Review of 2022

“Knowing is a barrier which prevents learning”

“comparison is the thief of joy”

Career

  • finished the kubernetes certified application developer training (KCAD)
  • Started a new job at allspice.io

Projects

Nimbleflight

i stopped developing the flight controller software i wrote in rust last year. i found the ecosystem for embedded rust was moving to fast and i was rewriting large portions to keep up with the libraries.

it was also difficult to figure out the legalities of testing the drone in Canada, especially in a city.

ultimately i still have interest in the project but have other things i want to do more. its not a waste however as i gained some good embedded and electronics experience.

limetea.io / snailscale.io

limetea.io is a new website for my blog with the goals of learning how serverless and ssr works ("next gen frameworks"). I wrote the website in astro and feel it was worth while as it helped me understand the direction people are trying to push the web.

snailscale.io was the project i started when i realized i didn't like the direction people are trying to push static site generators (astro), it uses 11ty and tailwind to create what i consider a minimal blog.

together these project have really helped me feel like i have a place where my notes and thoughts can live.

Smoothie (Game)

While I still worked at BitQuill i participated by myself in the Game Jam, a yearly event.

The theme was music or/and fruit and i felt it best i combine them so i created smoothie.

The game is pretty simple, you start a round by hearing some notes played and you are given a list of fruit. Each fruit plays a note when clicked, the objective of the game is to reorder the fruit to match the sound played at the start of the round. You may submit your attempt to rehear the rounds sound. In order to keep your progress fruits are in the correct position are highlighted in green on submit.

I only had a single day to work on the project so i cut a bunch of features that i had initially planned. For example I wanted each level to be randomly generated each day from a different song. Instead I manually converted some songs to a format i could parse and play on the browser and limited the number of levels.

the game uses svelte, tailwind, and tonejs/midi. you can find the source here

Discord Minecraft bot

like many my friends and i go on a 3 week binge of Minecraft every year, and every year we either delete our old world or pay money monthly for a server. i don't want to pay for a server when we don't use it and i would like to continue our world year after year so i wrote a bot to help manage our world.

using discords api i wrote a bot which allows users in our discord server to start and stop the Minecraft world using commands. it was a pretty easy weekend project but has been used quite a bit since creating it. it means that the game won't be sitting idle when no one is using it and everyone can have access to it whenever they want.

for my group of friends we use Tailscale and a shared device as outlined in a blog. however the bot could be deployed to a ec2 instance just as easily. the benefit of Tailscale is not having to port forward.

Centerpin reel

i took on a project which is pretty far outside my area of expertise, designing a physical product to be lathed and CNCd. this is an area i want to learn more about and gain experience in and i figured a fishing reel with no drag, ratchet, or gears would be a great place to start.

i have been iterating on the project quite a bit as i cannot find CAD software that is free and has widespread learning material. i started with fusion 360 which was fantastic until my license expired. i then moved to OpenSCad which was great until i wanted to add some chamfers, filets, use reference bolts, and generate a draft to give to a machinist. Starting in the new year i will attempt to use freecad.

Ultimately it might not matter what CAD software i use as all of them are capable but the burden of choice is similar to that of picking your first programming language.

Hobbies

  • Camping (Squamish)
  • Cooking
  • Fishing (Squamish, Capilano, Ontario, Quebec, Vedder)
  • Rock Climbing
  • Brewing (beer)
  • Gym (2-5 times a week)

Books Read

  • Dune Messiah
  • Children of Dune
  • God Emperor of Dune
  • The total fly fishing manual (field and stream)

Articles

  • https://thewalrus.ca/why-success-in-canada-means-moving-to-america/
  • https://12factor.net/
  • https://bert.org/2020/10/01/pressing-yubikeys/
  • https://artemis.sh/2022/03/14/propolis-oxide-at-home-pt1.html