Designer, Web Dev, Consultant
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All the Anime I Watched in 2025
Last year, I intentionally watched one anime cour every week and documented it to help friends discover shows worth their time. Well it was fun and I did it again! Scores with ★ deserve your attention. My Criteria: Entry Finished Title Notes Score Format Length 1 01-03-25 Bartender: Kami no GlassBARTENDER Glass of God Rare to find a seinen series with anime bullshit! 8 TV 12 2 01-20-25 Shoushimin SeriesSHOSHIMIN: How to Become Ordinary I…
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All the Anime I Watched in 2024
Few anime fans force themselves to watch regularly unless they write reviews for money. But I asked myself last year: what else can I do to enjoy and enrich my life? Watch one anime cour a week. And I did it! Here’s what I watched so you don’t have to. Scores with a ★ deserve your attention. My Criteria: Entry Finished Title Notes Score Format Length 12 01-04-24 Kakuriyo no YadomeshiKakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for…
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State of WordPress 6.4
Nerd Alert… If you couldn’t tell, I drink the WordPress koolaid. It’s missing some advanced features, but nothing that a couple of trusty plugins and 30 lines of CSS can’t handle. What’s new in 6.4? Why care? The Editor’s gotten some polish with photo lightboxes, group background images, and enhanced List View to better organize your content. Jamie M’s tour summarizes it well. For content managers: unless you’re building a directory, we no longer need…
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That “Make it so” Energy
Hey, thanks for reading my blog. This is a personal one. This week marks 9 years since I started consulting full-time! It’s been a great ride. I’ve served dozens of creators, communities, and more through chaotic times, albeit with many privileges that decrease my overall risk. One of those privileges is fitting in. Until last year, I believed serving clients meant tucking my nerdy interests away to look “more professional.” The 3,000-member anime nonprofit, the…
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WordPress is 20 – the mixed reality from a consultant’s perspective
Chicago’s anime fans circa 2006 had a problem. Some incredible Japanese films and cultural events were happening around the city, and no one was hearing about them. There’s only one solution, right? Buy a domain! AnimeChicago.com launched in November of that year. My dev experience then was FrontPage, Dreamweaver, phpbb, and other justifiable reasons to hack at code, like LiveJournal. But this new project required an easy way to publish content and iterate templates as…
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Return to the Blogosphere
Never in a million years did I plan to revive my blog. Here we are. Social media implosions aside, 2023 seemed like a proper deadline to incorporate WordPress 6.1 with a fresh coat of paint. “But why?!” Future Me shouts. “This can’t possibly spark joy!” Well… I make no guarantees on the frequency and quality of future posts, but they’ll serve as stepping stones for the above goals. Enjoy this site in its transitional state…
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Bit Bash
Starting in Spring 2014, a dozen people have been organizing regular indie videogame parties here in Chicago. I’m one of those people on the planning committee, and I couldn’t be prouder of what Bit Bash has become since those early days. We host one large 1000+ attendee event every summer, and a couple of ancillary 450+ parties to keep the energy going in the dead of winter. We partner with established Chicago institutions such as…
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Skillcrush
When I heard Skillcrush was seeking a remote, part-time WordPress mentor, I got really excited! I find teaching extremely fulfilling but didn’t have the headspace to commit to a physical location or build out courses myself. Now I have the pleasure helping new WordPress developers get their freelance businesses off the ground, and some great cohorts that make the magic happen.
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Curiouser
I took the full-time plunge as a digital marketing consultant in Oct 2014. I serve nonprofits, communities, and indie game developers through website development, WordPress optimization, identity design, and more. It’s been a wild ride!
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AnimeChicago
I’m the founder and president of Chicago’s largest non-profit anime club. We host 8 meetups each month for over 800 members who have helped us raise over $1,000 to date. Our membership is comprised of working professionals who appreciate good anime, enjoy sharing Japanese pop culture knowledge, and absolutely love crushing all those stale otaku stereotypes. I never thought my simple event calendar would transform into a fully fledged non-profit anime organization over the span of 10 years, but I’m…
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Indie Boothcraft
Many people don’t understand the effort it takes to market a game, let alone book, build, and run an exhibition booth. It’s grueling, tiring, passionate work. You’re on your feet for hours promoting a game that hasn’t even launched yet, building momentum for that big push that makes or breaks first-day sales. Yet – there are booths that have no clue. The logo is hard to read. The demo is broken. There’s no actionable item for their visitors to take. They wasted $3,000…