Strength Training
01 Feb 2026
I had a single fitness goal for 2025: squat “3 plates” (315 lb). This is how I did it (with 1 day to spare).
GogenDex: An iOS App for Learning Pokemon Names in Japanese
Okay, so this is a super niche app, I admit. But it’s been so useful to me as I play through the mainline pokemon games in Japanese.
Japanese: A Language-Learning Journey
16 May 2021
33 hours of reading later, I finally finished the first Harry Potter book in Japanese!
KameKurosu: An iOS App for Practicing Japanese with Crosswords
09 May 2021
Now that we have all our data into our app, we can actually make our app come to life!
29 Apr 2021
Just as we can prepare pasta from scratch and have it then ready to be cooked, we can prepare our data to be available for use by our app!
18 Feb 2021
So, at this point I have 6 levels x 100 JSON files per level = 600 JSON files filled with raw data, not in a super nice format, and also containing data we don’t need. We need a way to organize all of this data for our app!
10 Feb 2021
The next step was to create the levels. It turns out that crosswords aren’t easy to make. And I’m definitely not planning on making them all by hand…
06 Feb 2021
After finishing my mock-ups, I decided to take a break and focus on more business-related tasks.
31 Jan 2021
The next step was to make more realistic-looking mockups. I used a program called Sketch (for Mac) to create all the mockups. Here are the results!
15 Jan 2021
Well, I’ve finished my iOS course. Now, it is time to build my first app! Let’s get coding, right? Wrong.
13 Jan 2021
What a year 2020 was. Although my goal was to finish that iOS course and start on my own app, life got in the way. I was able to still learn a lot and finished about half of the course early last year. But this year, I made a New Years Resolution to start again where I left off.
23 Mar 2020
Well, the pandemic is currently in full swing! I’m lucky enough to be able to continue work on my PhD remotely, but I have also gained quite a bit of extra free time…
09 Feb 2020
But wait! One thing about apps, which you are probably aware of, is that the market is incredibly saturated. There is an app for everything! From workout logs to todo lists to music players to language learning apps, you’d be hard-pressed to find an app that doesn’t do what you want.
04 Feb 2020
I love crosswords. I do them all the time (often to the detriment of my Japanese studies). This led me to an app idea: solve Japanese crossword puzzles geared toward learners of Japanese that make practicing kanji relaxing, motivating, educational, and most of all, fun.
28 Jan 2020
If you didn’t know, I have been learning Japanese ever since I met my wife, Ayana, in 2014 (and yes, my Japanese still sucks even in 2020). One of the most difficult aspects of learning Japanese is reading (and writing). This led me to a question: how can I make Japanese reading practice more fun?