Resolutions are tricky. While the new year tempts us with resolve for our goals, January 1st is often a day like any other. Quite often, this resolve fades as quickly on the first Monday of February as it does the last Thursday in November.
So, instead of resolving myself to some specific goal that just might run away from me, I love setting a theme for the year. In the form of display resolutions.
Creating Games
In 2025, my resolution was 160x144--the display resolution of the original Game Boy. My theme for the year was to create interactive media (mainly games) and to meet as many new and interesting people as possible.
Layered
In April, I participated in my first game jam--solo--and created "Layered", placing 529th out of ~1,600 entries.
Layered was incredibly fun and satisfying to create, and it was my first dip into the unending ocean of creating games. Because I was creating it for fun, I had every excuse in the world to use my own game engine.
I write more about the details in my post-jam article (I used Rust, btw), but my favorite part about creating this game was figuring out how to render “waves” in real-time that would be affected by walls. Here’s an excerpt from the article explaining how I got “wave occlusion” working:
To solve this issue, during each frame, I use my naive ray casting to find all tiles between each tile on the “wave front” and the threat origin. If any of these tiles contains an obstacle, that section (tile) of the wave front is marked as “occluded”, and doesn’t get rendered.
Though simple, this logic results in a fairly convincing illusion of sections of the wave being “deleted” or occluded by obstacles.
Open Sauce
In July, I went to my first Open Sauce in San Francisco, meeting and getting inspired by countless creatives, game developers, and system builders. Of course, no visit to the Bay Area (for me) would be complete without seeing the redwoods for myself with my friends.
One of the favorite connections I made was with the team at Owl Integrations who created the fantastically-named ClusterDuck Protocol, and mailed me several of their LoRa units for testing (if you’re reading this: I still owe you some demos in 2026…).
Recollect
In October, I participated in my second game Jam--still solo--and created "Recollect", skyrocketing to 60th place for "Mood", 82nd for "Audio", 139th for "Innovation", and 397th overall out of ~1,400 entries.
What I enjoyed most about this jam was creating my own audio for the very first time--it was tricky, but I figured out how to create a custom MIDI engine within my game engine so I could have frame-perfect synchronization of audio to visuals.
This custom engine enabled me to create a series of audio tracks that build on each other, and physically affect the game world as you explore it--why not try it for yourself in your web browser? You can also check out some of the source code here.
Creating Writing
Though much of this article has been about creating games, meeting people, and stalking the redwoods, that’s not all I do.
For the past year, I’ve been a Principal AI Engineer for a consultancy called Thoughtworks.
Before that, I led key parts of Wayfair’s advertising data platforms (I know, please forgive me) and AI platforms. I’ve founded startups and advised numerous enterprises (big and small), and received a few patents and NSF funding for my work in distributed computing. So far, the systems I’ve created have driven around $3B in value for their owners.
I’ve done a lot. But what I haven’t done in a while is write.
Despite majoring in rhetoric and writing (and systems engineering (and entrepreneurship)) in university, the last time I wrote something substantial for the public was the first time I wrote a book on interactive media (more than a decade ago now).
This Year’s Resolution
All this lead up brings me to my resolution--my theme--for this year: 1748x2480.
1748x2480 is the resolution of a piece of A5 paper when it’s printed at 300 DPI. This particular configuration is one of a few standard (ish) sizes used when printing books.
While I don’t plan to publish a book again this year, my theme for the year in general is writing--or rather, communicating.
I intend to take more time throughout this year to write about the exciting things I’m creating, the fun people I’m doing it with, and the most interesting lessons I’ve learned along the way.
This is Chats With Caer
If you enjoyed reading this article--or at least, enjoyed any of the many topics I’ve brushed on in this article--why not subscribe, and follow along with me on my journey through 2026?
I’d love to chat with you, too.