Good gravy. I usually say this at the beginning of all of these posts, but holy moly time flies!

So I blinked and suddenly I was no longer 30. While turning 30 was a momentous milestone, 31 felt like nothing more than a whimper in comparison. XD

It was an intense year. An extremely intense year. To the point where I let all of my side projects fall to the wayside, and this poor blog didn’t get updated in 9 months. It also ended up changing somewhat drastically in the last few months, which have given me a good chance to reflect on this year, and to think about what I want to do next year.

Like I always do, I like to make a little checklist of the things I’m most proud of doing as a 30 year old, and setting some goals for next year.

Continue reading →

Hello! It’s been a while. What a crazy year it’s been. XD

This is a blog I’ve been meaning to write since March, since I went to Japan and bought a Japanese Apple Watch Series 2. But now that the Series 3 has been announced, now’s just as good too.

So in March of this year, I flew to Japan to attend this year’s try! Swift Tokyo conference. To say I had a fantastic time was an understatement. XD

Continue reading →

Blimey. I survived 2016. XD

Even saying that as a joke makes me feel a little guilty, especially when we lost so many notable people this year. People are saying that we should start getting used to this trend, but I choose to remain ignorantly hopeful otherwise.

So 2016 is over. It blew past so fast. So amazingly fast. I’m not even sure what the hell happened.

I considered 2015 to be a transformative year. It was a year where I moved from consulting and predominantly web work, to fully plunging into the mobile software space in Silicon Valley. In retrospect, it feels like 2015 was landing on the tip of the iceberg and 2016 ended up being actually discovering the rest of the giant iceberg under water.

Continue reading →

(The photo on the left is one of me from mid-2006. The other is mid-2016; 10 years apart. I’d like to think I haven’t been ravaged by the flow of time that much just yet. XD)

WELP. It finally happened. This time last year, I was lamenting that I’ll soon be unable to say “Yeah, I’m still in my twenties.”. Well that time finally came. 

I’m 30.

I spent some time last week reflecting on the last time I hit a new decade. When I turned 20, I was in my final year of studying Digital Media at ECU then. I was planning to head to Japan on a working holiday visa, but had no clue what I was going to do after that. So much has happened then. I spent a year in Japan, working at ski resorts and teaching English. I came home and very nearly ended up working at Interzone Games (That was a bullet dodged!) before settling on becoming a web designer/developer. After the iPhone 3G launched, I slowly gravitated towards mobile development before embracing it full-time at pixiv in 2013 and ultimately ending up at Realm.

So much water has passed under the bridge. I started the decade completely dazed and confused as to how the world worked, and now… well I’m only slightly less dazed and confused. XD

Continue reading →

I love the iPhone. So much so that people have accused me of being an Apple fanboy in the past before (they’re probably right).

I also love Japan. I spent a chunk of my childhood growing up there and I now enjoy traveling back to the country whenever I can.

So during the September Apple keynote this year, you could imagine how excited how I was when Apple announced not just the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2, but that both of these devices had the necessary capabilities to have Suica loaded onto them.

What’s a Suica? Suica is a NFC-based prepaid smart card that you can use to pay for things in Japan with a simple tap of the NFC receiver. You can buy them pre-charged in Japanese train stations, and while they were originally intended for automatic paying of fares on train lines, they can now also be used to pay at vending machines, and even some types of stores.. Easily the most convenient way of paying for things when you’re over there.

Continue reading →

And WWDC 2016 is now officially behind us! What an absolutely crazy week it’s been.

For the third year in a row, I sadly did NOT get a ticket to WWDC (Next year Gadget! Next year.), but thanks to the nature of my work, it’s always still absolutely worth the trip out here anyway to join in on the alternative conferences happening during the week, as well as the festivities during the evening. 

Continue reading →