Kandria

Holidays, hiring, and more

Last week I finally convinced myself to put the job listing online, which I did on Thursday. Right the day after I went on holidays, and only yesterday got back to work. I didn't bring my laptop with me on purpose, but I still had my phone, so I kept getting little alerts about new mails coming in while I was away. That was a really pleasant experience!

As I'm writing this there's over 50 applications for the pixel artist and writer jobs combined. Today I started sorting and evaluating them a bit, but it's going to take a whole lot of time more to thoroughly go through all the material I was sent and somehow evaluate what I think of it all. Especially actually deciding on who looks like the best candidate is going to be tough. Anyway, I'm still open to more applications until I've settled on someone, so if you are interested in the position, or know others that are, please pass it on!

I also started working on some smaller improvements, such as a bug reporting system. Once it's done you'll be able to hit a button, fill in a description, and it'll automatically gather a screenshot, the logs so far, your current save file, and system information and send anonymously send it over to a private server for me to debug. Both the server and client parts of that are open source, so if you're worried about privacy and security, you can feel free to audit it, too!

It's still a bit glitchy right now due to the immaturity of Alloy as a UI toolkit, but I hope to get that ironed out by the end of the month, along with the other minor features I have planned for the next prototype release.

Then I also spent some time cleaning up and filling up my todo list with more, smaller tasks that I can focus on if I get burnt out on bigger ones. Finally, during my holidays I got another email besides the applications, namely one about the exam results for my ETH studies. Unfortunately I did not pass my classes, and due to the way the curriculum is structured, it now means my MSc. is pretty much forfeit as I'm out of time – and out of patience.

I could ask for an extension and probably get it, but that would still mean I need to repeat and actually pass the courses, something I just don't see myself wanting to do. Taking a break for a semester is also not an option due to breaks not extending the term limit, and I'm already out of time as it is. I'm not yet 100% decided on what's going to happen – I'll talk to the study counsellor first and see what my options are then, but it seems very likely that I'll drop out and instead focus on Kandria full time.

I'm honestly not surprised by the results, and not that bothered about the idea of dropping the MSc, though it is undeniably a shame. I'm much more bothered by the idea of the past two years having been a lot of stress and suffering for nothing, but I suppose we all have to count our losses sometimes.

Anyway, for now I'm going to see what the counselling is going to bring and then see furthur from there. For Kandria my time investment can only increase from here, so that's the silver lining, I suppose.

Hopefully I'll have some less depressing news for you in the next weekly!