My first intercontinental business trip ever and my first international business trip since my Seattle trip at Zynga! I stayed a week in the Bahnhofstrasse city area: Flew in Saturday afternoon, worked Monday ~ Friday, and left Saturday morning. It was my first time flying intercontinental business class since 2000 (when I immigrated to the US as a child), and it was so nice! The office that I went to was pretty barebones, and the work was busy but fun! ... Read More

Inspired by my friend’s travel blog, I’m determined to record my experience going on a cruise with my spouse and my parents-in-law. The cruise was with Viking Cruises and it was called Mediterranean Odyssey. It was just under $8k per person, and our first all-inclusive trip experience. We didn’t really take much vacation during the pandemic – a small trip to Napa in Summer 2022 served as a mini vacation but the others were mostly going here and there for weddings or family stuff. ... Read More

This past June, I had the unique experience of publishing a bite-sized representation of what I had been working on for a little under a year and a half to the world: Google AI Blog Post: Quickly Training Game-Playing Agents with Machine Learning Falken Github Repository One and a half years seems like a really short time, and most of it was spent during quarantine. During that time I started driving for real (I had a license for license sake for 10+ years), purchased a home, moved, and handled more than a couple family changes, including welcoming a cat. ... Read More

💪Swole Squad🥊🐜🥗 is a game I submitted for the LD48 game jam back in April. Play at: https://hinerz.itch.io/swole-squad or http://hinasakazaki.com/ChatHorror/ GitHub: https://github.com/hinasakazaki/ChatHorror Overview Inspired by some story-telling chat apps, I decided that for this Ludum Dare, I would make a chat based novel game. Rather than aesthetics or technology, I tried to focus on the emotions text and sound can trigger. A chat screen is something we’re used to seeing – the more realistic it is, the easier it is for the player to immerse as the recipient of the messages, and someone making choices on what messages to send. ... Read More

Late Summer of 2020, my spouse and I purchased a home (a whole heap of fun which I don’t want to think about). While the various fruit trees that it came with weren’t the deciding factor, it certainly seems that they will become a large part of our lifestyle. We’ve only lived here for almost three months, and we’ve already spent quite a bit of effort on the hachiya persimmons for a good two months: ... Read More