Torn between two homes

I was prepared to spend a whole uninterrupted year in Maastricht without even having the possibility of coming back home for a christmas break. But as the Netherlands is going back into lockdown here I am writing my blog from a surprisingly snowy Tampere. We flew back here last week just before the new restrictions.

I've grown to like Maastricht a lot. Sure it's strange to acclimate to a new city without being able to enjoy all it has to offer but luckily there is a lot to see and experience by just walking around. I'm excited to be back in Tampere for a bit but I also can't wait to get back to Maastricht. I'm torn both physically and mentally between these to cities now.

I'm also excited about a couple of job opportunities I've come across and I have a feeling that I'm close to finding a place I want to work at. I'm really looking forward to doing some serious web development again soon. Even though I've kept my skills sharp in the mean time studying full stack JS I've also got around to doing some non-web related coding. I finally picked up Lua and started developing a game.

I once dabbled in web game dev using HMTL5 Canvas but after that little experiment I left game dev aside for a long time. The trouble is that I just can't get this one game idea out of my head. I can't help myself and I just have to try and make this game. I might write a game dev log or something similar but I'm not sure about commiting my time to that yet. Just take my word for it that some git repo somewhere houses a little unfinished game of mine. I'm planning on getting a playable demo ready next year.

Lua was real easy to get into and I feel like my JS knowledge has helped out a lot. I'm using Lua framework called LÖVE and with the help of a great course by Kyle Schaub I got more than I needed to get me started. If you're interested in getting into game dev I wholeheartedly endorse picking up Lua and starting with that course.

Also I'm starting to toy with the idea of redesigning this website, again. Constantly redesigning and rebuilding your own website seems like a perpetual web dev pastime. I think the next redesign would focus on providing different information in a more compelling way instead of being just one flow of blog posts with snippets of information on the side. I don't think I can afford spreading out my focus too thin right now and I'm still quite happy with the current design. I guess it's fine for now.