About Me · vereis.com

Ahoy~!! I’m vereis~!!

I don’t really know how to introduce myself in one sentence, so I made this page instead. It’s a living Q&A thing… questions people ask me, things I feel like writing down, whatever.

Just me rambling about myself and trying to be organized and future proof about it :)

You can find out more about me here:

If you want to say hi, you can also find me in these places :)

You can also reach me via email. Always happy to chat~!!

Computer Stuff

Favourite language?

It shocks a lot of people, but I actually prefer Erlang over Elixir as a language. I wish it had macros, sure, but I like how intentional everything feels.

The syntax with ,, ;, and . as function boundary markers is genuinely beautiful to me… it’s prosaic, it’s clear, and once you get it you don’t un-get it.

I miss Elixir’s standard library though, and its macros, and the community. If I could have Erlang’s bones with Elixir’s ecosystem I’d be insufferable about it.

On a completely abstract level I also love Lisp. I don’t know Lisp! But I love it.

Favourite database?

SQLite. It’s small, it’s simple, and the whole thing fits in my head. I don’t think I need to say more than that.

Unfortunately, most places will use Postgres by default, and don’t get me wrong, Postgres is my second favourite database. But SQLite is one file. One. File.

Your setup?

I run NixOS on everything. I have a nix-shaped crush on making Linux not hurt and it’s mostly working out.

I keep a /uses page with my full setup, hobbies, and other stuff. It’s a bit of a mess but I try to keep it up to date.

Building anything?

I’m building an anime-inspired “monster-catching” deck builder JRPG MMO and I’m going to open source it!

It’s a serious project and I’m not being coy about it… I just don’t want to say too much yet. You’ll see :)

Favourite project?

patterns, an Elixir library that scratches many very specific itches I get when I build in Elixir and I’m kind of proud of it.

That’s all I’ll say for now.

What grinds your gears?

I hate it when people build things with no sense of a bigger picture. Their work might be good locally, good for the problem right in front of them, but I’ve seen where that leads and it’s not maintainable.

You have to care about the shape of the whole thing, not just the piece you’re touching.

IRL Stuff

Formative Experience?

I was stabbed by a pencil! I must have been like five. I don’t remember exactly why it happened, the memory’s fuzzy… but I remember my mum seeing it when I got home. There was a pencil lead or something stuck in my back.

I had to go to a doctor’s place where they held me down on a table and tried to extract it. They didn’t have the right tools. I think they tried using sticky tape to pull it out? It was very hacky and kludgy and honestly I wryly attribute my love of all things hacky and kludgy to that formative moment lmfao.

What’re you proud of?

Short and sweet: falling in love with my fiance when we were both sixteen. First loves. Still going :P

Any advice?

That it’s okay to be weird. That it’s okay to be different. That I should be less shy, more confident, just… happier. You’re your brain. You can literally just do it.

I spent too much time worrying about how I came across when I could have just been myself and been fine.

How do you fail?

I take failure really hard.

Depending on how bad it is, I might retreat into my shell for a while and not be as outgoing or energetic. But I always learn from it. Learning from your mistakes is genuinely the best way to grow and I do mean that.

Any “change” moments?

When I was a kid on Windows, I was really into ricing my desktop. At some point I realized that the command line was basically a text version of how computers did things. In my brain at the time, I thought all clicks and keypresses had internal shell scripts behind them.

That’s obviously wrong. But honestly it’s not a bad mental model. It helped me piece together “how computers work.”

Still figuring anything out?

How to make time for all my hobbies.

I’m really bad at disconnecting. There’s always something I want to be doing or making or reading or playing and I haven’t quite figured out how to be okay with doing less.

Media

Favourite anime?

Naruto (Shippuden), my favourite like… mainstream pick.
Attack on Titan, my favourite more “serious” mainstream pick.
Madoka Magica, my “artsy” pick and I love the composer Yuki Kajiura’s work on it.
Frieren, for its fresh take on telling a very traditional story
Shinsekai Yori, one of the best anime ever made as long as you forgive the pacing of the second arc. A real hidden gem.

There’s more… Clannad for high school romance, lots of others, but those are the ones I’d defend with my life.

Watching anything?

Planning to watch the second season of Frieren, Witch Hat Atelier, and Princess Jellyfish. I’m behind on my backlog (and have been since like 2012) but that’s fine.

Favourite game?

Visual novels are a separate category, so for games specifically…

I don’t really have one single favourite. I was a competitive top-ranked Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 player in the UK, which is silly and dumb but it happened.

Half-Life 1 is probably the closest thing to a real answer… I had it on a preowned PC we bought when I was growing up in Malaysia, and you wouldn’t believe how far a five-year-old could get through that game with enough savescumming :)

Minecraft too, but I play for building and aesthetics more than anything… Tales of Symphonia for the plot twist and classic JRPG charm…

Maybe for classics I’d say Spyro 2 as an example of a perfect collectathon (not too short or long, not gimmicky, just charm!). Crash 2 for classic platforming (ditto… no bloat just great tight gameplay).

I’m pretty open with games but hard to pin down to one answer. It’s really vibe-based for me.

Playing anything?

I’m replaying Dot Hack GU Remastered. It was one of the first JRPGs I ever beat, but I saved too eagerly after the final boss when I was a kid because it was like 5am and I needed to sleep.

To this day I’ve refused to look up the final cutscenes or what the various character romance endings are like. I’ll get there this time ;w;

Favourite VN?

SubaHibi, because it’s one of the best depictions of what it looks like to be clinically insane. Or G-Senjou no Maou, for a VN experience that couldn’t really be translated into a movie or anime or show. It just does what it does really well.

If you’re just getting into visual novels, try a classic like Clannad or something free to play like Katawa Shoujo.

Reading anything?

I’m not the world’s most avid reader, but I’ve just finished re-reading The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey and I’m looking for new stuff to read.

Currently I’m getting through Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, as well as Junji Ito’s Gyo which is about a fish invasion and is terrifying and beautiful.

Listen to anything?

Anime OSTs, Touhou music, 8-bit video game arranges. Stuff that fills the room without demanding attention.

I particularly like MEGAZUN which is a Touhou arrange album that sounds like it uses the 8-bit Megaman soundfont. It’s a very specific niche but I love it: I feel technical listening to it :)

What shaped you?

Naruto.

I know how that sounds, but hear me out…

Kakashi’s whole deal… being wildly capable while also being whimsical and aloof and a little weird… it made me feel like it was okay to lean into being weird.

It didn’t take anything away from him. The idea that working hard can make all the difference, even if you’re an underachiever or a screw-up or whatever… it made me a fighter. I believe in chasing the impossible. I really do, believe it :P

Work

Your job?

Tech & Team Lead. It still catches me off guard sometimes, not because I don’t think I earned it, but because titles are weird and imposter syndrome is real and I’m not immune to any of it.

Where do you work?

We build software for veterinarians. We save vets time so they can focus on what actually matters: helping animals.

Vetspire does that by trying to make the whole practice run as smoothly as possible: scheduling, billing, record keeping, inventory, and more! It’s a big problem space and gives us plenty of opportunity to learn and grow as engineers too!

What do you do?

Both architecture and code, and people and planning. I’m never doing just one or the other. It’s constant context switching and honestly I kind of like it that way. I get bored otherwise.

I stay very hands-on, though. I pair with people, I review code, I push people to think about the bigger picture, I work with stakeholders, internal and external… I try to be a leader from inside the pack.

Maybe that’s too much stuff, but I like it :)

Team size?

My direct engineering team is rather small, like 1 to 5 people.

We’re a tiny and nimble unit. I like it that way.

The wider engineering team is probably around ~20 people, and the whole company is around ~200 people but that’s a wild guess.

Background

How’d you start programming?

I remember being really disillusioned with Spyro 1 (I grew up with its sequels, and going back to the original was a very… barren experience) and I thought I could do better…

So I went on AskJeeves (Google for millennials) and searched “how to make a video game” and discovered GameMaker 5.3 and started making little video games, mostly Sonic the Hedgehog fan games, but lots of stuff!

I was seven at the time.

What was child you like?

I was a weird kid! A smart kid and a little bit of a loner… but like, self-inflicted.

I liked being alone, but I also somehow managed to always have a lot of very close friends who’d share my weirdness and curiosity.

I was a little bit of a troublemaker too, but I was never malicious about it. Teachers would get frustrated with me, but it was more me being too much of a smartass than anything else :P

Where’d you grow up?

Malaysia, then the UK. I was born in Malaysia and lived there until I was 7, then moved to the UK where I still am now.

University?

I went to the University of Kent, Canterbury where I read Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence.

I Graduated in 2018 with 1st Class Honours (approx eq. to a 4.0 GPA).

What about parents?

Encouraging, but mainly they left me alone. In the good way.

They let me make my own mistakes, find my own hobbies, pick my own friends. My life has been pretty self-directed and I’m grateful for that.

How’d you get into Erlang?

I was forced to use it in my second year and I was terrible at it. It was abhorrent. Nothing made sense. I hated it with a passion.

But I’m competitive. Like, annoyingly competitive. So I forced myself to use it for every single assignment until I got it. And once I got it… you don’t just un-get it.

I remember I couldn’t stop yapping about Erlang to my friends and classmates. During my internship (between my second and final year) I kept bringing it up and trying to introduce it to the company I was interning at…

Anyway, everything I did from second year onwards was in Erlang. I didn’t think I’d manage to get a job in it (because there are no jobs, let alone junior ones) but luckily I did!

Something people get wrong about you?

Some people think I’m an idiot, because I don’t always know how to respond to things in the expected way.

An LLM once told me that if I were a JRPG character my stat spread would be high INT and low, questionable WIS… which I can’t even argue with.

I flunked maths three times during middle school and have little common sense for everyday things.

I like to frame it as being stupid but in a smart way. I’m not afraid to ask the dumb question or challenge the status quo.

Someone has to… right? :3

How’d you introduce yourself?

Badly.

I ramble and I don’t know where to start and people’s eyes glaze over somewhere around the third topic change.

This page is my attempt at doing it properly… stretched out over way too many questions.

Philosophical thoughts

Thoughts on consciousness?

I think consciousness is fundamental! Like charge! Or mass! Or spin!

I’m a panpsychist… I believe subjective experience is built into the universe at the lowest level. Everything has some kind of proto-consciousness.

Yes, even rocks.

I used to be a strict physicalist: Everything reduces to physics, right? But subjective experience resists reduction in a way that nothing else does. It’s the one thing you can’t explain by just modelling the atoms. The “cuteness” of pink~ The “depth” of love~ The what it’s like to be something.

Thoughts on free will?

Free will is poorly defined, but if you want to shoebox me: I’m a hard superdeterminist.

I don’t think free will exists. Everything follows from everything that came before. The burden of proof is on the people claiming we have it and I’ve never seen a compelling case.

I’ve held this since I was a kid. The thing that broke it for me was the contradiction between an omniscient God and free will. If God knows everything you’ll ever do, how is any choice free?

The only answers anyone’s ever given me has been on this has been copium.

Believe in meaning?

Nothing. I’m a nihilist. That’s not as bleak as it sounds, I promise :3

There’s no inherent meaning, so you get to make your own. Or not. Either way is fine. The universe doesn’t care and I find that oddly comforting.

Believe in faith?

I try to build my mental model of the universe with as few faith-based takes as possible. But the one I keep: other people experience consciousness.

I can’t prove it. Solipsism is technically unfalsifiable. But a universe where other people are real and feel things is a nicer universe, and I’m okay with that being an article of faith. I think it’s the right call.

Thoughts on death?

Consciousness probably continues in some form, but the me-ness dies. The thing that was being experienced… that specific instance of subjective experience… it ends.

Maybe reincarnation comes next, but not in the human sense. Maybe it’s local to where I died, assuming there’s some kind of conscious physical connection. Maybe another lifeform on some other planet. Something continues. It just doesn’t include me. Or even necessarily include life.

I don’t claim to know. I’m just thinking out loud. The honest answer is I find the whole thing scary and beautiful and I’ve made peace with not knowing.

What scares you?

Stuff like eternity, infinity, death. Unbounded things. For all the infinities math throws around, infinity is the one thing we have no concrete falsifiable example of.

Grasping with it and its surrounding concepts is inherently scary to me.

Advice to the world?

Be more whimsical~!! Be more selfish~!! Be more fearless~!!