Regal's Blog

Art Fight 2026

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For a primer on what Art Fight is, check out last year’s post

2026 Art Fight Season

This year the event was a little different! For the first time it was a 3-team arrangement. Teams Comedy, Tragedy, and Mystery.
As usually I don’t really care that much about the actual competition, it’s just fun set-dressing.

I picked Tragedy! I don’t think we’re gonna win!! So many people picked the clown team (comedy) because of course.

Life Context

This was a tough year for me. My girlfriend and I have been battling the Chicago dog groomer job market for months now, and this was the month that our last ditch effort to land her a stable, dignified job fell through.

Suffice to say we were incredibly stressed until the very end of the month. That, plus Anthrocon in Pittsburgh taking up the weekend of the 4th of July…I had a lot of things taking my time.

That being said I still put out 12 pieces that I’m incredibly proud of.

1. Veryn

I was feeling a little rushed trying to get my first attack out for the year, but I’m still proud I found a super cool character! Like most pieces this year, I tried to manage my time (and low energy)…meaning not letting Perfect be the enemy of Good

Proud of:

Overall vibe
Color textures
Foreshortening angles

Room for improvement:

Depth/shading on skull
Hands
Expression

Kyrozon’s Revenge! ⚔️

Just a lovely Argent with delightful muscles. He’s got hard shapes and I’m always pleased when folks give him a shot! Artfight Link

2. Rieger

Again, pressed for time as I had a limited day out in Cincinnati, I wanted to see how high quality of a BEEFY scalie I could draw up in a single sitting and I’m pretty pleased!

Proud of:

Muscle anatomy
Coloring

Room for improvement:

Facial structure & expression

3. Mantra

This was a cool one I had a lot of fun with. I wanted to draw another cobra, and found this very colorful, varied character. I ended up kind of falling into a harsh comic-style-ish black line shading, and I think it kind of worked but I should’ve gone harder on it.

Proud of:

Black line shading
Simple expression, pose
Coloring accents

Room for improvement:

Cobra neck looks a bit wonky
Deeper shading

Rew’s Revenge! ⚔️

Good golly I love getting Ristretto art everyone draws him so differently! Artfight Link

4. Lumie (and Kiln)

I love love love my friends’ weird protogens. Lumie is a really cute lava lamp protogen that I’ve drawn before, and Kiln is a unique “molten glass” character my friend Oblvon created.
I was sitting with friends at Milli and just brainblasted this goofy idea to trap Kiln as the lava lamp lava in Lumie.

For reasons still unknown I decided to go for a wildly difficult ultra-thin lineart style! I think it turned out pretty nice :3

Proud of:

Lineart
The pose and idea overall
Splitting up Kiln between the lava lamp spots
The expressions

Room for improvement:

More thin lineart practice (for more confidence)

Courtney’s Revenge! ⚔️

Oh my god he’s so cute the hermit crab destroys me <3 Artfight Link

Oblvon’s Revenge! ⚔️

This Dyrim piece makes me feel insane I love how Oblvon drew her so much…I definitely took some inspiration from this for my later pieces this year! Artfight Link

5. Jelly

I knew I wanted to attack my very good friend Briva, but picking a character from her incredible roster is so hard…Ultimately I settled on Jelly because I’m obsessed with how she goofily breaks the rules. Is she average height? Or tiny? Hard to tell!

I found a cute picture of a shrew resting in someone’s palm and felt inspired, so that became the reference for this. Of course I made Briva’s fursona the hand holding her too.

The pose and anatomy tripped me up a few times but I’m very happy with the cute result!

Proud of:

The idea and execution
Cuteness
Selling the scene

Room for improvement:

Fluff/fur texture
Expressions
Shading

Briva’s Revenge! ⚔️

An insanely cool piece and pose. I keep coming back to look at it it’s so unqiue and powerful. Artfight Link

6. Levi

While I’m still proud of this piece, it was easily my biggest struggle this season. I think my approach of translating my friend’s comic style into my own was a bit ham-fisted and I should’ve loosened up in my approach.

I think I did a good job respecting the character’s lore, role, etc. though! I tried to depict him in a between-adventures setting and I like how it came together, even as I was trying to keep myself from over-obsessing the piece.

Proud of:

Scene/setting
Gritty shading

Room for improvement:

Facial expression
Posing
Stylization and scalie features

Rayzr’s Revenge! ⚔️

What can you possibly say about this other than holy shit Artfight Link

7. Lorwell Locksmith

This was actually the first piece I started this year, but I think I got overwhelmed by some anatomy things and I put it off til later.

Definitely turned out to be one of my favorites this year! Synths are just really fun to draw, and I need to draw more.
Big fan of the Fromage board game…I used a photo and then scribbled over it with rough color and I think that looks great :3

Proud of:

Synth texture, features
Anatomy
Board game idea + execution

Room for improvement:

Hands/fingers
More tech-details

8. Red

Simply a cool protogen I wanted to draw! I don’t actually have a lot to say about this one, as it kind of just fell into place very nicely, and I had a good, quick time from start to finish.

I just like their design, and I tried a bit of brighter shading than normal to help bring out their color :3

Comintoo’s Revenge! ⚔️

I love love love getting Ristretto art, especially when folks lean into the coffee theme :3 Artfight Link

Proud of:

Overall vibe of piece
Simplicity and solid technique

Room for improvement:

Drawing non-standard fingers
Posing

9. Raspberry

My annual attack on the gf!! Last year I goofed and made this little guy VERY long. So of course this year I decided to go the other direction and chunk him up into a little bean.

I love my girlfriend and her delightful creatures. She’s truly an animal lover through and through, and her characters & her style really reflect that.

I genuinely love Raspberry. And not just because he’s been her discord profile icon for 3 years…though I’m sure that helps.
I really want to come up with my own type of silly animal mascot character like this.

Anyways, art wise not a lot to say lol. I worked hard to ensure the markings etc. were accurate but I very much beefed the anatomy on purpose :3

Girlfriend Revenge! ⚔️

I love the gf’s style so much she’s just tremendously cool and awesome Artfight Link

Proud of:

Matching the character’s colors
Keeping it silly

Room for improvement:

Loosening up for silly things like this and really getting goofy (more funky shapes)

10. Nicanor

In terms of effort, output, and finished product, I think this is my “big” piece for this year. I just really wanted to go all out on a BUFF character and really pull out all the stops, and I think I really pulled it off here.

That being said, I still restrained myself a bit—limiting time overall and rejecting some of my initial, more ambitious pose ideas.

I’m very proud of myself for pushing the muscle anatomy a bit past my comfort zone for a piece like this, and I love love how the shading turned out—especially for the veins and shoulder shine. It’s a technique I’ll definitely be bringing with me past Art Fight.

I also think I did a good job with the facial expression! Komodo dragon character (mine included) have pretty simple faces, so I’m happy with how much personality I was able to impart with the few details I was working with.

Kairune’s Revenge! ⚔️

Such a plaintive, cute, innocent Wilson piece! Him sippy Artfight Link

Proud of:

Muscle anatomy
Lighting & shading
Vein and muscle details
Facial expression, details

Room for improvement:

Foreshortening
Clothing folds

11. Keel

Another annual tradition: attacking Somite! Lol. Somite has some really fun characters that I just really enjoy challenging myself with. The hardest part each year is choosing who to draw!

This time I challenged myself by drawing Keel, a kobold. Why is that challenging? I feel I have a weakness in drawing small characters and imparting chaotic energy.
The pose I picked really helped with both of those!

Even though it was a tough pose, I vibed it out pretty well. There really weren’t great references for this, so I’m quite pleased. Plus it served as an excuse to draw another BUFF SCALIE helllll yeahhh

Also shout out to Rayzr whose advice on how to draw decent scalie feet keeps proving useful. It wasn’t the focus of this piece, but I think it really helped shore up a BIG weakness of mine.

Kairune’s Revenge! ⚔️

Somite draws the most indulgent art for me I’m so blessed. Communism, coffee, Chicago, transit, AND gratuitous muscle all in one! Artfight Link

Proud of:

Posing dynamicism
General anatomy, muscles
Fun expression and levity

Room for improvement:

Feet anatomy
Expressive scalie faces

12. Juniper

A well-overdue attack on my good friend Juni! I really genuinely struggled to get the “ram” shape right (to my eye, at least). I’m happy with where it ended up but my word this was very out of my wheelhouse. Definitely need more practice!

I don’t have an issue with headshots, but as an anatomy guy I love drawing bodies. This is a headshot purely because of time constraints, as my final Art Fight.

I think I did a good job though, aside from how dark it turned out (my iPad playing color tricks on me again).
Excited to do even better with next year’s attack >:3

Proud of:

Expression
“She looks like a ram”

Room for improvement:

Color
Non-scalie expressive faces

Conclusion

Once again life got busy and complicated, and Art Fight was a welcome, solitary blast of art and creativity. I don’t feel I jumped much in skill between now and last year, but that’s okay. I’m still having fun, and still trying new things.

9 years!! Crazy. I love this event. It’s so simple and fun, but I really look forward to it each year.

I really really wish it were any other time than the heart of summer though

Peruvian Coffee Showcase

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Thanks to a new friend, I discovered an awesome local roaster that regularly hosts cool coffee events for the public!

This is going to be a quick post mostly sharing photos from the event :3 enjoy!

Preamble

My barista friend Ryan and I went together without much of an idea what to expect. Fortunately, things were immediately off to a good start when we walked into the roastery and the first person we saw was our friend + Ryan’s colleague, Myra! Apparently she is in the process of transitioning to Tailwind Roasting, so she literally works there now. How cool!

Anyways, the roastery has a separate office/tasting room, and in there we saw the Onyx¹ crew setting up for the cupping event. The front of the table had a magnificent spread of take-home swag for attendees.

obsessed with these little guys

While the Onyx team finished grinding coffee and boiling water, we mingled—I talked to a coffee guy from Colorado who very kindly shared his industry/cupping/tasting/etc. knowledge with me throughout the event.\

Shout out to Jay, you’re a real one!

Cupping Event

Before we began, Rachel of Onyx gave us a rundown of what coffees they’d prepared, explained that their company has until recently exclusively imported coffees from Guatemala, and that this is the first year that they’ve imported from their new Peruvian relationships.

Smell!

She then gave a brief rundown of the coffees, and encouraged us to go through and smell the grounds before beginning.

I only have 3 big takeaways from the smelling:

Wow I fucking love coffee this stuff is so good
Hooray I can instantly tell which one of these is decaf!
Omg it’s so funny that exactly one of these coffees is a natural process (the rest were washed) and it was OBVIOUS

Taste!

The main event! The first time through we went in a line, testing the 2 Peruvian coffees first, then a series of the Guatemalan, ending with the funky natural process.
Each coffee had two cups each, and they were set up in front of fantastic detail sheet talking about the farms, the people, and of course the coffee itself.

This one was one of my favorites. Lovely story too! This is the kind of coffee you want to find and support!

There isn’t a whole lot to say, other than that it was a great time, I enjoyed the coffees, and I was even responsible enough to spit out most of it instead of destroying my body with caffeine at 4pm haha.
I’m also proud of myself for being able to taste the decaf coffee and identify that it was indeed the same coffee bean as the non-decaf one next to it :3

Other Cuppings

My helpful guide Jay explained to me that this was a very casual cupping experience. In my past experience, I’d done a tasting where we were told what coffees were there (region, roast, and process), but not which ones were which.
Apparently Jay has been to cupping where not only was all information withheld, but the lights were also all red so as to prevent folks from visually differentiating the coffees and allowing that to color (heh) their perceptions of the taste.

In this tasting we had full explanation of each coffee, as well as info sheets in front of each one. Fair to say more of an advertisement for Onyx than a “practice cupping/tasting” event, but that was what I expected anyways.

Future Coffee Stuff…?

I’m probably going to go back to Tailwind Roasters for either a cupping class or a roasting class, because it was a really cool space and I really enjoyed the people I met there. I will say though that for as much fun as I had, I felt a bit out of place being completely outside of the industry.

I really love coffee. I love learning about it, brewing it, drinking it, and especially sharing it. And I can’t help but feel that I’m not…serious enough about it? I have some casual aspirations for opening my own cafe, but I don’t actually know if I’m up to the task. And I don’t really know what a good medium would be.

It’s a little existential, but today left me feeling both fulfilled and inadequate. Because my life right now is very fulfilling and fun—full of friends and many cool hobbies and interests.
But at the same time, events like this make me wonder if I’m stretching myself thin here, and not engaging fully enough with any one of my personality-defining hobbies, whether that’s coffee, urbanism, weightlifting, or anything else on my about page.

Is this what a midlife crisis is? I’m not even 40 yet!

Or maybe I need to relax a bit, and take some advice from the graffiti and decor I found at Printers Row Coffee today

I’m listening. I’m learning.

Much to think about.

This is Onyx the coffee importer not Onyx the coffee roaster btw ↩

Snake in a Doggy Dog World

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Via my lovely girlfriend, I’ve been deeply introduced to the world of professional dog grooming and dog showing. It’s pretty cool and interesting!
I’m putting a lot of effort into engaging with a hobby outside of my circle and direct interests, and it’s been more fun than I expected. And not just because I love my girlfriend :3

Personal Context

The gf is a professional dog groomer, and her favorite breed of dog is Boxers. She’s not *just* a dog groomer, she is deeply passionate about it, and aspires to compete live at shows!

She explains it as “they’re just so goofy!” but I don’t get the Boxer love lol. I’m more a Poodle person myself but I certainly love and respect her enthusiasm :3

Since moving to Chicago with me, she has struggled to find a grooming salon that respects both her and her craft at her level. Amidst hopping between different salons as they fail to uphold her standards of care for dogs, grooming standards, or her dignity as a worker, we’ve also been going to dog shows and grooming expos all across the midwest.

This blog post is going to be a little look at both of these as an outsider looking in.

Shows and Expos

Poodles are so cute and funny that little one in the back is killing me how are you so smalllll

Dog show = “best of breed” etc. style shows. The kind you see on TV. They’re usually centered around a single dog breed, and it’s pretty crazy seeing dogs and realizing “ohh THIS is what they’re supposed to look like”. People dress up nice, and it’s a more “official” affair.

Grooming expo = live grooming contests and large vendor floors selling dog grooming equipment and products. Just like any convention, people are wearing comfy clothes and it’s a casual hodgepodge of movement and activities.

Shows

I’ve only been to PCA (Poodle Club of America) in 2025, and the American Boxer Club (ABC) National Specialty Show this past month so far, and I don’t actually have any photos from PCA because we spent the entire time talking to a single poodle breeder (whoops!), so this section will mostly be about the Boxer show :3

I’ve never seen so many Boxers in my life and especially none that looked as good as these ones. It’s not my place to get into it here, but shows (and grooming expos, sometimes) really showcase the gulf between mixed-breed and pure-bred dogs!

As for what happened during the show, it’s pretty much what you’d expect: people parade around their fancy, well-bred dogs, and then they’re judged against one another.
It’s more exciting than I’m making it sound, but also as a non-dog-world person, I will fully admit it’s a little boring at times. I just don’t know what to look for to be truly impressed.

Me: “Cool Dog!!”

Soapbox:

All dogs are good dogs. Every dog deserves love, respect and a comfortable life

Modern purebred dogs are extremely healthy; their genetic lineages are meticulously tracked to prevent in-breeding and passing unhealty traits or diseases

Adoption is amazing. Buying pure-bred dogs is also amazing. Buying dogs from puppymills is the only incorrect choice

No puppymill dog is evil, but the profit-motivated people running puppymills at the expense of dog health are evil

Mixed-breed dogs are often great pets, but often have poor genetics leading to poor health outcomes, or poor behavioral foundations

Expos

Grooming expos are huge, and also only 3 things:

Large vending floor with booths set up selling vacuums, shampoos, clippers, smocks, etc.
Live grooming stage showcasing grooming competitions (these take ~3hrs each)
Various panels/classes

The vendor booths obviously aren’t for me, the outsider. I follow the gf around, asking about the things she gets excited about, and cautiously asking “don’t you already have that?” every 10 min or so.

I’ve only been to one panel, and it was really weird. It was state groomers association meeting listed as an informative “how to advocate for yourself as a groomer in our state” but it quickly became clear it was mostly for grooming shop owners who wanted to maximize profits amidst changing labor laws.
Weird vibes!

The grooming competition is the bread and butter of the event though. Participants bring in a dog ready to be groomed, and compete on stage grooming the dog from start to finish within a time limit (limit depends on the dog’s size).
Try as I might, I quickly get bored while watching because unlike the gf, I can’t extract significance from every moment of a groomer’s cutting/work. I have a dog-grooming-interest refresh rate of about 10 min, upon which she points out something impressive about a specific groom (among the 15-30 happening simultaneously).

It’s pretty fun seeing so many impressive dogs though. Especially considering how well they’re trained to handle a long, public performance like that. And even without any grooming experience myself, it’s obvious how much skill is on display here. Like, it’s hard to overstate how impressive it is that someone can make a dog so perfectly, correctly *shaped*.

Dog Grooming Business

It’s not my place to explain how dog grooming works and why it’s important, but I’ll sum it up with a pithy truth from the industry:

Dog grooming isn’t just a haircut, it’s healthcare.

Every dog needs grooming. And if your dog is getting shaved down bald every time you do get it groomed, then you’re not going often enough.

But anyways, what’s the deal with dog grooming shops?

A Spectrum of Quality and Lack of Regulation

Legally, your dog is pretty much equivalent to a toaster. It’s property, and the regulation around managing your property is not very strong. Especially from a federal (US) level.

The bar to groom dogs is surprisingly low. There are certifications and standards, but not only are they not legally required, the average consumer has no idea that they can even ask about those.

Extremely “United States” moment. But I shouldn’t be surprised. I worked as a phlebotomist for 2 years and no certification was needed in my state.

As a result, you have many shops run by incompetent people with wildly varied training experience and overall motives. This results in most dog grooming shops being mediocre due to one of the following:

Lack of knowledge re: breed standard grooms
Low priority placed on dog comfort & limits
Illegal employment practices (1099 contractors instead of required W2 employment)
Slow/inefficient bathing & grooming
Just plain poor grooming technique
General bad small-business management (HR, payroll, hiring, etc. etc.)

And unfortunately for passionate, well-educated groomers like my gf, the lack of regulation and lack of consumer knowledge means that these shops manage to stay in business.
People know a good dog groom job, but they really don’t seem to know BAD grooms!

Schnauzer grooms with various quality “skirts”: Good (top) and Bad (bottom).

The “bad” I’m talking about is things like unevenness, or not cutting shorter in certain areas of the dog to accentuate their breed features. Or neglecting to properly groom/cut their sanitary area properly.
All things I only know about via the gf. And aside from a few exceptions (poodles), every dog breed has a single breed-standard groom, and you evidently just learn them as you go.

I suppose in its own way, identifying a good dog grooming shop is similar to how I identify a good coffee shop :3 You know what to look for once you know what to look for!

This Job BARKet Is Hell

While not as bad as perhaps my job search experience, the gf has been struggling to find a grooming shop here in Chicago that will provide her the Pay, Respect, and Grooming standards she desires from her passionate career.

Gotta say I love all the punny salon names

Next week she’ll be starting at yet another new grooming shop since moving here. There are a good many shops in town, many of which are hiring, but most of which are trash for one reason or another. And she really can’t tell until she goes in for an interview and test-groom…a time-consuming and soul-crushing experience when bad.

If the dog grooming salon is large, it usually means it’s somewhat corporate. This means lower standards for grooms, higher daily dog quotas, and usually poor (if consistent) pay.

If the salon is small, then you’re rolling the dice BUT more likely to find higher quality “boutique” quality grooms. At the very least, one can check a single person’s Instagram (the owner) to see their quality of work. And that will be 100% indicative of the shop’s quality.
The risk there of course, is personality clash and classic shitty small-business bullshit.

The Obvious, Difficult Solution

Eventually we’re going to have to open her own grooming salon. It’s the only way to ensure she can produce the quality she wants to, and avoid terrible bosses.

We have no idea how to do this so that’s a Much Later task…

Conclusion

In the meantime, I hope she finds stability. I’m grateful for how much I’ve learned about the professional dog world from her.

It’s extremely easy to take dogs for granted. Not just as pets, but also as highly intelligent, trainable creatures.

I’m not nearly a dog snob (yet) but I have learned to expect more and better from dogs and their owners! It’s not hard to train your dog to properly respect boundaries and I think in much the same way that we should expect people on public transit to not fucking smoke or play loud music/videos aloud, we should reasonably expect dog owners to train their dogs to behave in public.

Oh and no, we don’t actually have a dog yet. We’re on a waitlist for a white mini-poodle from the breeder we met at PCA last year…would love for her litters to stop having black-coated puppies! It’s the dominant gene, apparently, so it’s probably going to be a bit of a wait :,)

You Should Get A Better Mic

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most people won’t be rude about microphone quality, especially when hanging out with friends. I am not most people. But fortunately, I’m also not an asshole, and I know that other folks’ money and interest in such things are not without limits.

Who is this for? If the extent of your microphone usage is “hanging out in vc with friends”, then this is for you! Because this is also me! I use my microphone for playing games in Discord, and (out of convenience) for work meetings.

Disclaimer: I am not a microphone or sound equipment expert. I’m just a nerd who did a lot of research into the subject these past 5 years. If you ARE an expert and reading this for some reason, please message me if I made any mistakes :3

Also I do not do affiliate links so if I link anything here, they’re as stripped and naked of links as I can get!

Why Bother With This?

This is a little tricky actually because unlike a good pair of headphones, a good microphone pretty much only benefits anyone listening to you; you yourself are not much affected. So is this just a magnanimous move to improve your friends’ calls with you? Partly yes, but I argue that there are very good personal benefits!

You Deserve Better Than a Headset

These fuckers

You should have a pair of headphones, whichever ones you like, and you should have a microphone. They should be separate devices. A headset is a worse version of both sold at a premium.

They’re not even good headphones!

You also deserve to wear a pair of comfy, cool headphones instead

Honestly this is even more important than the microphone. Make sure you like listening to things at your computer. You shouldn’t have to give up a good listening experience just to use a microphone. Get yourself your favorite set of headphones, and then a separate microphone. That’s it.
This is the “microphone” blog post but take this also as your friendly wake-up call to reevaluate your headphone situation. You don’t need to be an audiophile to appreciate good sound!

Just wait until I get time to do an open-backed vs closed-back headphone blog post >:3

Your friends deserve to hear your real voice

From hourly comics day this year

They should also want to hear your voice. Good friends will overlook microphone quality of course, but a better microphone removes unnecessary friction from a hangout.

If it’s within budget, it’s great to make an investment into your speaking power, and in allowing your friends to truly hear you and the warmth of your affection for them and the shared moments you’re creating.

Good mics are cool as hell

I picked my microphone because it looks cool as hell and feels great to grab and swing down in front of me. It also sounds great and blocks out keyboard, but genuinely even 5 years since buying it I love grabbing that thang, swinging it down in front of me, and jumping into voice chat.
Feels cool. Feels intentional. Locked the fuck in to fun friend time

This is the guide section

Your choice of microphone boils down to two major decisions (then narrowed further by taste and cost):

How does your microphone connect to your computer? XLR or USB?
Condenser microphone or Dynamic microphone?

XLR vs USB

Historically, this has been a very contentious question ~~on reddit~~ online because of quality concerns, but as of 2026 USB mics have gotten very good!

In my opinion, go with a USB mic UNLESS you:

really like a certain XLR-only mic
plan on using other recording hardware (instruments etc.) now or in the future
value fine-control of every aspect of your microphone input and processing
want the aesthetic of a bunch of stuff plugged into your USB interface (see below)

Basically everything on the flow on the XLR side is just shipped inside the USB microphones themselves

XLR adds some complexity, but you also have the benefit of a USB Interface, which allows you to plug in speakers, headphones, and other instruments to control all from one set of dials.
That personally appealed to me strongly enough to warrant the XLR path.

I will add one extra note from my software dev perspective: this is also a choice between digital and analog. XLR mics are analog technology, and are therefore generally more robust, replaceable, and modular. USB mics rely on a lot of digital technology, and software to make them sound great.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but as a guy who works with software for a living…any reliability that I can pass onto hardware instead of software is a big win for me.

Dynamic vs. Condenser Microphones

Play This mini-series of Bandrew’s is honestly all worth a watch

Two different technological approaches to Microphones. They’re both good, but just have certain strengths in different areas.
In brief:

Dynamic:

Passively powered
Produce a more traditional “radio sound”
Very durable/rugged
May need a pre-amp
Naturally pretty good at blocking out other sounds in the area
Can handle huge swings in signal without blowing out. (If you’re prone to excitement/yelling when gaming etc. this is a good type of mic to look into.)

Condenser:

Actively powered (via USB interface or built-in pre-amp)
Produces a more “natural” voice sound
More sensitive and produce louder signal (aka needs less gain)
Tend to pick up more ambient noise/sound (including keyboards)
Do not need pre-amps to boost signal

For more info there’s a great writeup on Sweetwater but I also highly recommend the Podcastage video linked above.

What do I need?

If you choose USB: just the microphone.
If you choose XLR: at least the microphone and a USB interface. If you choose a Dynamic Microphone, you might need a pre-amp (also known as a “Line Activator”).

What else should I consider?

Note that aside from #1, these “optionals” are often either unnecessary or built into the mic itself.

A microphone boom arm. This will get the microphone off of your desk (which helps with avoiding vibration interference) and also allow for easy positioning so that you can speak into it properly.
Anti-vibration microphone mount—it uses small bungees to absorb vibration. My mic does not have anything like this built in, but I also found through experimentation that having one did not make a difference for me.
A pop filter. Some microphones have these built in, but if not they’re cheap and easy to attach to your setup and will help cut out plosives.

For an idea of what “plosives” sound like, one of my favorite microphone experts uses the test phrase: “Please Bring Pizza Pronto”. Try saying that into your setup and ask listeners how much ‘popping’ they hear from you.

Software

I’d also recommend a virtual audio mixer for fine-tuning your audio inputs and outputs. Especially if you’re on Windows which has famously terrible audio software.

Many USB mics these days come with their own management software, so if you get one of those maybe check if it’s any good!

Right now I have everything at defaults, but I usually have some EQ settings on the right, and for fun I mess with the “Intellipan” above my mic input on the left.

My go-to is Voicemeeter. I use Voicemeeter Potato specifically, but most of my friends use Banana (yeah I know lol).

They look complex because well, they are. I’m sorry. But it’s worth trying out if you want to separate volume control for your Browser vs. your Games vs. Discord vs. Spotify or whatever etc.

But I need to reiterate the hardware is so much more important than the software here. You don’t need this.

Play I always send this video to friends when they’re setting up Voicemeeter for discord etc. so just know there are great guides out there!

So which one do I get?

Again, not affiliate links.

This is a rabbit hole so I’m going to avoid it by offering just a few as a starting point, and then a great YouTube channel for doing your own research. Because ultimately you should hear what they sound like before buying.

Microphones

Dynamic Microphone: Samson q2u. It’s $100, works and sounds great, and has both USB and XLR connection options. Boom.
I’d also recommend the Rode Podmic (~$100) or the Rode Procaster ($~240). I have the Procaster myself, and on top of personal experience, in general I hear consistently good things about the quality of Rode products.

Condenser Microphone: Elgato Wave 3. It’s about $170, USB-only, and was made specifically for spoken word (streaming, voice chat). You can get cheaper if you want, this one is just a tidy package with decent software included.

Overall though, I think you should start with this video and figure out what kind of sound you want from your microphone and then go from there.

Play I really wish this video had existed during my initial search…

USB Interface

I think the Motu M2 gives the most bang for its buck (~$200). It’s the one I have and I really like that it’s got all the knobs I want, but also a pleasant little screen to show input and output levels. I know the Focusrite 2i2 was pretty universally recommended for a while. I’m sure it’s still good now, but it’s one of those “better value options are available now” situations (including the M2).

For a better, still-brief writeup I recommend Chris Person’s article in Aftermath:

There's No Good Reason To Buy A Yeti Mic - Aftermath aftermath.site

The Blue Yeti was the best USB mic for podcasters and streamers, but there is no reason to buy this microphone now.

Further Research

I love Bandrew from Podcastage and his reviews. I recommend checking out either his playlists sorted by price range, or just scrolling through reviews until a microphone catches your eyes.
His reviews are particularly awesome because he does long, well-timestamped sequences comparing the sound of a given mic to multiple, similar mics. Great for figuring out exactly what kind of sound you want!

Anti-Recommendations

You probably don’t need to get an SM7b. It’s a fantastic microphone, and there’s a reason why so many streamers use it. But it’s very expensive ($400 right now). I wouldn’t consider it unless your voice is a major part of your career or hobbies.
Keep in mind that if you get the Shure SM7b you’ll likely need to pony up for a Line Activator as well. Shure offers the Shure SM7db as a $100+ alternative with a built-in pre-amp, but I mean c’mon that’s a lot of money.

You should also not get a Blue Yeti. It has long outgrown its role within its price range. Look around a bit more, or at least look toward the cheaper-wholly-an-upgrade Blue Yeti Nano model.

My personal setup

And before you say anything that isn’t dust or dirt on my desk mat. It’s keyboard solder :D

Microphone: Rode Procaster (dynamic mic)
USB Interface: Motu M2
Microphone Arm: Blue Microphone Boom Arm

That’s it! I did buy a “Fethead” microphone line activator (pre-amp), but it turned out to be unnecessary. If I crank the gain on my M2 up to 100% my mic sounds perfectly fine.

My 2026 Frontend Dev Job Search Experience

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This turned into a behemoth of a blog post, so please feel free to skip ahead with the Contents links there if you just want specific info about my actual interviews, etc!

I’ve been on and off the job hunt since April 2025. I’m currently employed, and looking because

I don’t trust that that will continue to last
I’ve hit 4 years at my company, and I’ve always been told that “Software developers don’t get promotions, they get new jobs”

In any case, I’ve decided to log my experiences thus far as both a personal journaling exercise and to hopefully help out my fellow software devs who might be eyeing their own job search.

As a small note, I’m going to try and keep this accessible to non-software dev nerds. So when you see me spell out what an “API is” that’s why

I’ll start with a quick “who is Regal? professional edition” summary to contextualize the types of jobs I’m looking for. Then I’ll give a quick broad-view status update of my search results. Finally I’ll follow up with a list of the companies I’ve had interactions with so far, and how that has gone.

My Particular Flavor of Software Dev

Yep it’s a lazy screenshot of my resume. Never do extra work, ever. lol.

In short, a Senior Frontend developer. In long, a C#-certified contractor who has never once written C# for work, and has pretty much only ever written Java, SQL, and HTML, CSS, Javascript/Typescript, and mostly works with React but sometimes NodeJS back-end stuff, and rarely sometimes in Angular.

Ironically this cobra hates writing Python

For my job searches I usually search “senior frontend engineer” or something like that. Sometimes “React” or “React developer” because I make myself sad when I find a great job posting but for Angular and I have to remind myself that I haven’t touched Angular in almost 4 years.

What I do

The long and short is I look at pre-prepared webapp mockups, build User Interfaces (UIs) with Javascript frameworks, and hook them up to APIs (aka servers and services).

My particular interests are in custom component libraries and accessibility. I’m not amazing at accessibility but I try hard to get it right! And some clients are very picky about this (as they should be!).

My day-to-day is building out pages from the mockup documents, talking to designers and testers about features in the webapp, and dealing with bugs and bug fixes. I myself am amazed that my work can actually eat up a full 8hr workday so quickly but it really is just like solving puzzles of various levels of frustration all day with lunch and random usually-pointless meetings in the middle.

The State of the Search

My email organization has become my personal failure tracker :3

This section is about the bullshit. The ways in which searching for a job as an experienced software developer in 2026 particularly sucks. It’s hard for everybody out there right now, but on top of fake jobs, getting ghosted, and every other plague of modern job hunting, I’ve consistently found 4 types of “oh hell no” throughout my search:

Dubious startups
AI and/or Crypto bullshit
Egregious interview or application processes
Insane applications

Startups — Are they for suckers?

It’s not just the uncertainty of working for a startup, it’s the vibes.

The previous page had 3 buttons, “Let’s Go ↓”, “Process ↓”, and “Skip the line →”. The last of which takes you to this page you see here.

These are the places that promise you heaven and earth if you work for them. Pay ranges from ~$60k to ~$250k “depending on experience”, they don’t seem to offer equity, they have ""unlimited pto"", and of course they have a *cool office in West Loop*.

“West Loop” is a Chicago neighborhood and it sucks bigtime. One or two cool coffeeshops but it’s the pinnacle of gentrified tech-startup yuppie nightclub nonsense. Every single startup seems to have their office there, and “is the office in West Loop” is one of my actual litmus tests for instant rejection.

Some of them offer tons of money, a rare few offer equity, many are just kinda cagey about *what* they’re even offering. But none of them seem to offer any explanation for why the thing they’re doing is better than any of the handful of legacy companies that already do whatever they’re offering.

Ooh wow consulting…but with AI! Wow how novel

I’ve never worked for a startup. I’m wary of them, but I don’t rule them out completely. At the very least I’m super curious what they’re like…and I’ll detail below how some of those interviews have gone.
But as someone seeking job stability, startups aren’t very high on my list.

AI and Crypto Nonsense

This one is hard to separate from the startups since every single startup anymore is selling some “AI-powered solution” or whatever. But there are certainly some that go HARD on the AI, and if they even have anything to do with crypto I know it’s a dead-end immediately.

At some point in my job search I ended up on Wellfound.com, a startup-specific job board, and the deluge of “AI powered-[noun]” companies flooding that site was all I needed to know that this side of the industry was a dead-end.

They all just have a weird vibe, y’know?

Call me cynical but I don’t believe in these *AI-powered companies*. Every single one of these ideas boils down to “Pay us $100s a month to use a crappy React app that prompts ChatGPT for you” which is fucking stupid on its own but obviously has a major issue: the entire company is fully dependent on OpenAI etc. both not fucking up and continuing to offer their AI services at disrupter “blitzscaling” prices.
Maybe the long game is that they host their own instances of the models and hope to be the only game in town once the bubble pops, but is that sustainable…? I don’t fucking think so.

“Take a proctored test before we look at your application”

Honestly this one was kinda fun. I’d set it as the upper limit of what I’d do before even getting to the screening interview

AKA “Do some egregious bullshit in your spare time before we even deign to add your resume to our pile”. This specific example refers to my experience applying to a big bank (which I only even considered b/c a peer works there). I submitted an application and they immediately sent an email telling me I’d need to take a proctored test before they’d consider my application.

That’s crazy. And they certainly weren’t justifying it with their below-market salary offerings. Fuck off.

The image above is an example of one, but I didn’t mind it. I was in a good, curious mood and it was kinda fun. Simple, accessible, no bullshit. OK!
But most of what I’m talking about is just so much worse. I see Glassdoor reviews of places complain that they’re just trying to get “free labor” out of applicants, which definitely isn’t true. But I get the sentiment.

Ultimately I think that this can be OK but in the age of LLMs in coding (I do not use this outside of work), how can you really trust that someone actually *did* that little fiddle challenge?

Can you legally fucking ask that

Regional Ethnicity or Race is a dropdown with two options btw: “North African” or “Arab”

I don’t know what to even say lol what do you do with an application like this.

I love that they’re always at the end too. You’ll put in your resume, giving all your personal information, and then whoops! This is a job for fascists whoopsie guess I need to “withdraw” the application after uploading all my info.

In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter, right because you just skip these. But job searching already sucks I don’t need the added “suddenly eugenics” pressure, thank you. Fuck off.

And I know it’s standard practice in the US but I still laugh when I choose the “I don’t want to tell you” option and it reads like this:

Yeeehaw

Honorable Mentions, I guess

This is the only mostly-positive standout I’ve seen so far:

“We’d like to make sure we treat you right!” as we ignore your application and subsequently ghost you

These ones just make me tilt my head like “what weird tax loophole are we exploiting here. Do I want to be a part of this?”

Hot new NY Times CONNECTIONS game where you find the strange labor law connection between Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, and Wyoming

Detailing My Specific Experiences Thus Far

These are 5 places where I successfully began the interviewing process to some degree or another. I don’t harbor any particularly ill-will against any of these, and they were all learning experiences to some degree.
I’m honestly not even sure if it’s “useful” to share what I experienced here…but it might be fun!

#1: Sketchy Startup Eager to Sell Out

Fucking lol at those ratings

Genuinely surprised to get a callback at this place, but as my literal first call-back of the job search I was willing to give it a shot.
It’s a middleman commerce company and I guess the idea is OK, but I definitely got the impression of “surely they already have a way of handling this since this industry has been around for literally 100s of years”

So basically I wasn’t sold on the idea and I think that the interviewers read it on my face whoops.

Vibe Check

Even selling me at its best, it just sounded like an OK startup with an office in the Loop (not being in West Loop is a plus!). I didn’t get any special impressions of the company culture or benefits etc. It all just sounded OK at best.

Interview

I got past the screening, of course, but failed after the first interview with an engineer. It wasn’t a technical interview, just an HR-style one. But in it, he revealed that the near goal of the company was to find a buyer soon. I suppose I made the mistake of asking more about that because uhhh what happens to a new hire at the plucky startup that gets acquired?

They didn’t call me back after that and I did not lose sleep over it.

Side-note: why does no one in the tech world have a decent microphone setup? Was I the only software dev to use their “remote/hybrid subsidy” or whatever to buy decent sound equipment?
This interview and every single one since then was so frustrating. Low quality webcams and mics…an added hurdle for no reason at all.

#2: Old Company Loves Outdated Tests

The video was genuinely endearing, especially since it only had audio on the left channel lol

This was a random “eh why not” application and I was very surprised to get a callback here.

Vibe Check

Honestly the video was totally fine, and so low-quality for how established this company is that it actually kind of grabbed my attention.
Ultimately I realized that should have been treated as a red flag. I called the included recruiter phone number there at one point and had a very frustrating experience with the rep on the other end who provided no information and seemed almost confused that I would even call at all.

So, kind of confusing, maybe low-tech? Definitely not a very empathetic feeling place.

Interview

I did not get an actual interview because “next steps” was actually an aptitude test, and I guess I failed??

They sent me a link to a 15-minute maximum aptitude test: “Criteria Cognitive Apptitude Test (aka CCAT)” (I just realized that the files.com email misspelled “aptitude” so that’s a great sign). 15 minutes is totally fine, and I actually enjoyed it. It had some fun puzzles.

Genuinely I thought I aced it. But alas. No idea why it was so impactful though, this proved nothing at all about my skill as a software dev.
Though, I didn’t get the score so maybe I totally beefed it.

Thank you for taking the time to complete the assessment(s) for our Front End Engineer (Remote) position at [company]. After review, unfortunately we have decided not to proceed with your candidacy for this position.

I called the recruiting team number to ask for more info, but after sounding almost confused that I even found the number in the first place (that they emailed to me, remember) they just stonewalled me so *shrug*.

#3: Over-Eager Local Startup Does Personality Astrology Test

This is a local Chicago startup. I’m still not 100% what their product is, but it was interesting enough that I went through the process, made it all the way through a gauntlet of in-person interviews before being cut right at the end.

The Job

Role: Senior Software Engineer
Pay: Somewhere between 140k-160k/yr
Office: Hybrid: 2 days in-office (Tues + Thur)
Benefits: Didn’t ask/get that far
Work Specifics: Somewhat of a frontend “architect” role, I would have apparently worked closely with a specific higher manager to coordinate frontend design between multiple teams.

My personal enthusiasm was on the low end. I was mostly attracted to the fact that it’s a local startup, and that I’d have in-town coworkers for the first time since 2020. The offered pay was honestly disappointing but I was willing to go to the end and see what was offered and what I could negotiate.

Vibe Check

First off, they’re a startup in Wicker Park. They’re real for that. I found the job listing on LinkedIn, but got sent to a sketchy site upon clicking “Apply”, and only after getting a rare “Verify the companies you’re applying to!” popup from LinkedIn, so that’s great.
I just applied directly on their site instead. And the application confirmation got sent to my spam folder. Wild.

The CTO emailed me an interview request 8 minutes later, which goddamn. That felt nice. But a few times throughout the process I did get this feeling of increased urgency which raised a few flags for me.

The introduction interview went very well. I rambled a bit, and actually this was the first time I was flat out asked for an “Elevator Pitch” and I have since then written and practiced one.

Turns out distilling your entire capitalistic worth down to a 30ish-second pitch is both difficult AND painfully introspective!

I moved onto the “Company Fit” interview with an HR rep.

The Process

After the initial interview I had the company “fit” interview with HR, which I genuinely enjoyed. I think it went pretty well! The last question was about compensation, and when I asked for my honest ideal range, she said:

That’s a fair bit higher than we normally offer for this role…however you have some pretty unique qualifications so I think we can make that work!

Which in hindsight might have been them just saying whatever to keep the process going, much in the same way I was testing the waters…because the CTO pushed back against this in an awkward way later and I think that might’ve been a large part of why I wasn’t hired.

But anyways, that went well. She said she’d talk with the CTO and have next steps or otherwise for me 2-days later. I got “next steps” a few hours later! :3

The Personality Test

This was the Next Steps. I had to take a personality test thing and it was really weird…Most of the test was multiple choice where I had 4 statements or adjectives and I had to label one as what I MOST identified with and one I LEAST identified with.
Some examples:

Credit: JobTestPrep.com (I forgot to take screenshots of mine)

And then some of those fun pattern puzzles. I actually like those and I think that’s reflected in my highest-scoring section being “Abstract Reasoning Ability”. This particular test did not have a time-limit, but this section was similar to the #2 Company’s CCAT test, except that one had a short time-limit and made these puzzles a bit more high-stakes.

Hover-text for answer UwU

My results:

Hire me, the Inflexible-but-open-minded Gregarious Reasoning God lol

Anyways that’s pretty weird. Technical tests are one thing but online personality tests? Very strange. I guess I should be thankful I passed because I only got a copy of my results when I went to the in-person interview later.

In-Person Interview

This was my first (and currently only) in-person interview I’ve ever had throughout my entire career. Pretty crazy to think about. It’s all been zoom and whatnot.

Anyways I made the mistake of biking here on a wet day so my pants got kinda wet. But other than that, it was genuinely exciting getting to bike-commute to potential future-employment. I even had time to stop by THRD for coffee :3c

The 4-hour process broke down like this:

Quick office tour
Technical interview with 2 frontend guys
Interview with CTO (again)
Interview with 3 product people
“Product Design” interview with an engineer and a product manager
RESCHEDULED interview with PM and CEO because they were both sick

The non-technical and non-product design interviews were very standard. I’ll go into more detail about the other two, but the standard interviews were just questions like:

Describe your experience and what kinds of technology you’ve built with
Talk about things you made that you’re proud of
Why are you looking for a new job
*Questions related to my thoughts re: working for a startup for the first time*
Describe a situation where (someone on your team disagreed with you/a problem arose and you found a unique solution/etc)

And then more “fit” types of discussions/questions. I think the fact that I’d never worked at a startup before was a weak point…

At this point starting to wonder how the heck anyone is supposed to work at a startup, because they’re all cagey like this. Are startups for suckers? Is that why I keep bouncing off? Much to consider…

Technical Interview

I was sat in a large meeting room for the whole day. For this interview, 2 engineers came in and one of them gave me his Macbook to do the challenge on.

The challenge was to finish wiring up a simple React App without the aid of any AI tools or auto-fill. I was to make a simple search input field that would query an API as the user typed, and then to display results as they appeared below. The API utils were already made for me, I was just implementing it and the stateful logic on the client page.

The trick was that the API data was kind of repetitive, and the API itself was designed to be slow. So further steps were things to improve the UX (minus CSS-related design, this was not required).
I think I did a good job with this. It was higher-pressure, but I remembered most things, and made light of having to look up things when I needed to (this was explicitly allowed), and one of the engineers helped me remember simple things when I described what I was trying to remember how to do.

The one big miss I had was I forgot what a return statement on a useEffect() loop did. Because I rarely use this.
This turned out to be the crucial solution to “what do you do when you’ve finished typing, the results you want have showed up, but slower API responses come in later anyways and override your results”. I totally forgot that the return statement would clean up the function and stop the on-going state updates.

Overall it was a little awkward, especially using someone’s work computer (he used Brave browser and did not close all his tabs…). But mostly awkward because I feel like I forgot a lot of basic shit I should know. A good sign I need to practice interviews!

Product Design Interview

This one sucked and I have no idea what they were looking for. 2 people sat down with me, and asked me to write down on paper or whiteboard my plan for a design for an app.

The app I was asked to design was an app for employers to find and sort through potential applicants.

That’s kind of it. I didn’t get much more detail than that, and I think that was the biggest struggle—I had no idea what my limitations were nor what level of depth to go into…like, did they want me to pick my tech stack?
I think part of the issue was that this is such a common, simple idea that I didn’t really know what to add. Like, this is just Zip Recruiter or one of many other HR products. So I kind of muddled through describing an intake form for potential employees, and an admin console for the employer clients we would sell this product to.

Unless I’m missing something, I feel like I was set up to fail. I don’t know what they were asking, and I was explicit that I had never done something like this before—my development experience has been turning designs into viable products. As a Frontend Engineer at a big company I’ve never had the opportunity to choose the tech stack. That’s always chosen by the company or client or whomever based on “market factors” and like, price.

Verdict

About 5 days later I got a rejection email from the CTO. The heart of the feedback I got back was:

I wanted to let you know that we’ve decided to move forward with another candidate.
It wasn’t an easy decision, and in the end it came technical fit and overall start-up experience.

See what I mean about the startup experience thing? I don’t get that. And “Technical Fit” does that mean forgetting about the useEffect() return statement thing really fucked me or was it that “Product Design” thing…? I guess I’ll never know. Good experience though, and I’m glad I went through it.

Also in hindsight that was so many interviews…And I still wasn’t done! Two more after that!! Crazy.

#4: Legacy Company Wants to Pay Me Crazy Well to Drive to the Suburbs

This one is short because this is the first and only instance so far where I seem to have failed the initial screening interview. I had a 30-min call scheduled where I boldly assumed that we’d both have webcams on (she did not), and it was a very standard, nice chat about a role that was a very good fit for me.

I think the only negative is that it’s hybrid 2-days in office, but one of those days was going to be an hour drive to the suburbs. The pay range was crazy high in the $200k+ range so I think I would’ve done it anyways but sheesh.

Anyways I’m not sure what happened but I didn’t hear anything for two weeks, I emailed her asking for follow-up and then got a very standard rejection so *shrug*.

#5: The Infinite-Ambition 10-month Interview Tech Company

I bombed the first part of the final interview here and it was Bad Bad. Both my mistake, and my mental health afterwards because I had SO much confidence. Truly an ego-shattering moment. But anyways.

This company is a former-startup, now well-established. They do big things and pay Big Money. Their philosophy is that they want to pay San Francisco wages irrespective of where you live, because “why should living somewhere else lower the value of your work?”

A GREAT fucking question

Fully remote. 2 company vacations. Unlimited PTO. Just…ideal in every single way. This truly felt like the perfect company for me and I tried very very hard here.

Process

Email an application (no resume, just answers to 4 questions)
Standard HR screening call
Take-home coding assignment (details below). No turn-in deadline, but only maximum of 40hrs work on it allowed.
Technical interview
Interview with a director
8hr “in person” virtual all-day interview - 2 technical interviews and 2 standard interviews

A real gauntlet.

Email Application

The company caught my attention because they just asked some fun, interesting questions as their way of accepting applications. They asked:

What’s your personal website, and if you don’t have one, why not?
Describe your journey as a software developer and a project you’re proud of
What is your biggest goal/ambition outside of work?
How have you heard about the company + this opportunity?

That’s it! I got a call-back email 5 days later.

HR Screening

Genuinely light and fun. I got to talk about my passion for coffee and wanting to open a coffee shop in town. The company rep lives in Portland, so she was actually familiar with Proud Mary roasters (my fave at the time), and that was really neat :3
I was asked if I was familiar with PHP at all, and I said no. She said “Excellent. 95% of people we hire are not, and we like to see if you can learn on the go with it.”

She told me about the rest of the process and was very insistent that the take-home application had no upper time limit for completion.

Take-Home Project

I defaulted to green-theming and then went hard on it!

This beast!! Oh my god.

First off…I received this project in June of 2025. I turned in my finished project at 37hrs total in February 2026. And they approved of it! So this thing was a winner and I’m still quite proud of that.

The task was to build an full-stack app using their testing API. The Frontend was limited to vanilla HTML, CSS, and JS. JQuery was the only library allowed.
The backend was PHP

The Task

To be successful, the app had to do a few things:

Display a login page that uses a PHP endpoint to actually login (I was given valid login credentials)
When logged in, the page should display and load a data-table without any page refreshes (aka a SPA using JQuery to manipulate the DOM)
Load the data from the API in as performant way as possible within the limitations
Allow the user to add a new record to the table by calling another API and submitting data. It should immediately appear on the table, and persist after a refresh (aka actually submitting to the server)
Allow the user to log out
Persist login on refresh
Provide meaningful errors when login fails or anything else fails.

I’m paraphrasing but the actual instructions were extremely vague and open-ended, and there was a line in the instructions confirming that this was intentional. I was also instructed to keep notes about how much time I spent on the project, and what I did with my time.

My Approach (the code)

Unsurprisingly, I had a lot of fun with the visual and UX design elements of the app. To that point, I started with the PHP stuff to get it out of the way. And god I really stumbled through this shit lol. But it more or less worked!

PHP 💀

Some of my PHP code

Auth.php

<?php
session_start();
 
$headers = [
    'Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *',
    'Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST',
    'Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-Requested-With',
    'Content-Type: application/json',
];
 
$userId = $_POST['userId'];
$password = $_POST['password'];
$url = 'https://www.company.com/api';
$authToken = '';
$configs = include('../config.php');
extract($configs);
 
$post = 'partnerName=' . $partnerName . '&partnerPassword=' . $partnerPassword . '&partnerUserID=' . $userId . '&partnerUserSecret=' . $password;
 
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "$url?$post");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true);
try {
    if (!filter_var($userId, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
        echo json_encode($userId);
        die(header('HTTP/1.1 401 Wrong username or password.'));
    }
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    extract(curl_getinfo($ch));
    $data = json_decode($response, true);
    if (isset($data['authToken'])) {
        $authToken = $data['authToken'];
        $_SESSION['auth_token'] = $authToken;
        echo json_encode(true);
    } else {
        die(header('HTTP/1.1 401 Invalid Credentials'));
    }
} catch (Exception $e) {
    die(header('HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error'));
}

Honestly just getting a local PHP server running on my computer was hard enough, but yeah this was a struggle. I didn’t fall in love with PHP. But it was cool and genuinely exciting to learn something new like this.

Javascript 😁

I hadn’t had to use JQuery in ages but it was like riding a bike, and I just had to look up a few of the functions here and there.

For those unfamiliar, JQuery is an ancient javascript library that just provides a bunch of shorthand functions to do things that javascript lets us do right out of the box. For instance, in Javascript if you wanted to select an element on the page, you’d do something like this:
const header = document.getByElementId("header");
In JQuery, you’d do the same thing with:
const header = $('#header');
It’s shorthand but only rewards people who already know what they’re doing. This company was testing me by limiting me to the simplest webdev tools possible, but they also (correctly) decided that JQuery would offer some ease and relief without compromising the core ideal.

I did some very cool things. I’m particularly proud of the “New Transaction” modal (pictured above), and the clever way I handled the fact that the GetTransactions API endpoint returned over 12,000 records over the course of 12 seconds

My Modal’s JS Code

modal.js

import { showSection } from "./cssHelpers.js";
 
$(document).ready(function () {
  $("#new-transaction-btn").click(function () {
    $("#new-transaction-modal").css("display", "flex");
    resetNewTransactionForm();
  });
  $("#reset-new-transaction-form-btn").click(function () {
    resetNewTransactionForm();
  });
  $("#close-new-transaction-modal").click(() => $("#new-transaction-modal").hide());
  $("#cancel-new-transaction-btn").click(() => $("#new-transaction-modal").hide());
 
  $("#logout-btn").click(() => $("#logout-modal").css("display", "flex"));
  $(".spinner-btn").hide();
 
  // Only allow numbers in Amt field
  $(".numerical-input").on("input", function () {
    this.value = this.value.replace(/\D/g, "");
  });
 
  // UX sugar for cents box
  $("#amountCents").on("focusout", function () {
    const val = this.value;
    if (val && val.length === 1) {
      this.value = "0" + val;
    }
  });
 
  $("#new-transaction-form").submit(function (e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    let hasError = false;
    // Clear validation errors
    $(".errorMsg").remove();
 
    const createdDate = $("#date").val();
    if (!createdDate) {
      hasError = true;
      $("#date").after('<span class="errorMsg">This field is required</span>');
    }
 
    const merchant = $("#merchant").val();
    if (merchant.length < 1) {
      hasError = true;
      $("#merchant").after('<span class="errorMsg">This field is required</span>');
    }
 
    const isExpense = $('input[name="transaction-type"]:checked').val();
    const amountWhole = $("#amount").val();
    const amountCents = $("#amountCents").val();
    // Must have at least one
    if (!amountWhole && !amountCents) {
      hasError = true;
      $("#amt-input").after('<span class="errorMsg">This field is required</span>');
    }
    // Expense is default, so for income, flip to negative.
    const amount = `${isExpense === "expense" ? "" : "-"}${amountWhole ? amountWhole : ""}${amountCents ? amountCents : "00"}`;
 
    const comment = $("#comment").val();
 
    var $form = $(this);
    var $inputs = $form.find("input, password, submit, select, button, textarea");
    const values = {
      created: createdDate,
      merchant: encodeURIComponent(merchant),
      amount: amount,
      comment: encodeURIComponent(comment),
    };
 
    if (!hasError) {
      $.ajax({
        url: "api/createTransaction.php",
        crossDomain: true,
        type: "POST",
        data: values,
        beforeSend: function () {
          // Clear status for new AJAX
          $("#submission-status").text("");
          $("#reload-page").hide();
          // Disable inputs while submitting
          $inputs.prop("disabled", true);
        },
        success: function (data) {
          // Hide Modal
          resetNewTransactionForm(true);
          setSubmissionStatus("Transaction added!", false);
          $("#reload-page").css("display", "flex");
        },
        error: function (error) {
          setSubmissionStatus(error.statusText, true);
        },
        complete: function () {
          $inputs.prop("disabled", false);
        },
      });
    }
  });
 
  $("#logout-form").submit(function (e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    $.ajax({
      url: "api/logout.php",
      crossDomain: true,
      type: "GET",
      beforeSend: function () {
        $(".messages").text("");
        $(".spinner-btn").show();
      },
      complete: function () {
        $(".spinner-btn").hide();
      },
      success: function () {
        $("#transactionTableBody").empty();
        $("#logout-modal").hide();
        showSection("#login-section");
      },
      error: function (error) {
        $(".messages").text(error.statusText);
      },
    });
  });
});
 
function setSubmissionStatus(message, isError) {
  $("#submission-status").text(message);
  $("#submission-status").addClass(isError ? "errorMsg" : "successMsg");
  $("#submission-status").removeClass(isError ? "successMsg" : "errorMsg");
}
 
function resetNewTransactionForm(isSuccess = false) {
  $("#new-transaction-form")[0].reset();
  $(".errorMsg").remove();
 
  // Reset form on SUCCESS, so that additional transactions can be entered
  if (!isSuccess) {
    $("#submission-status").text("");
  }
}

I built a form AND implemented some simple-but-useful form validation :3 Not bad for a guy who has only ever done that with a full Angular or React framework!

My Table-Chunking JS Code

createTable.js

import { formatAmount, setNoRecordsFound } from "./dataUtils.js";
 
/**
 * Create Table
 *
 * @description Rendering 10,000+ records all at once is extremely intensive. This function breaks that up into batches ("chunks").
 * Additionally contains CSS logic for rendering a custom progress bar loader that actually accurately represents page hydration status.
 * ChunkSize is configurable, but 1,000 seems reasonably performant.
 *
 * @param {any} data
 * @returns HTML
 */
export function createTable(data) {
  // Hide API loader
  $("#table-placeholder").hide();
  const tbody = $("#transactionTableBody");
  tbody.empty();
  const chunkSize = 1000;
  let index = 0;
 
  if (!data.length > 0) {
    $("#loading-bar-container").hide();
    return setNoRecordsFound();
  }
 
  function renderNextChunk() {
    $("#loading-bar-container").show();
 
    const end = Math.min(index + chunkSize, data.length);
    const chunk = data.slice(index, end);
 
    let html = "";
    chunk.forEach((transaction) => {
      const positive = Number(transaction.amount) > 0;
      html += `<tr id=${transaction.transactionID}>
      <td id="${transaction.transactionID}-created">${transaction.created}</td>
      <td id="${transaction.transactionID}-merchant">${transaction.merchant}</td>
      <td id="${transaction.transactionID}-amount" class="rightAlign ${positive ? "positiveValue" : "negativeValue"}">${formatAmount(transaction.amount)}</td>
      <td id="${transaction.transactionID}-comment">${transaction.comment}</td>
      </tr>`;
    });
 
    tbody.append(html);
 
    const progress = Math.round((end / data.length) * 100);
    $("#loading-message").text(`Loading table, please wait...${progress}%`);
    $("#loading-bar").css("width", `${progress}%`);
    index = end;
 
    if (index < data.length) {
      requestAnimationFrame(renderNextChunk);
    } else {
      $("#loading-message").text("Loading...Done!");
      // Let the finished loading bar hang for happy UX
      setTimeout(() => {
        $("#loading-message").text("");
        $("#loading-bar-container").hide();
      }, 1500);
      $(".main-page-btn").prop("disabled", false);
      return;
    }
  }
  renderNextChunk();
}

I don’t know why I kept with the word “Chunk” to describe what is clearly “Batching”…Anyways. Yeah I’ve never used requestAnimationFrame() before! I felt super clever for figuring this out AND I cleverly used this to create an intuitive and honest loading bar (see first screenshot above) :3
I’m also proud of how I figured out that I could just build the table as large strings first and THEN append them as actual html.

There’s a lot more I could say, but suffice to say this was a big undertaking. I tried very hard, and happily learned new things along the way. I ultimately got good feedback:

Good:
 
-   Good performance optimization: chunking system renders 10,000+ transactions in batches using requestAnimationFrame with real-time progress indicators
-   Well-organized modular code structure with clean separation of concerns across multiple files
-   API credentials properly isolated in configuration file
-   Polished user experience: Modern UI with loading states, form validation, and intuitive modal interfaces
-   Comprehensive documentation: Detailed README and thorough 37-hour time log showing methodical development approach
 
Observations:
 
-   Transaction display failure: New transactions require manual page refresh instead of immediate table updates as specified in requirements
-   Authentication implementation: Used PHP sessions instead of required cookie-based authentication (authToken cookie)
-   Missing email validation: Login form accepts any text input without email format verification
-   auth.php - GET-style URL parameters for POST requests (CURLOPT_URL with query string) was used instead of CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS
 
Overall: While your technical skills and performance optimization are impressive, some requirements were missed that impacted the overall evaluation.

I pretty much did great on everything I’d hoped to, had weaknesses in the part that they knew beforehand I’d likely struggle with.

Technical Interview

This consisted of 2 parts, a 30-min challenge and a series of various technical questions. I was told in my first interview that I really only needed to get 50%+ of the questions right to pass that bit, so the bigger part was the coding challenge.

30-min, JQuery, and a Rotating Square

I was asked to create a Javascript app that would run on the browser, and upon load would generate a grid of squares of dimensions NxN where N was a random number between 10 and 55.
The centermost square needed to be outlined in black, and it needed to have one side colored red. And if the left or right arrow keys were pressed, the square was to rotate in place, appropriate to the direction that was pressed.

I was allowed to reference my take-home project (which I did to quickly grab some JQuery functions) and I was told a few things:

Don’t use a CSS Grid, b/c it messes people up
Go one step at a time
Google (Kagi) whatever you want short of a specific solution to this problem
Ask the interviewer for help at any time (this was strongly encouraged)

I managed to get it at the last second…and my word was I sweating. So much nasty dirty Javascript…switches and terribly hoisted variables augh but it worked!

Enough Questions to Make Me Feel Stupid

It’s been almost 2 months so I don’t remember the exact questions, but they ranged from “Describe the difference between == and ===” to “what’s the difference between a javascript function and a javascript arrow/anonymous function”, as well as some backend questions that I wasn’t as prepared for.
It was fine though and I didn’t feel too nervous.

Almost a full week later I finally got the email saying I moved to the next step.

Director Interview

This was an hour long interview that went over by 20 minutes, which I (correctly) took as a good sign. I spoke with a nice guy who’d been with the company for 8 years.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about this, except very notably he only asked two questions:

Why did you spend nearly 10 months on your take-home assessment?

and then just

Do you have any questions for me?

Insane. 5 minutes into an hour-long interview and it’s immediately psychological warfare

Anyways it went fine, and he ended the interview confirming that I’d be moving forward to next, and final steps.

Final Interview

I took off a whole day of work for this. I expected to be in the GRIND from 9am to 5pm doing this. This was the last hurdle before a life-changing career change…very probably the last job interview of my life!

First Challenge

The task: in 35 minutes, take my NxN grid challenge from the previous interview and turn it into a rudimentary Asteroids game. The tasks are broken down into 4 steps, and I was not expected to complete all of them in the time allotted:

The center square is now the spaceship. When pressing the A key, the ship should move in the direction it is facing. If it reaches the end of the grid, it should appear on the other side in classic game fashion.
Pressing spacebar should fire a laser. The laser is depicted as yellow squares stretching from the ship to the end of the grid in the direction it is facing.
4 Asteroids also spawn. They’re green squares, and one spawns at each side of the grid. They should move towards the opposite side in a straight line one space every time the ship moves one space (one game tick)
The laser should be able to shoot an asteroid. A shot asteroid turns red, and on the next game tick is removed from the game.
Add a scoring system tracking asteroids destroyed, and a game over system for if the ship runs into an asteroid.

I failed to complete task #1.

My nerves got to me and I did something very stupid. I locked in on the first problem: “I need to programmatically track the spaceship, and be able to move it across the grid” and instead of landing on the extremely obvious, easy solution (use X,Y coordinates on this grid), locked onto tracking “Parent” and “Child” relationships between my generated grid rows and grid items.

This didn’t work. At all. And using an X,Y coordinate grid would have been infinitely easier.

Maddeningly, my interviewer criticized me in the end for not asking her for help, and also for not googling better for my chosen solution. She said that she had to “push pretty hard” to get me off of this bad track of thinking.

I disagree! I’ll own up to the fact that my nerves tunnel-visioned me onto a bad path. But I was not sufficiently informed that my interviewer was supposed to be treated like an actual resource, and I don’t think that’s on me. This was another vanilla JS and JQuery task, and the impression I got was “you should know how to use this”. But whatever.

I still had to turn in my code. Which didn’t work, remember. And wait 5 minutes for them to “confer” and come back with their verdict. Unsurprisingly it was “We’d have preferred that you’d gotten further in the challenge, so we’ll be concluding the interview early here. Thank you, goodbye.”

Me forreal

Fucking blew it, man. Feels bad. Real bad.

Asteroids After

The interviewer suggested to me that I finish the task anyways, just to practice. I gave myself another 30 min and did as much as I could, partly because “sure” but also very much because my mental state was in disarray and this was a great distraction.

*sad pew pew sounds*

I got as far as making the laser. I could probably eke out turning the asteroids red, but I was trying to be extra fair just in case. Idk. I clearly *can* do it. Just nerves.

My Asteroids Code…Remember, 30 min time limit!!

main.js

$(document).ready(function () {
  const N = Math.floor(Math.random() * (55 - 10) + 10);
 
  const topAsteroid = [Math.floor(Math.random() * (N - 1) + 0), 0];
  const rightAstroid = [N - 1, Math.floor(Math.random() * (N - 1) + 0)];
  const leftAsteroid = [0, Math.floor(Math.random() * (N - 1) + 0)];
  const bottomAsteroid = [Math.floor(Math.random() * (N - 1) + 0), N - 1];
  const center = (N * N) / 2;
 
  const asteroids = [topAsteroid, rightAstroid, leftAsteroid, bottomAsteroid];
 
  // SETUP (runs once)
  //   Sub-containers
  for (let i = 0; i < N; i++) {
    $(".container").append(`<div class="n-container" id=sub-container-${i}></div>`);
    for (let j = 0; j < N; j++) {
      if (i === Math.floor(N / 2) && j === Math.floor(N / 2)) {
        $(`#sub-container-${i}`).append(`<div class="n-box n-center" id="${j}-${i}"></div>`);
      } else {
        $(`#sub-container-${i}`).append(`<div class="n-box" id="${j}-${i}"></div>`);
      }
    }
  }
  // Spawn asteroids
  asteroids.forEach((asteroid, index) => {
    let names = ["down", "left", "right", "up"];
    let asteroidName;
    $(`#${asteroid[0]}-${asteroid[1]}`).addClass(`asteroid ${names[index]}`);
  });
 
  let currentPos = () => [Math.floor(N / 2), Math.floor(N / 2)];
  document.onkeydown = function (e) {
    // A key = 65
    // Space = 32
 
    let currentPos = $(".n-center");
    let currentPosCoord = currentPos.attr("id").split("-");
    let currentPosCoordNum = [Number(currentPosCoord[0]), Number(currentPosCoord[1])];
    switch (e.which) {
      case 32:
        fireLaser(currentPosCoordNum, status);
        break;
 
      case 65:
        currentPos.removeClass("n-center");
        const newPosId = incrementShipLocation(currentPosCoordNum, status);
        incrementAsteroids();
        const newShipLoc = $(`#${newPosId[0]}-${newPosId[1]}`);
        newShipLoc.addClass("n-center");
        break;
 
      case 37: // left
        if (status === "up") {
          status = "left";
          $(".n-center").css("border-width", "0px 0px 0px 2px");
        } else if (status === "left") {
          status = "down";
          $(".n-center").css("border-width", "0px 0px 2px 0px");
        } else if (status === "down") {
          status = "right";
          $(".n-center").css("border-width", "0px 2px 0px 0px ");
        } else if (status === "right") {
          status = "up";
          $(".n-center").css("border-width", "2px 0px 0px 0px");
        }
        //   top, right, bottom, left
 
        break;
 
      case 39: // right
        if (status === "up") {
          status = "right";
          $(".n-center").css("border-width", "0px 2px 0px 0px ");
        } else if (status === "left") {
          status = "up";
          $(".n-center").css("border-width", "2px 0px 0px 0px");
        } else if (status === "down") {
          status = "left";
          $(".n-center").css("border-width", "0px 0px 0px 2px");
        } else if (status === "right") {
          status = "down";
          $(".n-center").css("border-width", "0px 0px 2px 0px");
        }
 
        break;
 
      default:
        return; // exit this handler for other keys
    }
    e.preventDefault(); // prevent the default action (scroll / move caret)
  };
  function incrementAsteroids() {
    const topAsteroid = $(".asteroid.down");
    const rightAstroid = $(".asteroid.left");
    const leftAsteroid = $(".asteroid.right");
    const bottomAsteroid = $(".asteroid.up");
    const asteroids = [topAsteroid, rightAstroid, leftAsteroid, bottomAsteroid];
    const directions = ["down", "left", "right", "up"];
 
    asteroids.forEach((asteroid, index) => {
      const id = asteroid.attr("id");
      let currentPosCoord = id.split("-");
      let currentPosCoordNum = [Number(currentPosCoord[0]), Number(currentPosCoord[1])];
      const newPosId = incrementShipLocation(currentPosCoordNum, directions[index]);
      const newAstLoc = $(`#${newPosId[0]}-${newPosId[1]}`);
      $(asteroid).removeClass("asteroid");
      newAstLoc.addClass(`asteroid`);
      newAstLoc.addClass(`${directions[index]}`);
    });
  }
  function incrementShipLocation(currentPos, direction) {
    $(".n-box").removeClass("laser");
    let newLocation = currentPos;
    if (direction === "up") {
      const change = newLocation[1] - 1;
 
      if (change < 0) {
        newLocation[1] = N - 1;
      } else {
        newLocation[1]--;
      }
      return newLocation;
    }
    if (direction === "left") {
      const change = newLocation[0] - 1;
 
      if (change < 0) {
        newLocation[0] = N - 1;
      } else {
        newLocation[0]--;
      }
      return newLocation;
    }
    if (direction === "right") {
      const change = newLocation[0] + 1;
 
      if (change > N - 1) {
        newLocation[0] = 0;
      } else {
        newLocation[0]++;
      }
      return newLocation;
    }
    if (direction === "down") {
      const change = newLocation[1] + 1;
 
      if (change > N - 1) {
        newLocation[1] = 0;
      } else {
        newLocation[1]++;
      }
      return newLocation;
    }
  }
 
  function fireLaser(currentPos, direction) {
    $(".n-box").removeClass("laser");
    if (direction === "up") {
      for (let i = currentPos[1] - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
        $(`#${currentPos[0]}-${i}`).addClass("laser");
      }
    }
    if (direction === "left") {
      for (let i = currentPos[0] - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
        $(`#${i}-${currentPos[1]}`).addClass("laser");
      }
    }
    if (direction === "right") {
      for (let i = currentPos[0] + 1; i < N; i++) {
        $(`#${i}-${currentPos[1]}`).addClass("laser");
      }
    }
    if (direction === "down") {
      for (let i = currentPos[1] + 1; i < N; i++) {
        $(`#${currentPos[0]}-${i}`).addClass("laser");
      }
    }
  }
});
let status = "up";
let trackedPos;
 
// return Math.random() * (max - min) + min;

Final Thoughts/Sobs

Very thankful that I’m not unemployed because this is soul-crushing, man. Not just #5 being the heart-wrenching failure that it was, but all of these other half-starts getting my hopes up, and stringing me along. It’s just real rough out there.

Since last Spring (2025) I’ve submitted over 120 job applications. All of which had to at least pass the bar for my lowest standards, and many of which required extra info or small tasks before finishing the submission. I feel like the 10 call-backs I’ve gotten so far is actually pretty good, considering. But it still feels so overwhelmingly dismal.

Shout-out to my friends and the cool folks in my Furry Fitness Server for cheering me along and keeping me sane with some of the bullshit. From my casual scroll-throughs of LinkedIn it feels like most job-seekers in my position are going about this in a much lonelier fashion and I feel for them.

In the meantime, it’s finally getting nice outside again, so I’m gonna focus on enjoying my city and social life for a bit here because I need a fucking vacation from my job-search job!!

Art by Luzzy!

Onyx Advent 2025

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Onyx Coffee, a 3rd-wave roaster HQ’d in Arkansas, has always had the best packaging and presentation in the game. I was never too impressed by their coffee offerings, however. But I think that may have changed.

This blog post is first just me praising how pretty and cool Onyx’s presentation is, but the meat and potatoes is going to be my ratings of all the coffee :3
I took off-the-cuff notes every day that I tried one of the coffees, and in honor of their honesty and out of respect of current-me’s time, I’m just going to reproduce them here verbatim.

What is Coffee Advent?

Other roasters and providers have done this before, but it seems as though Onyx is the most recognized (or perhaps the best at marketing it).
In brief, Coffee Advent is 24 different coffees for each of the 24 days of December preceding Christmas. Each bag is 2oz of coffee, and the idea is that every day you brew a completely unique coffee from the day before.

It’s a neat, simple idea. I think what really won me over was the combination of presentation and supporting media.

Obviously the packaging is fantastic, but what really sold me was the playing cards and videos that came with it. Two decks of playing cards, one a full normal playing deck with custom coffee motifs. The other a 25-card deck hosting 1 card per coffee offering with the coffee info, a description, and a QR code to the website and accompanying videos.

They’re high-quality too! Genuine Bicycle playing cards!

They had a special website for this event and I have some opinions on how it’s coded. Thematically very cool. And neat that the cards match the physical cards I actually got with the package. Neat! The coffee nerd in me just wishes that throughout the event I’d had easier access to the *information* itself

But I digress.

Figures that it took til I recorded this in January 2026 for the site to actually work w/o a hitch

I don’t digress actually what the fuck. I couldn’t reliably open this on firefox, or safari. I had to open it on a chromium browser just to get it to work.
It’s a wobbly reactive app with a spread of cards for each day and I hate it. Trying to swipe between cards on mobile just made safari freak out and change tabs and stuff.
This has very cool design elements to it, but if it doesn’t work then what’s the point. Bad UX kills cool UI.

The Coffee Review

Reminder!! My original notes were very rough and taken off-the-cuff while brewing and drinking coffee each day…These are my casual, un-edited, first-impressions translated one-to-one from paper to my blog.

I’ve refined their presentation below, but the contents are still rough (aka please be nice).

My actual, paper notes. I’m actually proud of how I arranged this, but the contents are still pretty rough lol

Coffee Info
= Country & Region
= Coffee Varietal
= Processing Method

My Notes
= Coffee Video
= Smell (before and after brewing)
= Overall thoughts

1. Colombia Aponte Village Honey

Nariño, Colombia

Mixed

Red Honey

Lance Hedrick: was funny & very sincere & genuine

Deep apple, Cherry

Warm, cozy, very good red honey just not my fave. 8/10

2. Ethiopia Shakiso Female-Produced Natural

Guji, Ethiopia

Landrace

Natural

Loud & Casual just about the producer

Coffee great. [The gf] liked it. FLoral but chill about it. Fruity, light, but very approachable.

3. Kenya Gakuyu-ini AA

Kirinyaga, Kenya

SL28, SL34, Ruiru 12

Kenya-Washed

Kind of boring, but tasty...Very washed, paltable...6/10

4. Uganda Long Miles Lunar Station

Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda

Mixed

Natural

Earnest. "Sometimes you get a natural that's like "Bwoop!""

Smells incredible. So sweet.

Super soft mouthfeel. Sweet, kind of delicate. 8/10

5. Framily

Guji, Ethiopia

Landrace

Washed

Video had US Cycling team. Very cute

Fantastic berry

Extremely good as it cools. Perfect washed Ethiopia 10/10

6. Costa Rica Las Lajas Natural

Sabanilla de Alajuela, Costa Rica

Catuai, Caturra, Bourbon

Natural

Morgan Eckroth

Deeply sweet chocolate + rich fruity like a fudge with cranberries

Med-light body juicy fruity but w/ solid chocolate/grounded floor. Sides of tongue...

7. Uganda Kamogo Station

Mt. Elgon, Uganda

SL14, SL34, Nyasaland

Yeast-Innoculated Washed

World Barista 2025 Champion Jack Simpson

Floral & Spicy, but not overwhelming. Very Pleasant

Comfy. Stonefruit bottom & rounded + tasty. Chocolate finish...maybe nut.

8. Ethiopia Hambela Alaka Natural

Guji, Ethiopia

Landrace

Natural

Jon Lampley tiktok style video. Good editing and very fast.

Deep chocolate that resolves to fruit.

Perfect comfy Ethiopia natural. Fruit forward & deep w/o being crazy. 10/10

9. El Salvador Santa Rosa

Chalatenango, El Salvador

Pacamara

Washed

Jorge Raul Rivera -> owner of coffee

Nothing crazy. General Pacamara "roasty" smell

Very OK. Maybe a bad brew. Def good, just nothing special. A classy Med. roast 5/10

10. Guatemala El Socorro Purpuracca

Palencia, Guatemala

Purpuracea

Washed

Jerry Truong USA 2025 Barista Champion

Citrus, berry fruit. Apple.

It's the standard good "wahsed." That kind of default apple flavor. 4/10

11. Colombia Edward Sandoval Chiroso

Tolima, Colombia

Chiroso

Washed

Zedd. Very "here are my espresso accessories"

Light & spiced

Light,j floral, very fruity but rounded out by the wash. 9/10

12. Mexico Mazateca Mujeres

Sierra Mazateca, Oaxaca, Mexico

Typica, Bourbon, Mundo Novo

Washed

Sam spillman - Cafe Mire(?). Great coffee prep video explanation of varietals

Lightly fermented notes beneath coffee.

It's a really good central American washed coffee but w/ a kind of fermented, sweet sting changing it for the better. Juicy grapefruit. 8/10

13. Krampus

Kirinyaga, Kenya

SL28, SL34, Ruiru 12

Washed

Goofy "Krampus" spooky forest horror movie

syrupy tobacco. Not pungent...just good.

Tobacco first, but not offensive. A little smoky. Not a daily driver but interesting. 7/10

14. El Salvador Santa Rosa Honey

Chalatenago, El Salvador

Pacamara

Red Honey

Jose Raul Rivera (producer). Honest & simple

Very light smell. Delicate "coffee" scent. Pleasant.

Rose, syrupy fruit but not heavy at all.

15. Ethiopia Lalesa Ephtah Site Slow Dry Natural

Gedeb, Ethiopia

Landrace

Natural

Dakota Graff. Chill explanation about the coffee & women-owned collective.

Very very deep sweetness. Almost buttery sweet (not saccharine)

Deep sweetness. Almost peanut butter aftertaste. Super comfy & tasty. 10/10

16. Panama Hacienda Barbara Catuai Natural

Boquete, Panama

Catuai

Natural

Cole Torode in Panama. Sourcer.

Not strong, but very deeply natural & fruity.

Developed fruit roast. No spice, but "chocolate & compote" for sure.

17. Kenya Kamunyaka AA

Kirinyaga, Kenya

SL28, SL34, Ruiru 12

Kenya-Washed

Peter Mbature. Cool earnest video about the coffee.

Very rich fruit + chocolate.

Top-notch comfy fruit. Mango for sure. 9/10

18. Ethiopia Bombe Natural

Bensa, Ethiopia

Landrace

Natural

Kay Cheon - terrible audio (cutting off) but understandable. He's on a mountain pouring this

Crazy red fruit

explosive sweetness, rounded in that deep natural way 9/10

19. Colombia John Diaz Pink Bourbon

Huila, Colombia

Pink Bourbon

Washed

Pedro Eschavarria -> works w/ producers. Good simple video about coffee & prep.

Fruity citrus, some stone fruit

Classic washed natural but w/ citrus finish. Not super floral, but more than berry 9/10

20. Honduras Sagastume Family Natural

Santa Barbara, Honduras

Parainema

natural

Benjamin Paz (Honduras producer). Demonstration + info about the coffee

Not great cuz I tried it in the new OXO rapid brewer for the first time

21. Colombia Jairo Arcila Lychee

Quindío, Colombia

Castillo

Fruit-Innoculated Washed

Juan Camilio Zuluaga. Cool vibes from this guy. I see his company goat logo in the Demo + explanation

Said "oh my god" aloud cuz so fruity. Kinda grapey or apple. Apricot.

INSANELY cool. Rich & fruity! Like candy apple but not fermented 10/10

22. Kenya Elshadai Coffee Estate Natural

Kiambu, Kenya

SL28, SL34, Ruiru 12

Natural

Morgan Eckroth again. Fine. She seems to really like this one.

Raisins, a malty sugar. Really cool.

Malty, a little fermented. A chill, not in-your-face candy flavor 9/10

23. Guatemala El Socorro Maracaturra

Palencia, Guatemala

Maracaturra

Washed

Akie Bermiss. Passionate about light roasts. Brewred & talked about the roasts "playfulness"

Perfect light roast smell. Nothing crazy

Full body, juicy fruit. Rounded chocolate

24. Panama Hacienda Esmeralda Gesha

Boquete Highlands, Panama

Gesha

Washed

Rachel Peterson. Talking about creating coffee w/ simplicity. Using hoop.

Sharp sweetness. Fresh & fragrant

Lemon, light stone fruit finish

At this point even I’m wondering why I’m making the effort to share this. 24 different coffees, and even if I put maximal effort into describing them…what’s the point of doing so with just text like this?
I think I just want to share a bit of the process for its own sake, because it’s *my* process. I love coffee, but I have some imposter syndrome about the hobby, and certainly about really *knowing* the industry. I’m trying very hard to be more intentional about my continuing education, especially if I’m really ever going to open my own cafe someday.

Onyx Advent Final Thoughts

The “review” thoughts I’ve shared are all over the place, but I assure you I had tons of fun with every coffee. The highlight, of course, was using 6 of them for the home coffee cupping with a bunch of friends :3

But no, aside from the website issues, I really loved this. I’m still working my way through the remaining coffee and I’m 100% keeping this beautiful box and these cards.

I think the real standout though is a combination of the videos and the well-deserved attention going to the producers and procurers of the coffee.

Great coffee is good on its own, but truly ethical coffee tastes all the sweeter.

Year of Creation

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This is my first New Years with a blog, so I think it’s only fair to make a corny “year of [goal]” post! I’m going to lay out my broad-strokes goals for the year, and then check in on them later this year :3

Cooking More

Very simple but the very first thing I want to focus on this year is cooking more AND eating out less. I already eat pretty healthy, even when I eat out at least half the time is at someplace nominally “healthy”.

Slop bowls…So many delicious slop bowls…

So far I’m trawling through my messy “recipes” discord chat channel in my junky private server where I throw recipe links and videos, and honestly that’s been working out pretty well.
So far I’ve made three truly novel things this year, and I’m only excited to get a bit more ambitious as I go along!

Hummus
Chocolate Hummus
Baked oat cake

Definitely room for improvement but pretty good for a first try!

Intentionality

I don’t consider myself a doomscroller, but I fall prey to a lot of *shrug* types of time-commitments. Mostly a lot of YouTube*, but also playing non-multiplayer infinitely-replayable games (i.e. roguelikes) just for the sake of passing time. This eats into a lot of my precious free time, and ultimately feels like I’m squandering the hard work I’ve put into building myself some stability.

* I know I essentially just described doomscrolling behavior anyways, but I’m not sure if it really counts when 90%+ of the YouTube I watch is educational…nerdy-ass engineering videos and lately a lot of cooking.
(The other 10% is Dead by Daylight videos)

Website Content

Unsurprisingly I intend to spend time this year working on this site! More specifically though I’d just like to add content to it in the form of reviews, blog posts, etc.

This site went live in Spring 2025 and since then I’ve added a bunch of neat things that I’m quite proud of! But I haven’t quite added as much of my personal thoughts as I’d prefer to, so I’d really like to do that :3

Make Art!

I have GOT to draw more this year oh my gosh. Last year I pretty much only drew during July during ArtFight…and while I made some incredibly neat pieces, it really was all I did until the end of the year and that’s kind of disappointing.

New Tools

To that effect, I made a point of getting a few new supplies…

The real sleeper is that white pen. That thing is a crazy cool 4-way pen + mechanical pencil :o

I love my coffee shop visiting habit, so what if I lowered the “empty canvas” anxiety with some casual traditional sketching? With added bonus of…doing traditional art again! :3

Coffee (is anyone surprised)

Social media followers may have already heard, but I’ve been hosting a few coffee cupping events at home for my friends! It’s been really neat. A fun activity for everyone involved, and a great opportunity for myself to delve deeper into coffee knowledge & education.

8 coffees was probably too many…but I couldn’t help myself! There were so many to share!

Home Espresso

First off I really want to get back into making espresso. I have a great, capable machine that has every tool I need to pull excellent espresso. But my day-to-day I’m just brewing V60 pour-overs because ultimately if I want an easy but consistent cup of tasty coffee, the pour-over is just the way to go.
V60 for the coffee, espresso for the hobby. And I’d like 2026 to be the year I get back into the hobby in earnest.

Part of my inspiration has been watching a lot of Lance Hedrick lately. He’s a very down-to-earth coffee ~~nerd~~ expert who can really get me excited about trying harder with espresso by cutting out a lot of the chaff and noise of espresso “culture” externalities.

You do not, in fact, need hundreds of dollars worth of equipment or even any fancy tools to brew great espresso.

I love all of the crazy cool coffees I buy, and I think I need to be okay with the financial “risk” of using up those beans trying to dial-in great espresso! After all, it’s fun!

Furry Con Coffee Panel

I have GOT to talk to the furries about good coffee. And not only good coffee but good cafes and what makes it so integral to the Urban, Gay, Furry lifestyle!!

This year at Midwest Furfest here in Chicago* there was a coffee panel and it just wasn’t enough for me! It didn’t go deep enough, or get people excited about coffee.

* “Rosemont” is NOT Chicago but whatever

So I’m gonna do it! I’ve already got ideas on how to format it to be interesting and deep without it being alienating or overly-dense.
And I’ve already got an idea to get around the lack of sample-able coffee due to food and drink restrictions at these things. Behold:

Get a load of THIS fuckin’ thing

Tasting coffee would be best, but 2nd best is a clean and safe way to pass around coffee smells, and this is gonna be how I do it. Everything else is pending but I’m gonna give this a shot!

Look for me at Anthrocon 2026 for the inaugural panel :3

Opening a Shop

The future… Credit @MichaelLee

This is a loftier goal, but I want to make the first steps towards coffee shop ownership! I really really want to open my own shop here in Chicago. I want to find a place, make it my own, brew amazing coffee, and create a community space I can be proud of! :3

I’m gonna take it slow, but steady, and I think this year is the year I do the business research I need to build a solid foundation for the future when I actually have the resources to get something like this going.

Weightlifting & Bulk Diet

After January I’m officially ending my 1.5-year long cut!! That is WAY too long for a cut diet, but I had things get in the way, taking me a while to get back on track. But I’m back, baybee! And man I am so proud of my progress.

You can check out the latest physique photos I’ve shared on my Weightlifting page here!

It’s been cool getting to really cut down and see how muscular I’ve become over the years, and now I’m hyper-motivated to switch to a controlled bulk and put on as much muscle as I possibly can! This year is going to be about sticking to my guns, not making excuses, and staying consistent both with workouts and diet.

I HAVE to become as hot and buff as my fursona it’s so important! Credit @NonCoralArt

Commie Book Club

Finally, the big thing I HAVE to get back into creating(?) is lively communist discussions with peers!

When you’re yelling at communists online, this is who you’re yelling at…

I’ve already laid the ground work in my Fitness Discord and I’m hyped to get some long time friends into cool theory discussions. Especially as the Imperialist nations of the world get more and more openly fascist…theory without practice isn’t enough, but it is absolutely something valuable you can do to feel involved and active in resistance.

Overall this is a pretty open looking year, so I’m excited to give it my all, and practice good self love by engaging with these things I care so much about.

Pilsen-Bridgeport Coffee Tour

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Another coffee tour! This time, of the Pilsen and Bridgeport neighborhoods Southwest of the Loop. I picked a Saturday and a friend, and made the 50min bike ride in the brisk November Autumnal morning, and headed down to two neighborhoods I’ve barely yet visited.

And unlike my last coffee tour, I’ve built some things on my website to streamline this process a bit :3 Enjoy the commentary but feel free to scroll down to the quick-n-dirty summary + scoring for each one!

They’re in the style of my full cafe reviews, just probably without a dedicated page.

The Map

The goal was for somewhere both bikeable AND accessible by transit in the future

The Outing

Anticonquista

The only shop on the trip today that I’d already visited, Anticonquista Cafe was high on my list to re-visit, especially with my friend.

As a coffee snob, I wasn’t overly impressed with the quality of coffee this time or last, but it was good, and more importantly, I am in love with their mission and the politics of their shop.

They really don’t make agitprop like they used to!

As a huge proponent of combatting white Western chauvinism, places like this are a precious goldmine of accessible education and perspective.

Never seen a handmade mug like this at a cafe

I enjoyed my coffee, though it was yet another shop that gave me this^ when I asked for a small, 8oz americano so. I don’t know what’s up with that.
Solid though! Not mindblowing, but genuinely very comfy, tasty coffee.

This place is utterly unique. It doesn’t fit in to my tidy “work from home” coffee shop paradigm, but it feels cool being there, and engaging with an honest business with a genuine anticolonial foundation. Very rad.

Anticonquista

A family-run shop defined by its anticolonialism, this shop serves coffee exclusively from their family farms, and features wall-to-wall anticolonial propaganda & decor plus community resources.

coffee 6 / 10
No-holds-barred coffee quality rating
cafe 4 / 5
Quality of cafe re: design, theming, layout
price 2.5 / 5
5 = very reasonable prices
productivity 3.5 / 5
Table size, outlet availability, wifi
vibes 5 / 5
Subjective 'How does it feel being here?'
Total 21 / 30

Order Suggestion: Americano

Cup of Joe - Pilsen

This place really surprised me! It’s a very small space, so it clearly serves as a tidy “grab food + coffee and go!” purpose in the area, but honestly the food and coffee were surprisingly good!

Yes, a 5/10 is a “surprisingly good!” coffee by my ratings lol. I’m pretty decent at avoiding BAD coffee, so my rating system scales down.

Really cute branding and pretty dang solid pricing overall!

This is the WHOLE cafe, minus the bar seating at the window

I enjoyed my Americano, and the vibes were very nice. Not exactly a place to hunker down and get some work (or website coding) done, so I probably won’t be back unless I’m meeting an acquaintance nearby.

A Cup of Joe - Pilsen

A tiny community shop with good vibes and pretty good food. Maybe not an all-day work 'n stay but cute enough to stop into for a quick cuppa, especially for the price!

coffee 5 / 10
No-holds-barred coffee quality rating
cafe 2 / 5
Quality of cafe re: design, theming, layout
price 4 / 5
5 = very reasonable prices
productivity 1 / 5
Table size, outlet availability, wifi
vibes 4 / 5
Subjective 'How does it feel being here?'
Total 16 / 30

Order Suggestion: Small americano and a breakfast burrito

CTRL Z

This is the entire cafe, save for 4 window bar-seating spots to the right

Ctrl Z might be the biggest disappointment of the trip, but I don’t think it’s hopeless. I took the barista’s recommendation for a type of drink (the name of which I’ve forgotten), and it amounted to a very roasty, mid-tier pour-over.
Not bad but I’d heard a lot of good things about this place so…

Incredibly competitive prices, so big fan of that. They offer a wide enough array of flavors and options that I feel like I could easily bring most friends here and find them something they’d like.

All medium roasts…hmmm

I’m fast learning that there are a good many high-tier, Southeast Asian specialty coffee shops. Love the ubiquitous ube syrups they all offer (ube is so so good, y’all), but also they tend to source/roast very interesting beans!

The could brew things are pretty rare, but invariably in my experience indicate a serious coffee shop

They’re clearly serious about their preparation. And it’s still pretty tough finding a good pour-over in this town, so I plan on coming back. The drink I got on this trip just wasn’t super impressive!

Points for creativity lol but I couldn’t sit here long

Interesting space with interesting coffee options…deserves a 2nd chance. Not super accessible by transit, but that’s why we’ve got bikes!

Ctrl Z

A strange, very small cafe with unique coffee offerings. Not a place to go and get work done, but unique coffee and funky seating good for a casual conversation.

coffee 7 / 10
No-holds-barred coffee quality rating
cafe 2 / 5
Quality of cafe re: design, theming, layout
price 2 / 5
5 = very reasonable prices
productivity 1.5 / 5
Table size, outlet availability, wifi
vibes 2.5 / 5
Subjective 'How does it feel being here?'
Total 15 / 30

Order Suggestion: Pour-over

Bad Owl Coffee Roasters

Absolutely NOT a hoot

Ho boy. Hooo man.

First off we gotta talk about the roasting machinery situation. I’ll refer to my rant in the Caffe Umbria review, but TL;DR any coffee roaster with their machinery out in the open like this is not serious.
On a more specific note here, what the hell is the deal with the two bar seats just facing the roaster?? If that thing is running anyone there is going to get blasted. Plus it’s so loud!

Okay I’m ranting again. Moving on.

I heard good things about Bad Owl (from reddit) but just from my maps sleuthing I could tell it was probably nothing too special.

Cute.

Full coffee flight review below, but suffice to say I was not impressed.

Coffee Flight Review

I talked to the barista, told them it was my first time here and wanted to order something that’d really show me the value of Bad Owl. They thought for a minute, and then recommended this coffee flight.
It had:

Espresso
Cortado
A banana nut latte cold brew (apparently they’re really popular)
A non-coffee drink they likened to “butter beer”

The espresso was OK. At tasting I told my friend “it’s the pinnacle of average medium-roast espresso”, as in, (generously) it’s just about as good as you can get from unremarkable espresso.

The cortado was awful. Just awful. The milk was flat, and the espresso tasted empty.

The banana thing was like, fine. But I don’t care about sweet cold brews so I’ll be neutral on that.

The butter beer thing was tasty because it was a sugary non-coffee sweet drink. Again, not coffee, so /shrug.

There’s just something suspicious about that gecko…

I wish I could say I love their coffee bags because at first glance they’re very pretty and cool!
But I can’t shake the feeling that they’re made with AI art…and I just don’t trust that.

Why put it in the middle of the floor, but then “hide” it with cheap plastic plants?

The vibes are off. The coffee is off. I don’t really know who this is for, but at the very least not me.

Bad Owl Coffee roasters

A California roastery transplanted into a Chicago neighborhood. Feels anodyne and unserious, but wants to be taken seriously. Possibly good coffee, but yet to be impressed. Weird amount of fake plants juxtaposed to genuinely decent real pothos so idk what's going on

coffee 3 / 10
No-holds-barred coffee quality rating
cafe 2 / 5
Quality of cafe re: design, theming, layout
price 2 / 5
5 = very reasonable prices
productivity 2 / 5
Table size, outlet availability, wifi
vibes 1 / 5
Subjective 'How does it feel being here?'
Total 10 / 30

Order Suggestion: Latte with any syrup

Jackalope Coffee & Tea House

The final stop on our little coffee tour, this was absolutely the overall highlight for me.\

Pretty dang good coffee
Interesting media and trinkets everywhere you look
Tons of space, and rooms of different volumes/activity
Community board games

It has it all!

I think I spent no less than 10 minutes just craning my neck looking at things

There’s a lot I look for in a cool cafe. Coffee, sure, but also places that I’d enjoy taking my friends to! And Jackalope really feels right.

I don’t have a whole lot more to say about the cafe that the pictures don’t say for me. It’s just neat! And I’m serious, the coffee (and pistachio donut we got) was really really good!
Not 9/10 good, sure but I’m picky…and picky as I am, that regular-ass americano was no less than a 7/10!

Mars attacks!! Iconic af!

Jackalope Coffee & Tea House

An eclectic cafe with tons of space, style, and charm but doesn't compromise on the coffee quality. It feels utterly unique and authentic, full of neat tchotchkes

coffee 7 / 10
No-holds-barred coffee quality rating
cafe 5 / 5
Quality of cafe re: design, theming, layout
price 3 / 5
5 = very reasonable prices
productivity 3.5 / 5
Table size, outlet availability, wifi
vibes 5 / 5
Subjective 'How does it feel being here?'
Total 23.5 / 30

Order Suggestion: A small americano

Closing Thoughts

This was even more fun than the previous coffee outing, partly because I biked, but also I think I just found cafes more representative of their respective neighborhoods (with the one exception), and that made a big difference.

Just Northside Things

Chicago is a historically segregated city, and only the delusional would suggest it isn’t still struggling with that history.
As a somewhat-recent transplant to Chicago (2022) and as a communist who lives on the wealthier, whiter Northside of Chicago, how do I contend with that? What do I do to both resist the chauvinist, alienating effects of that material reality?

I don’t have a great answer to that. But I feel that the lowest hanging fruit would be to visit and engage with the other neighborhoods in the city. And I strongly believe that community coffee shops are an excellent stepping stone for an outsider to mingle!

So many great books here. I nabbed that copy of The Red Deal!

For someone on the Northside, what would bring you all the way to Pilsen or Bridgeport? For the average person, probably either a special event or friends.

And I suppose that’s true for me too. I first visited Pilsen a few months ago when South Loop friends took me on a bike ride from the loop over to Anticonquista. Ever since then I’d been trying to come up with a good excuse to travel over there.

A bit of the local fabric

Cruising through a few streets between coffee shops is hardly a thorough exploration of a neighborhood but it really planted a seed in me. I have two good coffee shops worth coming back to, but I also have countless sights of things I biked past that my friend and I called out–things worth another visit.

We briefly stopped into Hoofprint here to check out the art :3

Biking down 18th St in Pilsen was a joy, passing all the vibrant Mexican-American art adorning the shops and restaurants along the street.
Crossing the bridge over to Bridgeport, almost missing Ctrl Z coffee shop for how simply it slotted into an old factory building…things like that really stuck with me.

I’m proud to call Chicago my home, and I’ve only ever been rewarded for exploring outside my hyperlocal sphere and seeing what else the city has to offer, and how all my cool neighbors live and support one another with hot brews and cool spaces UwU

Comfort in simplicity…also still thinking about the really cool black & blue e-bike my friend and I saw while at Cup of Joe. @ that cyclist: hiiii thanks for chatting with us your bike is sick I hope I wasn’t too weird asking questions about your e-bike I just thought it was neat

Uptown-Edgewater Coffee Tour

Sat, 06 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Some Background

I’m obviously a pretty big coffee nerd, and if you follow me online you know I talk a lot about the cafes I like to visit. I hadn’t been in Chicago long before I’d scoped out all the best shops…judging from a purely “where’s the best Coffee” perspective.

“Best Coffee” list here, btw! :3

But there’s more to cafes than just the coffee, and I think it’s high time I put more effort into appreciating them. A good cafe is the avenue into the heart of its neighborhood…so today I chose a neighborhood (well, a few) and scoped out the cafes beforehand.
The goal was simple exploration, but the added hope was finding new places good to meet friends at—especially for drawing or doing work together :3

The Map

Posted to Bluesky the night before

I started out just googling around on Maps. Fortunately with the 4 new Red Line CTA stations open, it was going to be super easy to use them to get around pretty quick. And turns out there were a lot of cafes near the stations!

Rating System

Going to keep this simple and rate things out of 5! Quick explanation:

Coffee = coffee quality relative to just this trip only! (Spoilers but none of these shops served as high quality coffee as my regular haunts)
Cafe = the physical space itself, size/layout and especially seating options
Price = rated based on quality of what was served. 5/5 means you’re getting a steal of a price for what they’re offering
Community = how much the cafe feels like it’s a unique part of its neighborhood, as opposed to ‘just another coffee shop’
Vibes = subjective overall “how likely am I to return and possibly bring friends here”

The Outing

I decided to start at pHlour Bakery, and then figured I’d hop from place to place, getting a cup of coffee from each, taking a few pictures, then choosing where to go next. Trying to hit up as many places as I reasonably could.

I also invited two friends to come with me. After an info mixup (“Meet me at Berwyn station” was mixed up with Bryn Mawr), we got started!

pHlour Bakery

While not a cafe, pHlour fits into the scene by being a very prolific pastry supplier to cafes across the city. The fact that their main bakery happened to be next to the Bryn Mawr station just made it a really convenient starting place for my little trip.

mmm scone

I got there at opening, so I had the pick of the litter. I got myself a tomato-basil danish, and a blueberry scone. The Danish was really savory and nice, and the scone was incredible. I love scones, and this is easily in the top 3 I’ve ever had!

Coffee: N/A Only ordered food
Cafe: 2/5 Simple, but clean and pleasant enough
Price: 3/5 Pretty much exactly what you’d expect
Community: 1/5 As they are mostly a supplier to other cafes, inside dining is minimal
Vibes: 2/5 Totally fine, just not really a hangout place. Get your stuff and walk next door to the train

Sent this to my gluten-free parents and they got a real kick out of it

Sip & Savor

I’m trying to figure out what this space might’ve been before a cafe, but I can’t quite nail the vibe

What’s the opposite of “starting things off with a bang”? Maybe “tripping at the starting line?” In any case, Sip & Savor is all that and more (less?).

I’m being dramatic, but it wasn’t a good start when I asked the barista for a macchiato and he said:

“Uh hmm…I don’t think we have a button for that.”

A button!! That means…they use a super-automatic coffee machine! Aaaa…dang. Now I know I’m a coffee snob at heart, but I’m chill and polite, so I asked the barista for his suggestion, and got an americano. He told me it’d be a medium-dark roast, and that they couldn’t do my preferred 8oz size so…yeah. (It was really bad)

Super-automatic espresso machines are awesome, by the way. Especially for home, but I don’t disagree with them in some commercial settings! There’s a lot to be said about having a programmable “press one button and get a specific type of latte/cappuccino” machine, especially in a high-volume environment. They’re just not for me :3

The back of the cafe is pretty nice at least.

The cafe itself was overall solid though. A lot of space, and good seating options. They even had some couches (a rarity at my usual coffee shop locations), but I wasn’t impressed by the comfort, honestly.

They do have a tv running a loop of Animal Crossing videos though…!

I genuinely like this, though it felt kind of out of place

Coffee: 1/5 Burnt and unremarkable americano with too much water
Cafe: 3/5 Good variety of seating, but the space feels too big for what’s being offered
Price: 3/5 Pretty much exactly what you’d expect
Community: 3/5 The signboards were cute and had personality, and the space felt reasonably tailored to the area
Vibes: 2/5 Just like, fine! Nothing special or really notable

The Lost Hours

I had high expectations for this place, based purely on their website, which has some of my favorite design decisions I’ve ever seen on an otherwise-polished site:

Just fantastic.

I’ll cut to the chase: the coffee was pretty bad, but the cafe itself hit every other mark possible.

So you walk in, and the cafe immediately feels like a community space. It was comfortably busy, and super cozy. The cafe has that kind of variety of comfy-cozy seating that tells you that not only did the cafe prioritize comfort over aesthetic, but that they likely engaged with the community to source the furniture in the first place.

I didn’t get better pictures than this, but there are many more tables and couches!

Very cool. As for drink, I took my barista’s recommendation and ordered a sweet latte drink…it was $7.00 and consisted of espresso, chai, and various syrups. It was an overwhelming sweet mess, and demonstrations the classic Cafe Syrup Issue.

Cafes and Coffee Syrups

The Cafe Syrup Issue is what I call it when I find a cafe that has tons of flavor syrups and specifically leans heavily into them as a standout feature of their coffee quality.

This is from a cafe I visited during a road trip:

The chalkboards are just lists of syrup combinations…

I understand that people can find these kinds of drinks tasty, but to me it just isn’t coffee anymore. It’s a sugar drink with coffee as a convenient caffeine source. Nothing special, and with very few exceptions, no artistry involved.

And to be clear, neither The Lost Hours nor any of the cafes on this list today are THAT bad. There’s an element of this issue, but it’s much much worse elsewhere I assure you.

Apparently they source their coffee from local roaster, Happy Monday Coffee, which popped up in my initial search but I quickly moved past mostly due to the fact that they only sell coffee blends and no single-origin coffees.

Now judging by a syrupy drink alone feels disingenuous, so I also ordered a straight espresso and it was under-extracted and undrinkable. Not sure if it was an issue with dialing in that day or what, but not impressed.
Score is below, but just wanted to note that aside from the coffee itself, I really like everything else going on here! It’s a lovely cafe, with friendly staff and clearly a successful outreach towards the local community. Super cozy and the seating is comfy as heck. Maybe the tea is good too! It’s really only the coffee not doing it for me.

Coffee: 1/5 Syrup hell and crazy under-extracted espresso. Not impressed
Cafe: 5/5 Great seating variety, big space, good acoustics. Pretty perfect. Only negative I’d say is it has big, east-facing windows with no shades, so it was very bright and hot
Price: 1/5 Too much money for too mediocre of coffee. But especially not a fan of $7 for just syrups
Community: 5/5 Great space, friendly staff, good location, and all of it summed up by a very earnest website
Vibes: 4/5 Totally subjective, but the vibes were great but even ignoring coffee, it’s just not quite my perfect type of space. Very very good though!

Everybody’s Coffee

Rotating art displays! Always a good sign :3

I wasn’t sure what to think of this place…with a name like “Everybody’s Coffee” I leaned towards ‘casual about coffee’. However as I traveled there, I checked their website and was delighted to find they listed a ton of single-origin roasts!

And I’ll cut to the chase: it was indeed very good!! For $2.77 I got an 8oz drip coffee with a single-origin natural-process Colombian (medium-light roast) and it was fantastic . 100% easy-drinking “could enjoy this all day” kind of drink. Lovely lovely.

And what a nice space

Took a seat in the back and marveled at the lovely cafe space. No couches, but every other type of seating was there! High tables, low 2-person tables. Outdoor seating (completely filled that day), and the building seems to be a larger community center type of space, so perhaps there was more!
A few negative points for acoustics which I don’t hold against them. The building just has a lot of echoey exposed ducts etc. and I feel like they did a pretty reasonable job filling the space with furniture, so aside from maybe some panels or something it’s as good as it gets.

But overall the vibe was a great mix of cozy and productive-comfortable. The high-table I sat at had special cabling routed through it to make sure that patrons could access power outlets! Like this place wants to be a comfortable cafe space, but they put some good priority into making it a great workspace. Oh and it’s open late!! Huge bonus.

Art is by local artist: Gene Arthur!

Local artist displays are always a great sign! Love this art, and it helped me feel cozy and welcome here :3

Coffee: 5/5 Beautiful single-origin! Clean and well-brewed
Cafe: 4/5 Docked a single point due to lack of couches (not a cafe I’d sit and read in for a long time) but definitely a great space for groups, or solo productive work
Price: 5/5 Unbeatable price. Only tried drip though! No idea what other coffee costs there whoops
Community: 4/5 Solid community space, especially with the art
Vibes: 5/5 Perfect vibes for me, especially since Wilson Ave really calms down by this point and it feels “active but quiet” outside and around it

Nabala Cafe

Free Palestine!!

Immediate incredible vibes from this shop! And not just because of Palestinian solidarity! Beautiful shop with variety of seating options, lovely decor, Palestine flags just everywhere which you love to see, and tons of community amenities. And they serve Middle Eastern coffee and food like!! What more could I possibly ask for?!

This cafe blew me away. Now I know my background means I’ll more heavily weight places with Turkish coffee, hummus, and za’atar but just look at this place. It screams intentionality, community, and a strong fucking identity.

The cafe has a solid variety of seating, ranging from comfy armchairs, more casual sitting-room style chairs, cafe tables, high tables, and two large group tables with bench seating. Pretty much everything you could ask for, save a full couch.
The lighting is incredibly welcoming and they make great use of it with so many plants.

Around the shop they have community resources, including a sizeable community book exchange, and this great little shelf full of board games, community art supplies, and even a gourd seed bank for folks to propagate some gourds of their own. I’ve never seen a community art supply thing like this before, how nice :3

As for the coffee, I ordered a Turkish coffee and treated myself to a hummus plate. Delighted to find that the hummus came with oil and za’atar as well! A little disappointed that the coffee came in a to-go cup…but then delighted again that it was prepared with cardamom by default (the Palestinian way!), which made me feel so at home you can’t even imagine.

Oh and it was good! Very very good Turkish coffee. I think a step below Oromo Cafe elsewhere in the city, but that might just be due to the plastic lining of those to-go cups. Not a fan.
Hummus was incredible! Za’atar was solid and the oil was good (not amazing). No Turkish delight with my coffee by default but that’s fine, I wouldn’t mind paying for it next time.

If the coffee came in a more traditional demitasse cup or something this would be a top 10 photos of the year contender

I could go on for ages, but I’ve been wanting to come here for a while. They opened a bit over a year ago, and I’ve walked past when they were doing community outreach events and Palestine fundraisers…so it’s high time I started getting involved myself!

Coffee: 5/5 Only had the Turkish which was very good, but 5/5 for also having incredible food :3 Though I will note that even I can’t drink Turkish coffee all day long so I’d need other options if I were to stay longer haha
Cafe: 5/5 Incomprehensibly perfect. Can’t gush enough about it
Price: 3/5 Honestly I was too excited and didn’t notice the price. I think it was like, average?? Normal?
Community: 5/5 Unbeatable. Obvious reasons.
Vibes: 5/5 For me at least, perfect. Not super ideal for a bigger group, but solo or with one friend? Absolutely ideal.

Heritage Outpost

Hard to judge the vibes of an old-lobby-turned-bougie-apartments because it was genuinely nice chilling there

This one won’t take too long because the last coffee shop of the day is actually an offshoot of one of my long-established faves in Lincoln Park: Heritage Bikes & Coffee. This one made the list because of the unique space it’s in, but the coffee itself I don’t have a ton to say about, so I’ll get that over with quickly:

The actual cafe is pretty small. You’re really supposed to grab-n-go

They serve Onyx Coffee, a reputable 3rd-wave roaster out of Arkansas. Heritage serves their quality blends in espresso and drip (no pour-overs), and they serve pastries from pHlour (I believe).
I love their Lincoln Park location, and go there for the space, the bike shop it’s attached to, and the kind staff. The coffee isn’t incredible, it’s just “above average” enough that I can enjoy being there. And that quality was replicated here at this “Outpost”. I got a small decaf americano and it was very nice. Easy drinking. Nothing to write home about.

Impressive variety of couches, honestly

The big draw was this lobby space. You walk in, and there’s a front desk with an attendant who receives visitors and deliveries for the residents who live here. The cafe is to the left. A bit to the right is a hallway leading to a restaurant-bar. The back center is all public-seating, with a 3-elevator bank in the very back for residents.

Going in I thought I was going to be uncomfortable in this space, in the same way that you’re never really comfortable in a hotel lobby, but honestly it wasn’t bad!

Good variety of seating, and the steady stream of residents moving in and out of the building wasn’t too disruptive. The few other people there with coffee were treating the space like a library and quietly working at laptops.

Overall not bad, though I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to come here on my own. More of a “if I’m in the neighborhood, I guess”. Especially since I’m already familiar with the coffee and enjoy their main location much more.

Coffee: 3/5 Totally fine, nothing spectacular
Cafe: 2/5 Cafe itself non-existent, but the lobby space was totally fine. Just kind of odd
Price: 3/5 Average
Community: 1/5 Any “community” felt fake in that luxury-apartment “community” kind of way. Not hostile, but definitely not what I’d call a welcoming space
Vibes: 2/5 Fine, but odd

Concluding Thoughts

This post has taken me 6 full days to write, so I’m going to cut myself off a bit and not rehash the rest of the post .

Obviously Nabala Cafe and Everybody’s Coffee were my two faves of the excursion, and I kind of expected that result. The main drive of this activity was to explore two neighborhoods I’ve barely visited, and to compare different cafe & community vibes in quick succession ~~also an excuse to check out the new red line stations~~.

Aside from the Outpost, every cafe had something going for it…or at least a vision that I could appreciate, and that’s really neat! I have aspirations to open my own coffee shop in Chicago someday, and much less “competition” I’m looking for inspiration and building an internal library of ideas for what works and what doesn’t…

But also I just want more places to take friends to. Because dangit all the good coffee is on the West Side for some reason and it can be tricky getting over there quickly.

Future Outings

The biggest takeaway was that this was so much fun and I’ve gotta do it again. Combining neighborhood exploration with transit rides and meeting friends AND new cafes…yeah I mean what a mix! I have my eyes on the Pilsen neighborhood next, as I’ve already gotten some strong cafe recommendations from friends there

I’ve also got to do this format again for my visits to other cities. I did this a bit when I visited Pittsburgh for Anthrocon this summer, and man even just the 3 shops I went to were awesome! This is a fun format, I’ve gotta expand it!

Thank you for reading my coffee ramble if you have any comments or ideas for how I could make this better or more fun, please hit me up online! And hey you should go out and visit your local shops! Nearly every city in the world has a coffee scene, and even if the coffee isn’t crazy special, the community and cafe just might be :3

These Goofy Games Are So Good To Me

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

“Friendslop” isn’t real, but it can delight you

This blog post will have exactly one apology for unironically using the word “friendslop” and this is it: _{sowwy uwu}

Listen if you haven’t played any of:

You’re missing out!

No money but yes toilet

The appeal is probably obvious

I mean, playing games with friends is fun! Obviously. I’m really only thinking about it now because these games are such a stark contrast to the friend games I grew up playing…Things like Halo or Call of Duty or even Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. All great games that I formed fantastic memories playing with friends in high school and college.
Even somewhat recently I tried PUBG and even Apex Legends, but those didn’t stick. The only games I regularly play with friends are these funky fun sloppy friend games.

Maybe we’re all just tired adults now, and playing something truly competitive or with “real” stakes is just too much mental or emotional effort.
Maybe we just want to have a relatively interesting task to perform together, whereupon we can hang out in a box and bark at each other.

barkbarkbark bark barkbark

Maybe this is all a circuitous discussion topic that just comes back to Capitalist Society Isolation, Alienation, and Loneliness™ because every game I’ve ever seen described as Friendslop boils down to in some way: “a colorful wrapper-task around just talking to your friends in virtual space”

Oh god…is “Golf with your Friends” friendslop? That feels weird. It’s a mini-golf game…but if you’re just talking and futzing around then…slop…?? Feels wrong to call that friendslop since it’s a simulacrum of a real life activity (mini-golf). Unless real-life mini-golf is also friendslop…
Have we been slopping this entire time? How deep does this go? Good lord.

So what makes one of these games good?

I’m not a serious gamer, but I’m a busy guy who’s picky about how he spends his free time! I’ve had a good think about what makes these games gripping enough for me to organize social events with friends to play them

There’s gotta be Skill Expression

maybe not this time

Starting off with perhaps the most controversial point, but in my opinion one strength of good friendslop games is being able to get better at the game.

Competitive games have it built in, but the competitive nature can itself drive a wedge between you and your friends’ gaming experience together (ranks, or just the serious intensity of matches). Games like PEAK and REPO can pull you in by being goofy friend games, but they hold you close by offering you ways to get GOOD at them.

Skill expression means being able to teach each other things, or show off techniques you’ve learned, on top of being able to more readily progress through the game itself.
The smart balance is when you can have that skill expression, but also build a game where it’s not needed or especially where equal skill expression isn’t needed for the group experience to be enjoyable.

It’s gotta have some scrungle

Video games with intimacy

I say this with only love in my heart but if your friendslop game doesn’t have some scrungle to its style…some roughness some ugly stuff going on? I probably don’t trust it.

the poor guy has all of 5 pixels to his name

Not to lean too much into the “if it’s not indie it’s not good” generalization, but smaller team games tend to have more jank, or lean into it more as part of their intentionally rough-around-the-edges style, and it can lead to some very appealing interactions. Comedy springboards! Or just an excuse to pause and share a screenshot with other buds.

*scuttles @ u*

Genuine UwU energy somewhere in there

I don’t even know how to articulate this one because it might just be a me thing but it’s so important for a game to allow me to act cute with friends.
Emotes, funny faces, or just an art style that lends itself to it.

If the REPO bots don’t give off UwU energy, just wait until you play with someone you respect; the flappy trashcan heads and googly eyes are radioactive with cuteness energy

It’s gotta be funny!

Like, intentionally. At least a little. The best fun is obviously the organic jokes made up with friends, but these games do such a nice job of leaning into it in their own styles.
It’s like platform development, you’ve gotta give people a springboard for the comedy.

The funniest thing I’ve found in PEAK (the most recent friendslop) lately is force-feeding my friends poisonous fruit. For whatever reason, the game has a built-in mechanic allowing you to feed food items to your friends without their permission. Useful when they’re legitimately in trouble, but outside of that they can’t stop me from feeding them whatever else!

Herein the “friend” part of this really pulls its weight because most of the comedy of these games will come across as grief to strangers. Only you and your friends know how to really tickle each other with goofy game griefing mechanics like “intentionally poisoning each other” etc.

trade offer…!

The Horrors…?

To me, the truly funny through-line to these games is the underlying horror aspect. So many of them are just…surviving or experiencing horror-able things with friends.
When you stop and think, I suppose it makes sense because if a multiplayer game isn’t: competitive, cozy, or a literal party game, then the only thing left must be…horror?

As a screenshot it’s kinda terrifying. As a memory, this fucking hilarious

Experiencing horrors from the safety of a video game with friends is a pretty banger combination. It naturally devolves into a comedy of errors, usually beset by attempts at a comedy of being-a-silly-little-guy.

Anyways, this was all just a ramble and excuse to share some fun screenshots from some games. Thank you for reading, and if you’ve read this far I’d genuinely love to hear about some of your experiences with these games! :3

uwu

Huge 💜 to all my friends for making these experiences so beloved. Y’all are everything to me, thank you for sharing these experiences with me.

Extra shout-out to Ochi for helping remind me tonight that I should just blog about whatever, whenever! I’m still learning to treat this as My Space :3

Art Fight 2025

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Real quick: what’s art fight?

Art Fight is an annual event each July hosted on the Art Fight website. You can read the details from the site’s about section if you wish, but the TL;DR is: it’s a month-long competition wherein you score points for your team by drawing fanart of other peoples’ characters, scored based on level of finish (rather than subjective quality).

This “finish, not quality” approach means that Art Fight is a fantastic opportunity to let loose! Try new things…but most importantly, just chill and not obsess over each and every piece you make.

^Guy who can’t take his own advice and predictably falls prey to perfectionism every single year.

And this is not a small event. There were 602,781 registered active participants this year!³

2025 Art Fight Season

This season was Crystals vs. Fossils, and at time of writing the winner hasn’t been declared yet, but I’m confident that my fellow Fossils pulled out the win

As with every year though, I ultimately don’t really care about the competition. The point is the art, and the fun of surprising people with art!

The Art!

I put out 15 pieces this season! My most ever >:3 and I’m proud of each of them!!

Below I’ll be including each of the 15 pieces, plus some thoughts as well as what I feel is strong and weak about each piece.

Also! If this piece is a revenge or has a revenge piece associated with it, I’ll share that in an Accordion :3

“Revenge” in Art Fight refers to an art piece (“attack”) made in response to one someone has received.

1. Person

My first attack was for my cool local friend Jasper, of their fursona, “Person”! I wanted to do something fun and full of action, but I was gripped by the desire to draw them on their brand new bike! Because it’s so cool and so very ~~they/~~them.

Yes, I certainly decided to draw an entire bicycle for my first effort-agnostic art event drawing…What can I say, an idea is an idea!

Proud of:

Perspective
Lineart
Vibe

Room for improvement:

Foreshortening
Shading
Anthro cat faces/anatomy

Jasper’s Revenge! ⚔️

Jasper’s style is so fucking sick. I only wish I could look even half as cool on a bike Artfight Link

2. Alaska

For my second piece, I wanted to do something painterly and dramatic! So I honed in on Pavlentine’s Alaska, a cool rapier-wielding cobra!

I was a little rushed because although Art Fight just started, I would almost immediately have to set it down to go to Anthrocon in Pittsburgh.
That being said, I think I did a pretty good job! I painted in color mostly on a single layer, and I’m pretty pleased with how the face came out :3

Anyways make sure to check out Pavlentine on Bluesky b/c they have a really cool pixel art style and obviously a very cool cobra OC

Proud of:

Paint texture
Expression
Eye

Room for improvement:

Values
Metal texturing
Scale textures

3. Jeh Jeh Rocket

Jeh Jeh Rocket was on my list from last year, and honestly he’s just a cool, hot, buff scalie character and I liked his vibe.

Tried some new stuff, and generally not fully proud of the result…but I am proud of myself for trying some ambitious Foreshortening and posing, and especially proud of myself for calling it done even though not perfect.

Jeh Jeh Rocket belongs to GatorFruitt!

Proud of:

Head/Neck anatomy
Hands
Simple beach background

Room for improvement:

Anatomy confidence
Foreshortening dynamicism
Shading

4. Pinecone

This might be my most personally-significant piece this year because this is for a good friend I’m finally re-connecting with after almost 10 years. Pinecone has just recently more fully joined the furry fandom, and most impressively, took me up on my suggestion to do art fight!!
I’ve linked his Art Fight above but if you don’t have an account to view them, I need to share a few of his here:

Some of Pinecone’s Art Fight 2025 Attacks + Revenge

My man did 20 attacks in his first ever Art Fight and they’re all tremendous! These 2 might be my overall faves though:

This one is just so stylishly cute. Art Fight link

I can’t believe my man drew a taur this well goddamn. Art Fight link

I think it’s both funny and cool that he focused so hard on deer characters since his fursona (and only oc at the moment) is a deer! He told me he just tag-searched for deer until he found one he wanted to try drawing. Very Real.

But of course, he also did me the incredible honor of attacking me back for drawing his deer by drawing Argent!

I was absolutely blown away by this. I still am!! It’s gorgeous Art Fight link

I’m just so delighted and impressed by him. I can’t wait to see what else he does! :3

With that context, this piece kind of speaks for itself. The Rainbow Dash plushie is a nod to our shared Brony past, and the fact that not only is she best pony (according to him 💎) but he actually sewed his own RD plush all those years ago!
It felt like including a nod to that here was a way of sharing enthusiasm for his continued creative drive and growth, especially as he continues to find new ways to express himself :3

Proud of:

Pose
Plushie design and texture
Hands

Room for improvement:

Deer anatomy
Antlers
Emotional expression of face + eyes

5. Persn

Listen.

Playing PEAK with Jasper got us in a silly mood and I came up w/ the idea to draw something just terrible of their Art Sona…? Brand mascot…? Unclear.

Most of the joke is the thumbnail.

This is what anyone on Art Fight sees until they click and see the full image…I think it’s hilarious lmao.

But yeah idk Persn is just a really cool goofy character, and I genuinely love them a lot. And I wanted to be a little evil and use my disgusting muscle furry art powers to turn them into a monster.
Success.

Proud of:

Muscle!!!
I’m fucking hilarious
Wings look pretty good ngl

Room for improvement: N/A

6. Harley Klawz

I think this might be my greatest triumph this season. I am woefully inexperienced drawing:

Fur
Werewolves
Intense emotions, poses

And yet! I feel like I kinda pulled it off! It was so important to me that I made a proper revenge piece against my friend Harley, and I pushed through the “oh god I don’t know how to draw werewolves” dread and put out something I’m really proud of :3

Proud of:

Hand pose
Textured shading/hatching
Simple efficacy of facial expression

Room for improvement:

Hair volume, texture
Wolf teeth/mouth
Clothing

Revenge for Harley’s attack! ⚔️

Getting this piece so early into Art Fight was fucking hilarious. It definitely set a mood. I’m infinitely amused and delighted :3 Artfight Link

7. Raca Rumrazza

A revenge piece for the undisputed raddest Argent piece I got this year…! I saw this super cool cyborg scalie with zero attacks and knew I had to break that terrible trend

Had a lot of fun with this piece though I did spend way too much time researching revolvers and getting the pose right…worked out in the end though!

Hammond has a ton of cool characters and he popped the fuck off with Art Fight this year. And not just because he attacked me with TWO pieces this year…! Scoundrel!

Proud of:

Lizardiness
Coloring
Revolver

Room for improvement:

Pose is a bit stiff
BG way too boring
Hands feel funky

Revenge for Hammond’s attacks! ⚔️

I’m astounded by how cool Argent looks with 90s era highlighter bleed color exposure lmao! Artfight Link

I can’t believe he attacked me again barely after I caught my breath…Grateful that Dio got some attention :3 Artfight Link

8. Sammy

I spent a lot of Art Fight this season searching for cool Protogen characters to attack, and honestly really struggled. Fortunately Genziao’s Sammy character managed to break through the fog and offer me something really fun to draw!

I don’t know why but I gravitated towards a fancy headshot this time. And I’m most happy about how great it looks from a reasonable distance. Up close there’s a lot of roughness…but it works! :3

Proud of:

Cleanness of final piece
Coloring and blending
Tasteful background and headshot crop

Room for improvement:

Glassiness of Protogen mask
Hair color, texture
Lineart cleanliness

Genziao’s Revenge! ⚔️

My precious beautiful little silly guy Ristretto…Genziao responded with this insanely quickly and yet it’s so quality! Powerful…Artfight Link

9. Sarc

I feel a little bad because I was drawing this literally across the table from Sarc, who themselves was finishing an incredible attack against me…It’s goofy, it’s silly, it’s fun, and still I feel like I should’ve done something higher quality for a friend like her.
But! It’s still art, and unlike random folks on Art Fight it’s always socially acceptable to draw for your friends :3

Anyways, not a lot to say about this shitpost piece but I had a lot of fun drawing Sarc as a wretched little creature :3

Proud of:

Shitposting style
Tasteful Tits
Goofy poses

Room for improvement: N/A

Sarc’s Revenge! ⚔️

Just speechless. Even still. Each pose is so powerful and sensual. I’m utterly flattered. Artfight Link

10. Donnie

I knew at least once I had to draw a #SnakeSquad pic, so I chose Donnie’s namesake snake, as well as Coatl’s Cy!

Donnie is drawn with such cool, fresh fashion that the idea of “Argent isn’t fashionable” immediately came to mind. Not long after I got the “Cobra hoods would make hoodies tricky” idea and the rest just came outta that.

Very pleased with this one! Good art skill but also quick and cute with a pretty functional background scene to boot :3

Proud of:

Background quality + efficacy
Expressions/posing
Overall art quality

Room for improvement:

Pushing goofy poses/expressions further
Clothing details to depict stretch and bad-fit
More snakes

11. Raspberry

Every year I draw something for my lovely girlfriend because 1. I love her but 2. and most importantly, she has fantastic characters.

Raspberry is one of my absolute favorites. He’s just a silly little guy!! And I wanted to be very silly with him. So I sat at my favorite bike + coffee shop and banged out this funky piece.

I’m really quite pleased with how well I illustrated his curvy ribbony body, especially with keeping the colors accurate!

Proud of:

His cute face
The ribbon shape, and curvature
Those funky lil legs

Room for improvement:

Better “kelp forest”
Goofier, cuter face…
Smoother coloring + shading

12. Ott Hiemnal Valentine

Probably my magnus opum for this year. I spent probably close to 8 hours total on this piece across 2 weeks. Ott’s design is just incredibly fun and cool, and I felt inspired to really push my painting skills.

This piece is actually my first attempt at a value-painting attempt. Everything painted in greyscale until layering color overtop. Very grateful to my friend Orion for offering their assistance. I would not have pushed my values nearly far enough without their input!

Also just grateful for Bean’s insane OC he is SO COOL augh. Inspiring just looking at him!!

Proud of:

First values-painting attempt!
The hands
The final product, esp with framing

Room for improvement:

More confident shapes
Darker darks!
Planning/Posing

13. Noodle & Bean

I found Casual Bean’s delightful OC collection, thanks to my friend Pinecone who drew Noodle earlier. After the painting effort of Ott Hiemnal, I really wanted something goofy and fun!

The Chicago theme kinda fell into place, I think this piece started just as a cute napping piece, but the thought:

…bean…bean…Chicago..Bean…Chicago Bean!!!

hit me like a truck and I had to go with it lol. Just a lot of goofy fun with this one :3

Oh and yes I did figure out how to import the special ligatures fontface for the Chicago Star (just like the rest of my website) as well as the official Big Shoulders typeface just for that title card haha.

Proud of:

The 4 scene ideas
Simplified Sears Tower
Letting loose and not over-engineering

Room for improvement:

More confident simplified shapes
Goofier expressions and poses
Better hotdog drawing skills

14. Diamondback

I just had to draw Diamondback. Ed is a very cool friend and has even cooler characters! And obviously if Argent was gonna wrestle any of them, he’d surely lose.

For this piece it was just so important that I drew Diamondback looking Cool Buff and “Wrestler”. I quickly decided on a challenging “leaning towards the viewer” type of extreme angle…and while I didn’t nail it, I think I did OK.

Also pretty pleased with the expression! I very gratefully had a nice reference from a previous attacker to help me with the face…again, non-scalie furries are a weakness!

Proud of:

Overall vibe/energy
Hair and ears
Shading

Room for improvement:

Pushing the pose
Better face/head shape
Outfit textures/lighting

Ed’s Revenge! ⚔️

I can’t believe Ed had time to bash out this incredible revenge…but also one so good?? The musculature is crazy good and the energy of Di is hilarious Artfight Link

15. Ruheg

My final piece this year! Finished with 2 hours to spare, I didn’t think I’d have enough time to polish this as much as I did but I guess when I’m drawing scalie characters it’s a lot easier to get comfortable haha.

(Nearly) every year Somite and I exchange blows on Art Fight, and I contributed to it at the eleventh hour here with something just kinda fun and beefy for my own sake haha.

Just had fun rendering big muscles! And the hand turned out real nice…glad I thought to add some fingerprint stylization at the end because it really adds a lot :3

Proud of:

Anatomy
HShading
Snakiness

Room for improvement:

Scale textures
Less obvious “didn’t have time to draw a 2nd hand” pose
Whatever is going on below the waist of a naga

Somite’s Revenge! ⚔️

Absolutely unbelievable that Somite had time to put this out. The timestamp literally lists it as 5 seconds past the end of the event…absolute madlad. Incredible pose and quality for that time!! So delighted to get a last-minute Daneer piece :3 Artfight Link

Closing Thoughts

Due to life events but especially development efforts for *this website*, I hadn’t done much drawing in the past year…Once July started creeping up I threw all my chips into an explosive Art Fight revival moment for myself, and I’m pretty pleased with the results!

Art fight means a lot to me. This was my 8th year, and I’m grateful for the site and the folks who work hard to keep the event going. It’s become a kind of time capsule of my own interests and artistic development, and that’s really neat.

But most of all I’m grateful to all my wonderful friends and future-friends who made it another fun year of back-to-back attacks against one another :3

I haven’t drawn since the event ended, but I’m still feeling that drive. I want to draw more! Improve my painting, and be more involved with the furry community in general—through art and otherwise!

Astro Overall 🚀

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

With so many javascript frameworks out there that the joke about it has become itself a joke, does this one stand out? I think so! It has a strong design philosophy and doesn’t deviate from it.

What is Astro?

From their website,

Astro is a JavaScript web framework optimized for building fast, content-driven websites.

–Astro Docs

Which is both uselessly vague and also honest in that the best parts take a bit more explanation than a pithy quote can provide. But here’s my attempt:

Astro is a “Static-Site Generator Framework” that excels in creating simple, speedy HTML/CSS-only websites in a modern, comfortable Frontend Developer atmosphere.

–Me UwU

In my opinion, the 3 best features of Astro are:

“Zero Javascript, By Default”
Content Collections
Astro Islands Architecture

Zero Javascript (kind of)

Astro sites are built with .Astro files, which are a combination of tsx and Markdown. In the frontmatter section you’re able to import components, create interfaces, handle Props, etc. while the rest of the file writes like a tsx file.

The only thing shipped though is plain ol’ HTML and CSS. If you want to ship javascript to the client, it must be contained in <script> tags.

What this means is you get comfy benefits of writing in a modern React-like tsx file, but don’t actually ship bulky React files to the client. Websites load faster, but you also can’t build fully “reactive” sites as a consequence.

Grateful that I can still use Tailwind lmao

Example Astro file: Button.astro

---
interface Props {
  url: string;
}
const { url } = Astro.props;
---
 
<a class:list={["font-medium text-lg  w-max"]} href={url}>
  <button class:list={["border-yellow hover:bg-yellow rounded-md border-2 hover:text-black p-2 hover:cursor-pointer"]}>
    <slot />
  </button>
</a>

A Bunch of Page Links in a React-App Trench Coat

As a React developer, Astro means no hooks or stateful management. No hot-reloading of pages in the “single-page application” style I’m used to. Astro forces you to treat every page as a static entity; if you want to change what the end-user is looking at, they must navigate to a new page.

Astro compensates for this with View Transitions support, which has made page navigation so seamless, many of my friends/testers didn’t even notice when buttons were actually navigating their browser.

I love this. I genuinely love React hooks and state, but working without it…and trying to emulate some interactivity anyways has been a very engaging puzzle-solving process.
For instance, on the Books Page I created the “Default View” and “Compact View” tabs with these limitations. So far as any casual end-user can tell, they’re just tabs like any other more “interactive” site, but they’re literally just styled tabs! The current view’s tab is styled to be prominent, the other is dim. Clicking the dim one navigates to a new page. Astro’s View Transitions (usually) transition smoothly to the other view’s equally flat, simple, HTML/CSS page so quickly that it feels like you didn’t navigate at all. It’s very clever!

Screenshot closeup of the “tabs”

Content Collections and Routing

Routing with Astro is dead simple: any HTML file placed in the mandatory pages/ directory becomes a route. There is a way to make this dynamic…my blog posts are automatically routed just by virtue of where I place the files. But all of the main pages of my site here are explicitly routed through the pages/ file structure.

This isn’t something unique to Astro, but as part of a static-site generator design philosophy it makes a lot of sense, especially if you leverage Astro’s Content Collections feature.

Collections

In brief, collections let you programmatically create + route new pages on your site as you create more content following predetermined schemas.

Blog posts (like this one) are explicitly one of the best use-cases. You specify a collection via a zod schema object in the config.ts file within the mandatory content/ directory.
Properties specified here are set in the frontmatter of the Markdown file, and then these can be accessed within .Astro files to modify behavior, style page templates…etc.

My blog post config schema

const posts = defineCollection({
  type: "content",
  schema: ({ image }) =>
    z.object({
      title: z.string(),
      subtitle: z.string(),
      date: z.date(),
      tags: z.array(reference("tags")).optional(),
      blogExclude: z.boolean().optional(),
      emoji: z.preprocess((val) => `@assets/mutantEmoji/${val}`, image()).optional(),
    }),
});

In the end, when I want to make a new blog post, I just add a new markdown file to the content/posts/ directory, and fill the frontmatter fields with the required information (title, subtitle, tags, etc.). That file automatically has a new unique route on my site, and the page is formatted automatically by filling in the templates I created in my Blog Layout page.

It is a LOT of work upfront nailing down your schemas and especially building your template blog/content-display page…but my god it is so convenient and satisfying to use.

Routing Complexity

I won’t get into depth here¹, but the dynamic routing capabilities of Astro get kind of nutty. Routing is dead simple…until it isn’t.

In my Books Page, it looks like there are only 2 pages. The list page, and then the individual book-post page. But because all interactivity is just routing, it means that to have 2 Views and Tag Filtering, I need a dynamic folder for the [view] side of things, and then a further nested [...tags] catch for filtering by tags on top of the views (not to mention an og/ directory for generating custom open-graph images).
It works! Really well, in fact. But figuring this out took a long time and is a part of Astro I’d push a new user away from until they get more comfortable with routing overall.

A lot of structure just to display a list of books.

Astro Islands

This is probably the most important but least-interesting to me, personally. In short, you can make actual React, Svelte, Solid (etc.) components in your Astro app. The idea is “Islands of Interactivity” or more colloquially, “selective hydration”.

I’ll skip ahead to an example: the only significant Island I’ve made here is my Accordion component. It was too complicated ~~(aka I couldn’t be bothered)~~ trying to figure out how to manage a performant, good-looking accordion feature in my site with just <script> tag javascript. So I made it in React instead. When I import it into my Astro (or Markdown) files I have to specify whether it’s loaded immediately, or on-view…etc.

It’s really cool! Makes Astro flexible, and I think so long as you don’t over-do it and only rely on it when it feels like the best solution, then it’s just great to have.

I’m just imagining new React Developer “useState hell” but with Astro Islands…

Opinions on Astro

It’s probably pretty obvious that I’m a pretty big fan of Astro overall. For brevity’s sake, here are my highlights:

I get to design webpages like I’m doing React development (conditional rendering my beloved)
I don’t have to think about routing (with rare exceptions)
Explicitly encourages component architecture-driven design and building templates
My sites load and run so quick and smooth that my friends can’t even tell they’re changing pages
It makes using Markdown files within my broader site easy and intuitive

I really like Astro! It fits my webdev personality pretty nicely, and it’s the perfect combination of open-ended and opinionated for my purposes.

I was going to do a “Pros/Cons” thing but all of the Cons are pretty much explicitly outlined by Astro’s overall premise…I really didn’t find enough jank to feel like there are Cons that don’t boil down to “you shouldn’t be using Astro to begin with.”

My Biggest Astro Struggle So Far

Not a negative (as I enjoy solving a problem like this), but it took a lot more work than I expected: Open Graph image generation. I wanted so badly to be able to generate custom images with text on them for my blog (without AI).
Spoilers: I did it! But it was really tricky.

I’ll go into more detail in a future blog post, but suffice to say it took a lot of googling and ended with me having to design the OG image template as embedded HTML within a React file. Awful! But like, fine, you know? And in the end I’m able to share my blog posts with unique, neat OG preview images without any extra work :3

The OG image for this blog post! Generated before even posting the new blog post

Who should use it?

Most folks could probably use and enjoy Astro, but I will say that there are plenty of other simpler static-site generators such as Eleventy. If you literally just want to build a blog, I think Astro out of the box is overkill. Or at the very least, a bit over-complicated.

It’s very easy to say that if you enjoy webdev and want both full control and an enjoyable framework to play with, Astro is a lot of fun. I have run into very few roadblocks caused directly by either Astro’s design philosophy or build quality.

An attempt was made. ↩

Sardine Summer, Baybee 🌞 🐟

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

For the first time in a very long time, I feel like I’ve got the whole summer ahead of me, mine for the taking. And I’m not sure what to do with it!

Summers of Yore

The last few years have kind of sucked for various reasons, or have just been busy in Not Fun ways.
Last year I spent most of June visiting family, and even had a weekend with friends out on the lake. It was a great time, but I spent a full month away from Chicago during what I quickly learned is the BEST time to be in Chicago 🙄

To be fair, it’s a pretty good time to be at a lake too.

The Game Plan

On the docket for this summer so far:

🦊 Anthrocon 2025
🏟️ See a Cubs game (I haven’t been to a baseball game since I lived in St. Louis a decade ago!)
🏙️ Architecture riverboat tour with parents
🍗 Bristol Ren Fair
🚴‍♂️ Bike rides (especially Critical Mass)
🎨 Art Fight (not really a traditional Summer Activity™ but it’s always during July…)
🏳️‍🌈 Pride Parade!

A bit of a reset

Most of what I’ll be doing though is relaxing. With my job search and my Spring spent working on this (and other) websites, I haven’t had much time for my other hobbies. I haven’t drawn a thing a since December,¹ and I’m very behind on my reading.

Hopefully soon after posting this blog post, the new Books section of my website will be done :3c
Be sure to check it out if you want to see what I’m reading, and what I’ve read!

I’m also hoping to grind out the last 5% of body fat from my current cut diet. As of time of writing I’m at ~17% and the goal is 12% by the end of August. Probably can do it sooner! But we’ll see…cutting like this is so difficult. Gonna have to resist a lot of good summer cookout food 🥲 ~~Maybe I should give Sardine Summer a shot huh~~

Argent Real

With a goal of “finished by Anthrocon”, probably the coolest thing I’m doing this summer is turning into IRL Argent 👀

Courtesy of the gf! Argent is her 3rd fursuit head she’s made, and I think she’s doing an incredible job :3

Just look at those shapes!! That’s SNAKE!! That’s me! Wrwow.

Thanks for reading! If you have any cool Chicago summer activity ideas please let me know 👀… I’m still new enough to the city that I know I haven’t even scratched the surface here.

Okay that’s not quite true ↩

I Made A Website

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Inspired by so many amazing furry websites, I decided that my first big 2025 project would be to finally make a Proper Personal Website™.

Planning/Development

Honestly I did the worst thing possible and just started coding without actually designing. On top of that I picked the tech stack before really anything else haha. This was 100% a bad idea BUT it was still kinda fun.

The tech stack is just TailwindCSS, AstroJS and a tiny bit of React :3

AstroJS

Shoutout to my friend Throudin for helping me lock in on AstroJS for this site. I’d heard about it on Fireship’s pretty convincing YouTube Video but Throudin helped me give it a real solid try, and it rocks. Ironically it probably made my “code first, design second” approach more accessible…contributing to the ineffeciency. But once I got going it was only good.

Everything is an Astro File

Similar to React, any file with rendered content was just an Astro file. Using Frontmatter for compile-time Javascript and importing components, then just JSX style code for the rest of the file. It reads pretty comfortably and writing it feels intuitive.

Error Page Component

---
import { Image } from "astro:assets";
 
import argentWhine from "@assets/argent/stickers/babanasaur/whine.png";
 
interface Props {
  title?: string;
  subtitle?: string;
  goBack?: boolean;
}
 
const { title, subtitle, goBack = false } = Astro.props;
---
 
<div class="flex flex-col justify-center items-center h-full grow">
  <h1 class="text-9xl text-slate-200 font-black">{title}</h1>
  <h2 class="text-6xl text-slate-200 font-black capitalize">{subtitle}</h2>
  <Image src={argentWhine} alt="Argent Whine" class="max-w-64" />
  <a
    class:list={[
      "rounded-md text-slate-200 p-2 bg-redDarkest hover:cursor-pointer hover:bg-redDark ring-2 ring-yellow mt-5 text-3xl",
      `${goBack ? "block" : "hidden"}`,
    ]}
    href="/links">Need Some Directions?</a
  >
</div>

Content Collections

Probably the coolest thing about Astro is its Collections API. On this site all of the blog posts, about page sub-pages, tags, and 88x31 badges are generated on the site via the Collection system.
By essentially standardizing the format of these forms of data, I can do my favorite Typescript thing ever with them: map() into an array! My favorite thing about React, Angular, all these JS frameworks is being able ot cut down on the tedium of hardcoding things.

Recommendation

I 100% recommend AstroJS especially for any static site. It’s just great to use, and its development is active and responsive.

The Future

Aside from (hopefully) regular blog posts, I’m not sure what else I’ll add to this site, if anything. I have some pre-made unfinished links on the Links Page suggesting future things but who knows. WebDev is not my favorite hobby since it’s ever-present in my professional career…The creativity and problem solving are fun, but I really just want to finish to go back to drawing and working out lol.

The one big exception is if my friends ask for help with their websites I’m gonna be 1000% ON for that!!

Regal's Blog

Art Fight 2026

2026 Art Fight Season

Life Context

1. Veryn

2. Rieger

3. Mantra

4. Lumie (and Kiln)

5. Jelly

6. Levi

7. Lorwell Locksmith

8. Red

9. Raspberry

10. Nicanor

11. Keel

12. Juniper

Conclusion

Peruvian Coffee Showcase

Preamble

Cupping Event

Smell!

Taste!

Other Cuppings

Future Coffee Stuff…?

Footnotes

Snake in a Doggy Dog World

Personal Context

Shows and Expos

Shows

Expos

Dog Grooming Business

A Spectrum of Quality and Lack of Regulation

This Job BARKet Is Hell

The Obvious, Difficult Solution

Conclusion

You Should Get A Better Mic

Why Bother With This?

You Deserve Better Than a Headset

You also deserve to wear a pair of comfy, cool headphones instead

Your friends deserve to hear your real voice

Good mics are cool as hell

This is the guide section

XLR vs USB

Dynamic vs. Condenser Microphones

What do I need?

What else should I consider?

Software

So which one do I get?

Microphones

USB Interface

Further Research

Anti-Recommendations

My personal setup

My 2026 Frontend Dev Job Search Experience

My Particular Flavor of Software Dev

What I do

The State of the Search

Startups — Are they for suckers?

AI and Crypto Nonsense

“Take a proctored test before we look at your application”

Can you legally fucking ask that

Honorable Mentions, I guess

Detailing My Specific Experiences Thus Far

#1: Sketchy Startup Eager to Sell Out

Vibe Check

Interview

#2: Old Company Loves Outdated Tests

Vibe Check

Interview

#3: Over-Eager Local Startup Does Personality Astrology Test

The Job

Vibe Check

The Process

The Personality Test

In-Person Interview

Technical Interview

Product Design Interview

Verdict

#4: Legacy Company Wants to Pay Me Crazy Well to Drive to the Suburbs

#5: The Infinite-Ambition 10-month Interview Tech Company