As I get older, I tend to do things that I’m getting good at. On the good side, I’m focusing and specialising. On the flip side, I will eventually stop exploring. Finding the balance between these two is extremely important and this is how I spend my 2013 doing both:
Open-source projects:
Finally shameless enough to release my code into the wild. Scary but felt pretty damn good! Just need to find time in 2014 to do more marketing and issue tracking.
Work: JoyTruck and Stir It Up
Joytruck gotta be my all time favourite so far. Armed with a simple game mechanics and beautiful graphics done by Aerin, we successfully connected the game with the show’s agenda. Knowing the game had actually impacted life(If the global total score exceeds a certain threshold, the tv show will donate some monetary help to needy families), it is really gratifying.
As for Stir-it-up, it is a real-time quiz game that you play along with the contestant on TV. Real-time is a difficult category to tackle as it has a lot of non-mainstream use-cases. Tackling these issues with an excellent work team really did ease the process.
Design
As much as I like doing design, the inertia to do anything creative have been growing these recent years. These are the few that I managed to do in 2013:
LeanBaker (2012 — ????)
Even though LeanBaker was started in 2012, it was at the CNY of 2013 that it peaked before the hiatus. The late-nights packing of ingredients, early weekend morning delivery was all worth it when we see the delight in our clients’ eyes. The final baked products that they send us the following days really did perked us up for the next order. Despite building some momentum, something more important came into my life.
Vapour Laundromat
Perhaps the most “adult” thing that I ever done in my life — setting up a business. No regrets. To many more good years ahead with my co-founder, Zhilong and my partner-in-crime, Joanne.
