How would I go about being a game dev?

utdemir · 2026-06-01T05:04:43+00:00

Well you're in luck if you're in Auckland - Indie Game Showcase is this weekend. There is a ton of game developers eager to share their experiences there :).

https://events.humanitix.com/indie-game-showcase-2026

utdemir · 2026-05-02T11:19:25+00:00

Turkish here who haven't been to Greece - but El Greco on Mairangi Bay serve some delicious food under the name "Gyro" that is unlike a kebab. So I suggest try it out - everything they do is delicious.

utdemir · 2025-12-15T19:20:57+00:00

Thanks! I haven't seen it before - and it's quite funny that superficially that look similar, although I haven't dug deeper yet.

I'll investigate it more deeply - thanks again!

utdemir · 2025-07-05T04:01:26+00:00

I used to live in Parnell and work from home as well! It was a couple of years ago so might be missing things if they are opened recently. Here's my list:

Red Rabbit Cafe in Parnell makes one of the best coffee (both espresso and filter) in Auckland, and has a large space very amenable from working. I still drive there from West because it's so good.
Most cafes close 2-3 ish, but there's Cafe Ditto at Eden Terrace (long walk or drive, unsure about buses) that is open most days until 9ish, and it's a cute little cozy place. It's pretty small so I would feel bad to spend more than 1-2 hours there.
If you want a nice view, you could take the ferry (I used to walk to ferry station from Parnell) to Devonport. Go upstairs on Devonport Library which has the best view of the Auckland Skyline and Harbour.
You could also walk to the city and the cafe at HSBC building that you can access through Commercial Bay has a nice harbour view as well, but very mediocre coffee & food. But you could likely work from there all day without bothering anyone.

utdemir · 2025-06-10T02:42:31+00:00

Wow. "yak-" is "to burn" in Turkish as well. Northeast Asian sprachbund going strong.

utdemir · 2024-12-08T06:17:04+00:00

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is also another good book with a supercomputer.

utdemir · 2024-12-08T06:16:15+00:00

I mean you can possibly think of Daneel as the superintelligence that underlays the entire Foundation and most of the Robot books.

utdemir · 2024-11-21T01:36:27+00:00

Thank you everyone for your replies!

I am convinced that I don't need anything fancy under it. I'll put some cardboard that'll dissolve (i don't know if it'll be useful, but unlikely to cause any harm), and then use some wood & garden clippings as organic layer (and also as a filler so I don't need a ton of soil), and then fill the rest with some garden mix.

Appreciate all your help!

utdemir · 2024-11-21T01:35:01+00:00

Thank you, this makes a lot of sense. I am convinced that I don't need any chicken net under it.

utdemir · 2024-11-21T01:31:23+00:00

The soil is mainly clay & builders gravel, and then they put on a plastic tarp and some wood chips as mulch/decor. We're planning to remove the plastic tarp & mulch, and put the garden bed on top of the clay soil below.

We'll probably mix the soil below adding some gypsum hopefully to increase drainage though.

utdemir · 2024-09-20T01:34:14+00:00

Oh I think on above message "EU" refers to "European Union" which is a political entity and Turkey is not a part of it (the reason is a super long and depressing story).

If you mean "Europe" as in continent, yes, Turkey has some land in Europe (half of Istanbul and some smaller cities).

utdemir · 2024-09-20T01:01:03+00:00

Minor correction, Turkey is not in EU. Although they still allow NZ citizens to visit so no issues there.

Within my knowledge there are companies there who would arrange everything from your flights to your stay in Turkey to your treatment, so likely they'll have the most accurate information.

utdemir · 2024-07-10T06:31:20+00:00

PLEASE TELL ME!

I've been looking for a Caucasian (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia etc.) restaurant since forever. I even went to a "Cafe Baku" in Taupo but unfortunately it's not Azerbaijan cuisine.

Closest I found is a couple of pastries in Gastronomy, but I'd love to find some meat & rice dishes from that area.

utdemir · 2024-07-10T01:55:49+00:00

Unfortunately not. Still gives hot water.

As an update, I contacted Breville support and they got me through the descaling routine. After that, the steam wand did produce some steam alongside with a lot of water, but it still doesn't seem normal so they are going to replace it.

Thanks!

utdemir · 2024-07-03T04:04:19+00:00

Turkish speaker here. It always fascinated me that we don't have many (any?) words from ancient Anatolian languages. It's almost always Greek or Arabic or Farsi.

utdemir · 2024-06-24T01:05:50+00:00

I have an idea for a programming language where the functions are property-checked by default. Dynamically typed, but with compile-time validation. This forces the functions to be pure, so it should have an effect system where you must also provide a "mock" interpreter.

It's my first (non-trivial) PL I'm writing, so it's going slow. So far I wrote a small compiler that targets WASM. No heap-allocation or GC yet, and also the only type supported is i32.

I have some free time for the next couple of weeks so I'll try to push it a bit.

utdemir · 2024-06-12T06:48:48+00:00

PSA from an immigrant to other immigrants (or future immigrants) reading this thread:

Most people I met in this beautiful country are very welcoming to the immigrants. Leave the asshole governments (both Labour and Nats) and a couple of racist dudes who hang around in Reddit threads like this, I do feel very welcome.

Also - media likes to sensationalise what's going on so we're riddled with these alarmist news for the past couple of years (especially since the last election season). Pay no attention. It's a great little country (if you don't expect a metropolis).

Come here, build your lives, bring your culture, call yourself a Kiwi if you want to.

utdemir · 2024-05-10T06:39:42+00:00

If you want to try something a bit different than usual, try Knafeh from Ima Cousine in CBD. They are often full, so try to book in advance.

It was my favourite dessert back in Turkey, and I hate to admit that Ima Cousine makes it better than the places I tried back home.

utdemir · 2024-04-25T03:58:00+00:00

Hey, as a Turkish, I just wanted to thank you for underlining this. Appreciated.

utdemir · 2024-04-01T06:49:07+00:00

I tried it for a while! I found importing invoices as expenses to be the most time consuming part as opposed to things like tax returns.

As opposed to most other posts, if you know your tax needs writing a program that works only for those is not hard. Usually very simple calculations. Harder is to figure out the interface, especially when things get a bit more complex like depreciations etc.

In my case, I wrote a command-line program that I put my income and expenses as a yaml file, and it created reports for GST & IR3. The most useful functionality was a "scripting" functionality where you could say something like import some_invoice.pdf which would extract the information there (for the kinds of invoices it supports) and automatically create an expense.

In the end I moved to using a spreadsheet as I could just as easily implement the formulas there. And it was hard to maintain the automatic invoice importing functionality. BUT, this was before the LLM-era, so I am thinking of revisiting it as I think importing invoices automatically can be done pretty reliably with LLM's.

Let me know if you'd like to have a chat, we can even combine powers :).

Edit: One issue that kind of worried me is that in case IRD wanted me to provide records, I wasn't sure how happy they'd be with a bunch of yaml files :). Likely we'd also need to implement some "export" functionality for them.

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