Month: January 2023

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I am. Excite.

OK, so there’s not much going on in ProjectLand… yet. This week is “get the basic framework set up and ready for development”, and I don’t think anyone really wants to read about Google Firestore vs. AWS whatever. So that leaves us at a crossroads – what DO we talk about?

Panic! of the Tech Bros?

Woo! More layoffs! Will I have a job at the end of this whole degree process? I don’t know. Theoretically I have an offer from one of those big companies, but my start date has been pushed out to October already, so…

OK, that’s a downer. Let’s try something else.

Read Any Good Books?

Uh, does Beej’s Guide to Network Programming count? No?

Well, that topic is no fun either. Let’s try something completely different.

Nerdy-*** Voice Actors

OK, so there IS big news in Critical Role land. (This pertains to me because I am A Fan.)

For those not in the know, Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors that play Dungeons & Dragons and stream their games on Twitch. They’re pretty popular. As in, one of Twitch’s highest revenue-generating channels.

So a while back they wanted to do a one-off animated special, so they put up a Kickstarter. Instead of a few thousand dollars they raised $11.3 million and broke some records in the process. So they decided to make an entire ten-episode animated series.

Then Amazon entered the chat, picked up the rights to stream the series, and paid for a full second season to the tune of many more millions of dollars.

This was all back in 2019. Season 2 of “The Legend of Vox Machina” hit Prime Video last week. Which brings us to yesterday, when Amazon announced Oops, we did it again – they’re developing another animated series based on Critical Role’s second campaign, and grabbed exclusive first-dibs rights to all of Critical Role’s IP for TV and film.

So this should be fun – I’ve been watching Critical Role’s ridiculous streams since 2015 or so, and in that time they have generated a mind-boggling 1,400 hours of content (eat your heart out, One Piece fans…)

I wonder if Prime Video is hiring?

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Blog Posts

The Infamous Intro Post

OK, here we go. So, this blog is part of my capstone (CS 467) journey, so let’s friggin’ go.

Bailey the dog in business attire, typing a TPS report. From /r/funny

I said some of this in my intro already – I was a professional musician in a past life. (Or I still am, sort of? Old habits die hard.) At any rate, I decided trying to “do music” for a living was a bit soul-crushing and actively made me hate music, so I’d rather teach rocks to do math for a living and do the music for fun. So here we are.

So far, software engineering seems a lot like the arts world. You send out hundreds of applications, maybe hear back from three or four of them if you’re lucky, and then you just kind of say ok, whatever, hire me or don’t. I call it the “Yeet Now or Forever Hold Your Peace” method of interviewing. (I don’t actually call it that, but it popped into my head just now, so you have to live with it, too.)

At any rate, this kind of apply first and learn things later approach got me an internship last summer with… uh, ok, since I had to sign some NDA paperwork let’s just say it was a place that rhymes with BLAMAZON. I spent the whole summer writing a ******* ***** to help automate *** ********* and **********. (MAN those lawyers are good.)

So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I tend to learn new things by just diving in, getting my hands dirty, doing everything wrong, going to read the docs, shouting “WHY ARE DOCS ALWAYS SO BAD???!!??”, going to StackOverflow, and then finally building a thing that kind of works. I’m looking forward to seeing what new and interesting technologies I’ll get to break for this project.

Until next time, party on, Garth.