Brett Chalupa

what i am up to

2013-05-02T21:49:00+00:00

After a half a year running and developing software at Gristmill, I am back to doing my own thing. It was a valuable experience where I learned a lot about doing contract work for clients and building web applications with Ruby on Rails.

It is now spring, and the weather is unbelievably gorgeous. I am thankful to have more time to work on personal projects and enjoy nature. I moved into a studio a few blocks away from home with Craig Winslow, a talented and kind individual.

I am optimistic about the future. My expectations are simple and humble. I want to make things because I can. I want to work on what interests me everyday. I want to cherish the relationships I have and form new ones. I want to continue to grow, learn and teach others.

There is no company or project to announce, thankfully. I am just going to work on what sounds fun and seeing where it takes me. I have no desire to make the Next Big Thing. I just want to make things. Things that I use, things that I play, things that people enjoy, things that help people.

Applause

2013-04-07T16:39:00+00:00

At the end, one could only applaud those performances, which is what a good television program always aims to achieve; that is to say, applause, not reflection.

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

2013 Burlington Ruby Conference

2013-04-03T10:33:00+00:00

I have been organizing the Burlington Ruby Conference this year with some friends and colleagues. It is happening on August 3rd and 4th, which should be a gorgeous weekend in Vermont. The goal has been to put on a comfortable, afforadable and fun conference in the beautiful town of Burlington.

I am honestly so excited to be working diligently daily to make the conference awesome. Ticket sales just opened today, and I really hope that the attendees are as excited as I am.

What is left to do is select the speakers (we got over 50 proposals!) and organize the activities and talks. There are four months left, and the conference organizing started in early January. It is crazy to think it takes so much work to organize a conference, but it is such an amazing experience.

My favorite part so far has been meeting new people and working closely with the other organizers. Being involved in the community is so emotionally rewarding.

Once the conference happens, I am going to create an overview guide of the process of putting on the conference for those interested in organizing their own conference. I have learned a lot so far, and I am sure there is much more to learn during the actual conference!

honey pie

2013-03-21T21:16:00+00:00

I want to write stories that are different from the ones I've written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. But right now I have to stay here and keep watch over this woman and this girl. I will never let anyone – not anyone – try to put them into that crazy box – not even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar.

Haruki Murakami, "honey pie"

BMO Open Sourced

2013-03-17T23:00:00+00:00

BMO, a project I worked on in September of 2012 has been open sourced. The goal of BMO has always been to make hosting game jams easier. After slowly working on it the months after the Adventure Time Game Jam, I think it is time I let other people hack on the code and deploy their own.

There is a lot I want to do with BMO, like hosting multiple jams on a single BMO and actually taking time to design it. The roadmap in the README is a decent list of ideas I have had for BMO. There is no timeline for BMO. I want it to grow and evolve naturally.

If you are looking to host a game jam, BMOs are easy to create and deploy. Hosting a BMO on Heroku is free and keeping the assets on AWS S3 is pretty cheap. Deplying a BMO, while easy, does require a little technical knowledge (mostly using the Terminal).

I hope BMO being open source makes hosting game jams easier, that way the games people create can be shared with everyone everywhere.

project euler

2013-03-05T22:00:00+00:00

Project Euler is a collection of challenging programming problems. There are over 400 problems, as of writing this. That is enough to keep anyone busy for at least a year! One of the many great things about Project Euler is that the problems are language agnostic. Whether you use Ruby, F#, C, etc. it does not matter. What matters is your ability to approach the problems programmatically and solve them.

For example, here is Problem 3:

The prime factors of 13195 are 5, 7, 13 and 29.

What is the largest prime factor of the number 600851475143 ?

If that is not an exciting challenge, then I do not know what is.

I have been slowly progressing through each problem. Some take me a few hours and others a few days. It has been great to revisit a lot of math that I have not used in years. A lot my time programming lately has been for business purposes and not for learning purposes - this is a huge problem. Working on Project Euler is one of my efforts to do more fun programming. More time needs to be spent programming for fun and learning.

I recommend anyone who is interested in program try and solve Project Euler problems with their favorite language or a new one. There is not much better than the rush of solving a problem.

simple ways to improve your day

2013-03-05T12:25:00+00:00

Some days are downers. I try my best to stay positive, but that is not always enough. Here are some simple ways I improve my day:

Go for a walk
Eat some fruit
Spend time with a loved one
Watch a Maru video
Listen to some music, sing and dance
Meditate

Things I find myself doing on bad days that do not help: spending money, eating greasy & unhealthy food, and spending time alone. Those do not help.

I hope that your day is going well. You deserve it. If not, I hope these six simple things can make your day a little better!

unlimited media

2013-02-26T20:17:00+00:00

Nowadays you can pay less than ten dollars a month and get access to an enormous catalog of tv shows and movies. You can listen to nearly every song from the past century for free (with the occasional advertisement). You can watch tv shows from Japan hours after they premier. It is quite scary how far things have come in such a short amount of time. It is extremely cheap and easy to consume anything and everything. On paper, this is good for consumers and creators. However, I believe this devalues content. When we can consume so much so quickly, we do not enjoy it nearly as much.

It is so common to watch an entire show on Netflix and once it is done, you think "what next?" With all the music in the world, do we really value the music we buy? How many people still buy music? Do we listen to it as much and actually form the powerful memories music creates? Soon the word buy will be foreign, a thing of the past, in regards to purchasing media.

I for one, do not want to have an unlimited access to all the music. I want to enjoy the music I already have. Most music is timeless (just look at classical music, still awesome today). A lot of the music I listen to today is the same as what I listened to ten years ago. Over the years, my music collection has not grown much. I do not know most of the top 40 songs, and I really don't care. Through different situations and parts of my life there is music that goes along with it. That feeling is so important.

When I listen to M. Ward's Duet for Guitars #2 I think about when I was learning to drive. When I listen to Bon Iver's For Emma I think about my freshmen year of college and the cool, crisp Vermont air. I really like that association, and I am not sure if that is possible by always listening to new music.

The movies I own are movies I really love. Schindler's List. The Lord of the Rings. Star Wars. A half-dozen or so of the Miyazaki films. Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. I will occasionally go to the movies or buy a new movie, but I enjoy the ones I have. I find them fantastic, and I love rewatching them. I do not want to have a huge movie, record or game collection. I simply want to have what I love and can continually enjoy. A lot of media is timeless, I think that's really amazing. Let's not let unlimited destroy that.

Why I Use Ruby

2013-02-20T15:58:00+00:00

I use Ruby because it is beautiful and elegant.

I use Ruby because the syntax is friendly.

I use Ruby because it is fun.

I use Ruby because it has a lower barrier of entry than most languages.

I use Ruby because it is cross-platform.

I use Ruby because I can develop web applications, games and mobile applications with it.

I use Ruby because it lets me easily translate my thoughts into code.

writing

2013-02-12T22:13:00+00:00

In an effort to spend each day doing what I love, I have started to form a daily routine of activies. This routine includes sketching, reading, muscle training, yoga and writing. Over the past four weeks I have written over 150 notes. Most of them are unpolished and incomplete thoughts. There are some thoughts that are ones I want to share, which I intend to do.

I am not trying to say that I write a lot. What I am trying to say is that I think a lot, and writing down my thoughts is one of the clearest ways I can express myself. I want to share those thoughts here, on my website.

In a certain light, it is therapuetic to write out my thoughts. It feels like I am talking to myself, and it often gives me a new perspective on that subject.

What I have been writing is varied, ranging from rants to reasoning to ideas. The experience of writing things down is really eye-opening, and at the end of week, month, year, etc. you have a nice journal of your thought process throughout time.

Writing about ourselves, our thoughts, our beliefs and our issues helps us learn more about ourselves. That enlightment is what helps us grow and become more aware humans.

In an effort to write more, I am going to spend a little of each day in March writing fiction. My goal is to have a short work of fiction by the end of the month. I have never written fiction, and to be honest, I am a little scared that it will feel a bit off. That's the reason I want to do it, though. I want to conquer that fear and create a story, setting and characters that I believe in.