Since we're back for real, I want to start blogging here again, seeing as its the only place I've ever actually kept a blog going for any real period of time. Might as well continue. Sunk cost fallacy is strong on this site.
The last few major life updates I gave here were that I bought a house, and then got a job working at Stripe. Both have been going well!Home
The house has been great, barring a few things that needed repair. We have two fireplaces, both of which needed new chimney liners, and the top of the chimney needed some major repair, so we dropped quite a bit of cash on getting that all fixed up, but it was so worth it to have fires burning in the winter. Cozy stuff. We also had some issues with the upper HVAC unit. The house is 4 floors, with two HVAC systems, one covering the top 2 floors, and one covering the bottom two. The upper unit is shoved in the attic crawlspace and is a huge pain to service. It began leaking water during the summers from so much condensation and it being improperly installed, so the water wouldnt go to the pump to pump it out of the house, and would instead overflow to the also improperly installed emergency drip pan, which also didnt drain, and instead overflowed into the rafters, where ultimately the water trickled down the light fixture over the shower and (somehow, luckily) right into the tub in the master bathroom. Anyway, got all that fixed up after a year long saga. Because of COVID, my wife was able to call a company that usually does commercial properties, and they came by and fixed it all right up, where the residential group we had been working with kept throwing their hands in the air.Work
As for Stripe, things there have been a pretty wild ride. After joining, my team (Stripe Checkout) shrank quite a bit just due to random departures and transfers, but then was soon labelled a top company priority, and shortly after, we quadrupled(?) in size. But hey, if you wanna sell something on the online, try out our good good stuff. Or maybe if you wanna come work with me, reach out and lemme knowwww.Town
I bought an ebike recently for a pretty penny, but any buyers remorse that I had immediately went away after my first ride around town on it.The town I live in has a lot of useful stuff in biking distance, but there is also a massive set of hills between me and anything worth going to. And its both ways, to boot. Uphill, both ways. Hopping on this ebike makes going up steep hills feel like biking on flat land. It's wild. So now I'm out here looking for excuses to take my bike instead of driving, just because its so fun to zip around.The bike is a Class 1 ebike, which means it has assisted pedaling up to 20mph (32kph). A class 2 ebike has a throttle, and a class 3 ebike is like a class 1, but can assist up to 28mph. The bike puts out something like 4x the effort you put in, so you start pedaling like a normal amount, and you just zoom. I can hit 20mph on it in a couple of seconds which is just wild, and helps a ton for being stopped at signs or lights. I highly recommend if you were even sorts interested in checking them out. They cost a lot but don't buy cheaper ones, those tend to break and have very few places that can service them.Gamedev
I've been still working (on and off) on Evenfall for all these years. I take big chunks of time during my "off" phases, but right now I'm in an "on" phase in a big way. I've reworked the game, massively cut scope so I could maybe ever finish it some day, and I've finally hired an artist to do actually good art for the game. We're still working through the backlog of sprites to be replaced, so I dont have any cohesively good looking screenshots, but I'm happy with the direction things are moving. I do, however, have a gif of the new "chest opening" animation which I'm very into.
That's a good looking chest opening animation, I like it!
E-bikes do sound good, though looking at local pricing I'm a long way off from getting one. Would be a great idea for where I'm living though: Most of the shops are around 2-4km away from home, and it's largely flat - I've cycled on an old mountain bike up to the shops before, but I'd probably be easier to convince to go out for a ride if I had an e-bike.I think I asked once a while back, but what kind of technology stack do you and your team use at Stripe?Ah yes, we are all still working on our projects. I love it. Just seeing Evenfall's name again is awesome. I never kept up with it too much but I'll definitely be watching for it now. That animation looks slick. Good luck!
Stripe looks super legit. Good find man, hope they keep treating you well.