Living in Seoul, Korea with my wife of 19 years. After marriage and naturalization, her name is now Annie Namba and she's a (graphic) designer, so we’ve created a bit of family confusion. Sorry, Aunty Anne.
We've been living in Seoul since June 2010. It's a great place to live, we don't have plans to leave anytime soon. I believe I could apply for Korean citizenship (without renouncing U.S. citizenship!), but that's a big decision that I haven't thought through fully.
For the first two years, we lived in the now world-famous Gangnam area, but the sensory overload was a bit much. We now live in Jamsil, the site of the 1988 Olympics. We're in a much quieter residential area near Lotte World (a giant complex that includes two malls, an amusement park, an ice rink, and more).
My Korean is pretty decent now. I have no trouble watching TV, buying stuff in person or online. Phone calls are still tricky, but to be fair, I don't exactly cruise through them in English either. For a long time, I was doing a Korean version of Wordle every day, but eventually tired of it. I play in a recreational baseball league on the weekends. I've given up on my original goal of being indistinguishable from a native (that turned out not to be realistic), but I still try to get a little bit better every day.
Studying Japanese as well, via Duolingo. Much easier than Korean, but I don't have the same motivation, so progress is slow.
Working as VP of Software and R&D at Upspring. I didn't think I had it in me to be a manager of people, and it's still something I'm learning more about every day, but so far it has not been the disaster I feared. Overall, I am just trying to ensure that my team is happy and productive, or trending in that direction. I still also try to help everyone in the company be as productive as they can be, by keeping on top of new technologies that could help us and our clients, while also managing our hosting platforms and doing a bit of development here and there (but generally more of an architect role, where I pick the technologies/components and get the project off the ground, and other devs take over from there).
After 14 years of continuous Ruby and Rails development (and a brief, but intense 8 month affair with Crystal), I switched to Elixir and Phoenix for new projects in May 2019.
I never could understand the appeal of functional programming while I was at Mudd, but I get it now! Only took me 20 years...
I am also getting pretty good at Flutter. Mobile app development was always too slow and frustrating for me until I tried Flutter. Doing a little React Native as well, but Flutter's way of doing things makes more sense to me.
I still do plenty of Ruby work, and that is still enjoyable for me. (It just requires a much better test suite vs. Elixir.) And playing around with DragonRuby a little bit, but I haven't really come up with any great game concepts...
JavaScript has been something I've been actively trying to avoid for the past several years (React especially), but Svelte (more specifically, SvelteKit) and AlpineJS have brought me back. As long as I can use TypeScript everywhere and Webpack nowhere, I think I can stomach it this time. SvelteKit is great for small projects. Tailwind has also helped make front end work easier (single-file components built with Tailwind and Alpine are nice).
As development work becomes less of an everyday activity for me, I find I need to rely more on AI. At first, that was GitHub Copilot, but now it's Cursor, which is very noticeably smarter.
Those who know me know that I am a serial entrepreneur by nature. I always have a looong list of ideas for new products (oh hey, ask me if you need one, I only ask for 1%).
Here's what I’ve got going right now.
In June 2005, just days after our wedding, my wife and I immediately embarked on another new adventure, and Bigger Bird was born. We create custom web sites and apps for small businesses and non-profits.
Some of our more well-known clients include YMCA of Honolulu and Iolani School (the main site isn't ours, but we manage the Iolani Fair site). Local folks may recognize The Cookie Corner and HHSAA's SportsHigh.com. Our focus is non-profits, but do accept for-profit clients.
As of February 2017, Annie is still working full-time at Bigger Bird, but I am now pretty much out of day-to-day operations. I pitch in as needed when new projects come in, but otherwise I just keep the servers and sites patched and running.
Meal DJ is a mobile app centered around meal planning and grocery shopping. It is, believe it or not, my first ever standalone mobile app project. (I've built apps in the past, but they've all been free companion apps for website projects.) Made possible by Flutter, without which this one-man development team could not have produced this in 5 months (or ever).
MyKBO Stats is an effort to make Korean professional baseball more accessible to English-speaking audiences. Doesn't make me a cent, but it sure was fun to build, and is used and loved by baseball fans around the world. It even offers live play-by-play coverage when there's a game on. iOS and Android apps available as well. By making use of Websockets to broadcast the live game updates, I can support hundreds of simultaneous viewers with a minimal budget (under $20/month, well at least it was, until KBO on ESPN happened). The old (2014) site was Ruby/Rails, but in June 2020 I re-launched an Elixir/Phoenix version. The launch of KBO on ESPN was quite the adventure, especially with zero advance notice. I thought I was an expert on hosting Rails and Phoenix apps, but I learned a whole lot more during May and June 2020.
I also work on some open source projects here and there, but nothing I'm ready to post here.
Baseball. The wife and I have LG Twins season tickets (or at least we did, in those long ago pre-pandemic days). We live near their home stadium (the one built for the 1988 Seoul Olympics), so we can just bike over.
And if 72 home games a year wasn't enough baseball already, I also play in an adult rec league league on the weekends. I just finished up my 10th (!!) and perhaps final season.
I've played all 9 positions (not in the same game... yet?). These days, I typically play third base, sometimes second, and I catch an inning or two here and there.
I didn't play baseball as a kid, so I don't throw particularly hard (60-65mph), but I can throw with both arms, so there. My defense is above league average at every position, though I have yet to throw out a runner from behind the plate.
Hitting is hard! 10 years in, I see the ball well, but still can't hit consistently. My swing is quick enough, my bat path is looking better than ever, but I still tend to make contact slightly high or low, and I couldn't tell a slider from a fastball if my life depended on it. So, plenty of hard contact, just not at a productive launch angle (sky-high pop-up or hard ground ball).
In my first year, 2014, I slashed an embarrassing .053/.250/.053. Improved a bit to .139/.340/.139 in 2015, .280/.419/.320 in 2016 and got to .348/.516/.435 in 2017. Regressed a bit since then after switching to ortho-k lenses and making some swing changes to keep up with steadily increasing pitching velocity in my league. Squaring up a round ball with a round bat really is difficult.
Music. I'm pretty far removed from my days as a musician, but music is still a big part of my life. (Funny that I only thought to add this section 20+ years in, but maybe that just shows how I think of music as a part of life, not a hobby.)
I enjoy listening daily-ish, mostly while working and cooking (I don't commute, and don't have much time to just sit and listen, sadly). My daily drivers: Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless, Sony WH-1000XM5, and occasionally the Philips SPH9500 wired into an Earstudio ES100 mk2 (USB DAC) during the cooler half of the year, and AirPods Pro for the hottest months.
I use a Korean streaming service (Melon) so I end up discovering and listening to mostly Korean music. I don't make playlists of things I like; rather, I check out all the new releases each week. And I do mean all, from the megastars to the tiniest indies. If I find something I like, I'll dig deeper, otherwise I typically put on full albums of artists I like.
Speaking of artists I like, here are some current favorites. I'll break them up into categories, but within the categories, they are listed in no particular order (because I don't want to obsess over this, and besides, the order would change more frequently than I update this site).
My distinction between bands and groups is that in a band, most play instruments and one or two sing (and none really dance much); in groups, all sing and dance, but generally don't play instruments.
Solo acts:
Heize,
Bibi,
IU,
Seori,
Zion.T,
BoA,
LeeHi,
Sunmi,
Taeyeon,
Sumin,
Lee Mujin,
10cm,
Ailee,
Jeon Somi,
Younha,
Lee Youngji
Bands:
Lucy,
Xdinary Heroes,
Jaurim,
Rolling Quartz,
YB,
Touched,
QWER
Groups:
Dreamcatcher,
NCT,
Itzy,
Kard,
Stray Kids,
Billlie,
Purple Kiss,
New Jeans,
aespa,
(G)I-dle,
ZeroBaseOne,
Twice,
Seventeen
Other:
AkMu
Gaming. At Mudd, way back when, I was decent at Quake 3. I enjoyed Counter-Strike, but never really got good at it. These days, I don't have a gaming PC, so I'm mostly stuck with what I can get for consoles (PS5 and Switch). Right now, that's Super Mega Baseball 4 (great physics engine!), Overcooked AYCE, FF7 Remake/Rebirth, Gran Turismo 7, Switch Sports, Mario Golf, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis Aces, Smash Bros, Octopath Traveler, and a bunch of ancient RPGs that I bought for stupid nostalgic reasons and will never get around to finishing.
Stationery. I've been into stationery since elementary school days, but as something I only looked at longingly from afar until recently (Feb 2022), when things took a different turn.
I spent so many hours in bookstores and stationery stores, but I thought that as a left-handed writer, I was always doomed to smear and smudge everything, so I judged all the fun stuff to be off-limits to me forever. (I even considered learning to write with my right hand, but never put in a serious effort.)
Until one day, when I randomly thought, "well, what if I just change how I write?"
I later learned that the new style I adopted is known as "under-writing," as in your writing hand remains below the writing line, whereas what I had been doing before was side-writing of the worst kind, in which the writing hand moves directly over what was just written, immediately smearing anything but the driest of inks.
This revelation led a wave of purchases over the next 6 months (fountain pens, dip pens, gel pens, brush pens, inks, notebooks, etc.) to make up for lost time. I have a pretty solid collection now. Out of [way too many] fountain pens, my current favorites are my Lamy 2000, Pilot Custom 74, Lamy Studio (brushed stainless, cursive nib), and TWSBI 580.
Baking. Since moving to Korea, I've taken up all kinds of baking. Pizza is my specialty, I make it a couple times a month and whenever we have company.
Lately, we got a bread machine to handle the labor- and time-intensive part (kneading the dough). I still do the shaping and baking by hand. When we make things like burgers & hot dogs, we can't just buy buns at the grocery store, we have to make them. So this was a big quality of life improvement. As much as I do enjoy kneading by hand occasionally, it is one of many things that feels different when are you doing it out of necessity.
Every now and then I make other kinds of bread and very occasionally, I make cookies, muffins, pies, brownies, pretzels, bagels, whatever we happen to be craving. I can cook, it's just not something I'd do if I didn't have to. But baking... there's something science-y about it that I really enjoy.
I think I make a pretty mean chocolate chip cookie and my brownie recipe has gotten pretty good. Sorry I can't share them with you online, but if you ever find yourself in Seoul...