title: Tech Buffet
tags: blog, rant
date: 2016-12-04 23:45:23+00:00

## Introduction

This blog has been side stepped for quite a while .. For some reason, this pattern happens every time.. During the beginning of the year, I'm like "I'ma blog all year!!". However, I slow down during the middle, and near the end realize, "Oh crap, let me play catch up now".

## All You Can Eat

I don't think it was a bad year for the blog, though, all things considered. I've finally overcome my iOS comfortzone and delved into other interesting fields, like Elixir and Unity.

I believe I also migrated my app backend to Heroku this year, and started using Heroku a lot more in general. I mean, the main restriction that bothers me is the freaking power cycle, but other than that, I just dump all my servers there.

I've indulged in docker during the beginning of the year and realized it was a crazy and unnecessary overhead for an army of one. Then, a friend convinced me to try out docker cloud during the end of the year, which was an amazing experience at first .. Until docker cloud "Lost contact with a node"... Seriously? Also their support forums suck. There, I said it.

Let's see, besides that ... 

How about using the new Android Studio external native build feature? Did you know Android studio can freaking import a CMakeLists file into gradle and elegantly build that into a native library, packaged as an AAR?! That was neat.

Regarding native libraries, docker wasn't a complete loss this year. I've actually learned about and utilized Dockcross; a set of pre-configured docker images that contain cross-compile toolchains. To build my C lib for linux on my Mac, all I have to do now is `./dockcross ./build.sh`. How neat!

Of course, the best thing that happened this year was meeting Elixir and getting to know it better. Just like a steak, you let it cook steadily, while incrementally applying the right set of spices. By the end of the process, you got yourself quite the indulgent!

Tech aside, I was really lucky to have worked with a super-fun team over at Bigfootgames.com. They helped my get the ball rolling with my game. I also had the fortune to knowing two super talented guys; a designer and a composer. Their fine work is the main reason I have the energy to keep at making this damn game (no pun intended).

Let's bring tech back again, since I'm not nearly done with that yet. This year we witnessed the drastic change that Firebase went through. Luckily enough, I was able to work on __two__ shipped products that utilize their new services. Firebase is just great; you should take a look at it.

While we are in this area, might as well mention the insanely useful papertrail logging service. I've been having issues with logging for a while, and never really cracked the problem until I found Papertrail. They have a neat, UDP based remote syslog setup which is compatible with an abundant number of technologies, including Elixir.

## Conclusion

This is just a dump, so I do apologize for the lack of structure. I can also summarize my 2016, from the tech side at least, as the year I finally understood Unity.

Regardless of anything else, Unity was this thing I just couldn't click with. Having committed to learning it, during my escape to Japan, was what will probably last with me the longest. I have arguably spent most of my time in 2016 sleeping, obviously, but second to that, doing Unity related stuff.

Elixir was fun, but not really the domain of my project. It's the assisting component that I unfortunately had to simply make work, and move on to perfecting the experience in Unity.

So, that took about 15 mins to write, lol. Says a lot about how long I've been wanting to dump this stuff... Would be nice to make it all dumps instead...
