projects, random thoughts, things I built because I was curious, and probably a few things I built because somebody told me I couldn't.

But it is also becoming the front door to everything else.

The site now has an Education side, a Security Arcade, and links into the projects and training applications I'm building.

I'm not trying to turn it into a corporate website.

There are already enough of those.

This is still mine.

HDJames.com

HDJames is where things get a little more serious.

This is the proving ground.

The initial implementation is intentionally simple: sign in, get authenticated, and see the applications you're allowed to use.

That's it.

Behind that simple entrance, though, is where I want to build and test security-focused applications, experiments, and tools without dumping everything directly onto the public site.

Some things belong behind a login.

Especially when I built them.

NerdDual.com

NerdDual is the other side of the personality.

Technology doesn't always need a business case.

Sometimes something is worth doing because it's interesting, ridiculous, difficult, or just sounds like fun.

NerdDual gives that stuff somewhere to live.

Same family.

Different room.

The Security Arcade

This might be my favorite part so far.

Instead of building another boring page full of certification notes, I started turning security and cloud training into applications.

If I'm going to spend hours studying something, I might as well make it interesting.

The first major addition is the AWS Arcade.

At launch, the idea is straightforward: take the material behind the AWS certification tracks and turn it into something closer to a challenge than a flash-card deck.

We started with the AWS entry-level and associate material.

Questions.

Scenarios.

Wrong answers that are actually believable.

Enough difficulty that getting a high score should mean you learned something.

That's the theory, anyway.

If you can just guess your way through it, I built it wrong.

The Study Apps

Alongside the arcade are the more traditional study applications.

The early versions aren't complicated.

Choose a certification.

Answer questions.

Get scored.

Figure out what you don't know.

Repeat until the answer stops being luck.

The certification tracks are starting with AWS and ISC2 material, with more planned.

Eventually I want the training side of this network to feel less like reading somebody else's notes and more like walking into a lab where everything is trying to expose what you haven't learned yet.

Because that's considerably more useful.

And much less polite.

Study Notes

Not everything needs to be an app.

The network also now has a place for actual study material.

The Study Notes section is being built to support the applications rather than replace them.

The app tells you that you got something wrong.

The notes are where you go figure out why.

That's the relationship.

Read it.

Learn it.

Go back.

Try again.

One Network

The important part isn't any individual application.

It's that they finally have somewhere to belong.

DJames617 isn't just pointing at random projects anymore.

HDJames isn't sitting by itself.

NerdDual isn't some unrelated side project.

The study applications aren't floating around without navigation or context.

They're becoming one thing.

A network.

A slightly strange network, admittedly.

Part personal site.

Part security lab.

Part certification trainer.

Part arcade.

Part portfolio.

Part “I wonder if I can build that.”

I'm not completely sure what the final version looks like yet.

That's probably a good thing.

I didn't sit down with a business plan and decide to create the DJames Network.

I had shoulder surgery.

I couldn't sleep.

And I had a computer.

Sometimes that's enough.

So this is version one.

The foundation is down.

The sites are connected.

The applications exist.

And now we get to see how far I can take it.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the DJames Network.

We're just getting started.