Archive for July, 2015

July 26th, 2015

Project 52, part 7

Aahh, July has been so busy that I’m behind on reading blogs! The past two weeks have especially been busy when it comes to work.

Two weeks ago, my company decided to do a Fix-It Week with all developers to pay off some “technical debt”. With so many developers and sometimes looming deadlines, we’ve all done some things quickly that we meant to go back and fix. We also use Ruby on Rails which is constantly evolving and our code must change along with it.

I led one of the teams (of about 10 people) to update some outdated frontend code. There were 279 instances of a pattern we wanted to rewrite, and we managed to rewrite all of them! I was so proud of my team that I baked them cupcakes at the end of the week to celebrate 😀

Now 4 other developers and I are taking the task of getting the code together for a release, and that’s taking up my time for the next couple weeks. I also spent all day Friday at a Javascript conference! It was a single track conference with 15 speakers. The talks varied but were mostly about Javascript, CSS, and other client-side things (performance, security, etc). Though it was a tiring day, I really enjoyed it. I will have a separate entry about my day there!

With July almost over, that means it’s time for another Project 52 recap! This is for weeks 27-30, which is the first week of July up til now.

#27 – Summer Grilling
Though we didn’t do anything special for the Independence Day weekend, we made sure we at least did some grilling. Bratwursts and corn are a couple of our favorites to cook on the grill 😀

2015_27

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16 · Posted in Photography, Project 52, Toys

July 18th, 2015

What Nintendo means to me

For those who keep up with gaming news, you might have heard that Nintendo’s President and CEO, Satoru Iwata, passed away recently from bile duct cancer at the age of 55. Though it’s always sad to see famous people you like pass away, this one hit me harder than others, mainly because Iwata-san worked on games I love and had also become one of the key faces of Nintendo.

iwata-direct

“On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.”

Iwata-san was not your typical CEO. First, he was actually a game developer at HAL Laboratory and worked on EarthBound and games in the Super Smash Bros, Kirby, and Pokemon series. A few of those games might not have been released without his programming help. After he became Nintendo’s CEO, he pushed for the release of the DS and Wii, both of which were very successful and followed his goal of making games appeal to a wider audience. He also hosted Nintendo Direct to bring news to fans and willingly cut his salary in half when Nintendo suffered a loss in profits.

“Above all, video games are meant to be just one thing: fun. Fun for everyone.”

Iwata-san was someone who was not afraid to be quirky and silly, and that is one of the things I love about Nintendo. I know many people consider Nintendo’s E3 presence this year to be the worst of the lot, but I genuinely enjoyed it. Compared to the other big E3 shows, it was funny, light hearted, and just brought a smile to my face.

iwata-banana

Nintendo is actually why I started gaming. It began when I was young, and my cousins brought over their NES to my grandparents’ house. I was hooked and wanted one so bad. Tetris! Battle Toads! Double Dragon! Contra! Super Mario! So many great memories! My parents bought my brother and I one shortly after, and my gaming hobby just grew from there.

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13 · Posted in Gaming

July 7th, 2015

My favorite things: July 2015

It’s July! And I love that I get to start the month with a 3-day weekend 🙂 I originally planned to watch fireworks at a nearby lake to celebrate Independence Day, but then my husband and I went out for ramen, went into a food coma, and ended up being lazy at home and playing video games. Oh well!

Though we spent much of the weekend just playing video games, part of it was productive too. We spent a few hours doing yardwork on Saturday and a few hours cleaning the house on Friday and Sunday. Though the cleaning part isn’t fun, it does feel good afterwards. We managed to throw away, recycle, or donate a bunch of things in our house. It feels good to de-clutter!

The beginning of the month also means my July entry for the My Favorite Things link-up! It’s where you write about your favorite things for the past month. Check it out if you’re interested in joining!

Psycho Pass

I finally got around to watching this show! My husband and I were watching nothing but One Piece for a while in an attempt to catch up with it. (We’re still 100 episodes behind…) We recently put ourselves on a schedule, such that we rotate through a few shows instead of focusing on one: Daredevil, Psycho Pass, and One Piece. Once one is finished, a new show will go in its place.

Anyway, I’ve really been enjoying Psycho Pass! It takes place in a future where a system is in place to measure people’s mental state and whether they’re likely to commit a crime. The series follows Akane, who is an Inspector and works with latent crimals (Enforcers) to solve crimes that have happened. I like how dark the cases are and how things start to tie together as the series goes along. It’s on Netflix if you want to watch it!

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27 · Posted in My Favorite Things