What's this blog about - an introduction

 Software Engineering

I started coding my second year of college and was immediately obsessed. I changed my major and fully immersed myself. This blog will contain information about my career as it progressed, what I am currently working on, what I find interesting, and honestly anything tech related. I want to document my findings, what works, and maybe one day help an aspiring software engineer with their career. 

I have long been interested in teaching, while the salary possibilities ultimately drove me towards a career in tech I have never lost the interest in helping other people learn. I was a paid tutor for students in Math and CS from high school (around 2010, I am not old!) all the way until ~2020 when covid happened. One hope I have for this blog is to capture information someone finds interesting, and help them learn new things!

At the time of writing I am coming up on 10 years of professional experience, a BS in math/CS and a MS in Cybersecurity. There will be no specific themes in this blog, one day I am working on an iOS game app and the next I will talk about option trading and what makes strategies work. If you enjoy tech, programming, option trading, or anything in the middle, this blog is for you!




Location: San Diego, CA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Solving Aspect Ratio Problems For Good!!

The Problem: Inconsistent Gameplay Across Devices BallBuilder is a physics puzzle game. Levels contain various components—triangles, rectangles, fans, portals—that players interact with to guide a ball to the goal. Consistency matters. A puzzle that's solvable on one device must be solvable on another, using the same approach. Early in development, I was building on an iPhone. When I used Xcode's device emulator to see how the game looked on an iPad, I was immediately disappointed. The layouts were wrong. Components appeared in different relative positions. The carefully crafted levels didn't translate. This was a fundamental problem that I needed to solve. First Attempt: Percentage-Based Positioning My initial approach used fixed pixel coordinates. This was obviously wrong—devices have different pixel counts, so a component placed at pixel 100 would appear in completely different locations across devices. The first real improvement was switching to percentage-b...
Read more

Designing a Scalable Community Content System

Problem Statement During development of the Ballistics puzzle game, I built a comprehensive level editing toolset for creating physics-based puzzle levels. This toolset enables efficient placement of game objects, configuration of gameplay parameters, and rapid iteration on level design. The natural progression was to democratize this capability—enabling players to create and share their own levels while maintaining quality standards and preventing abuse. The core challenge involved designing a system that would allow user-generated content while addressing several critical constraints: Ensuring published levels meet quality standards (solvability requirement) Preventing statistical inconsistencies when levels are modified post-publication Implementing efficient content discovery with multiple query patterns Mitigating cost concerns through strategic resource gating Pr...
Read more

Customizing the playing experience with special ball effects

Customizing the playing experience My original vision for BallBuilder was strict equality. Players would unlock balls through coins earned by playing, and every ball would be functionally identical—just cosmetic variety. Everyone competes on equal footing. Through discussions with my development partner and general brainstorming, I realized this approach left significant potential on the table. The ball system could offer much more than cosmetic choices. It could become a customization layer that changes how players approach puzzles. The concern with giving some balls mechanical advantages is obvious: pay-to-win dynamics. But I concluded that advantages can exist without breaking competitive integrity, as long as skill remains the primary differentiator. A better ball might make a puzzle easier, but it won't solve it for you. Passive Effects: The Core Concept Each ball in BallBuilder now has a passive effect that activates when equipped. These effects range from subtle ad...
Read more