Meta moment: the app you're looking at right now. Built with Astro and markdown files.
Wanted a simple way to share my life’s highlights with friends. No database, no backend, just markdown files that become a beautiful scrollable timeline. Total build size: under 20KB.
48-hour game jam — built a gravity-shifting puzzle platformer in Godot.
Placed in the top 20% overall. The mechanic was simple: pressing space rotates gravity 90 degrees. Level design was the real challenge — had to make sure every room was solvable from all four orientations.
Tech: Godot 4.3, GDScript, Aseprite for pixel art.
Tokyo → Kyoto → Osaka → Hiroshima. Temples, ramen, and way too many train rides.
Highlights:
- Fushimi Inari at sunrise (no crowds!)
- Akihabara retro game shopping
- Hiroshima Peace Memorial — deeply moving
- Osaka street food in Dotonbori
Would absolutely go back. Next time: rural Japan and onsen towns.
Dove into Rust after years of saying 'I should learn Rust'. The borrow checker humbled me.
Worked through the Rust Book, then built a small CLI tool for batch-renaming files. The ownership model finally clicked after about two weeks of fighting the compiler.
Key takeaway: Rust doesn’t have a steep learning curve — it has a tall learning curve. Once concepts click, they click hard.
Moved to a smaller company working on developer tools. Big culture shift from enterprise.
The switch from a 2000-person org to a 30-person startup was wild. Way more ownership, way less process. Shipping weekly instead of quarterly.
Repurposed an old PC into a Proxmox homelab. Running Jellyfin, Nextcloud, and Home Assistant.
Started with just Jellyfin for media, then fell down the self-hosting rabbit hole. Now running:
- Jellyfin — media streaming
- Nextcloud — file sync & calendar
- Home Assistant — smart home automation
- Vaultwarden — password manager
- Uptime Kuma — monitoring
Total cost: $0/month (old hardware + ~15W idle power draw).
1:52:30 finish time. Months of training paid off — didn't hit the wall!
Training plan: 12 weeks, 4 runs per week, gradually building from 5K to 21K. The race day energy from the crowd was unreal.
Rewrote a 2D action RPG prototype from Unity/C# to Godot/GDScript after the Unity pricing fiasco.
The migration took about 6 weeks of evenings. GDScript felt weird at first coming from C#, but the signal system and scene composition model won me over. The editor is so much lighter too.
Bought a used Canon AE-1 and started shooting 35mm film. Slowing down completely changed how I see things.
There’s something about having 36 shots per roll that forces intentionality. No chimping, no instant review. You just have to trust your instincts and wait for the lab results.
Favorite stocks so far: Portra 400 for everything, Gold 200 for sunny days.
A tiny top-down shooter made in Godot. 200 downloads in the first week — not bad for a first release.
It was a simple arena survival game with waves of enemies. Nothing groundbreaking, but finishing and shipping something felt amazing. The itch.io community was super supportive with feedback.
Lessons learned: scope small, ship fast, polish later.
Joined a local climbing gym. Went from barely finishing V1s to projecting V4s in four months.
The problem-solving aspect hooked me immediately. Each route is a puzzle — figuring out the beta before you even get on the wall. Made some great friends at the gym too.
Packed everything into a van and moved across the country for a fresh start.
Leaving behind a decade of comfort for the unknown. The first month was lonely, but joining local meetups and co-working spaces changed everything. Best decision I’ve made.
Lisbon → Sintra → Porto → Algarve. Pastel de nata count: lost track after day 3.
Highlights:
- Sintra’s Pena Palace — surreal colors on a misty hilltop
- Porto’s Livraria Lello (yes, the Harry Potter bookshop)
- Surfing in Ericeira — terrible at it, loved every second
- Algarve caves by kayak
Portugal is criminally underrated. Affordable, beautiful, incredible food.
Soldered a 65% board with Boba U4T switches. The thock is real.
Kit: KBD67 Lite, Boba U4T switches (lubed with Krytox 205g0), MT3 Susuwatari keycaps. The soldering was meditative — 68 switches, each one a tiny moment of focus.
Now I understand why people have five keyboards.
Followed Blender Guru's donut tutorial, then modeled game assets. 3D is a whole different world.
The donut tutorial is a rite of passage. After that, I moved on to low-poly game assets — trees, rocks, buildings. The sculpting tools are incredible for an open-source tool.
Still can’t do characters though. Topology is hard.
Met a one-eyed orange tabby at the shelter. He chose me, not the other way around.
His name is Pixel. He sits on my keyboard during coding sessions and has strong opinions about my commit messages. Best coworker I’ve ever had.
Presented on 'Making Games as a Solo Dev' at a local tech meetup. Hands were shaking, voice was not.
About 40 people in the room. I over-prepared (80 slides for a 20-minute talk) and had to speed through the second half. But the Q&A afterward was the best part — people were genuinely curious about indie gamedev workflows.
Would do it again. Maybe with fewer slides.
A week in Iceland chasing aurora borealis. Saw them on night three — absolutely life-changing.
The ring road in winter is intense. Whiteout conditions one hour, crystal clear skies the next. We saw the lights dancing green and purple over a frozen lake at 2am. No photo does it justice.
Also: Icelandic hot dogs are inexplicably good.
print('Hello, World!') — and everything changed. Started with Python, never looked back.
Signed up for a free online course on a whim. Within a week I was automating boring spreadsheet tasks at work. Within a month I knew this was what I wanted to do full-time.
The magic of making a computer do what you tell it to — that feeling never gets old.
Kept a sourdough starter alive for 4 months. Named her Dough-rothy. Made approximately 47 loaves.
Like everyone else during that period, I got really into bread. Unlike everyone else, I kept going for months. My fridge smelled like fermentation and my counter was permanently dusted in flour.
Peak achievement: a 90% hydration open crumb that would make r/Breadit proud.