Thirty two

Another year, another life update shared with you, dear reader, on my birthday. Some significant events happened. I proposed to my partner, ended up having another enjoyable summer between jobs, and racked up some good miles while on the bike and while travelling. Let’s get to it.

Work

After 2.5 years at Mantle, we got bought by Shopify! I wasn’t that interested in joining Shopify for that journey (been there, done that), but several of my team members and founders did end up going over. Mantle has been an incredible adventure at an opportune time: being part of a startup as the world got overtaken by AI. We had a very strong team that worked so well together, and built a great product, company, and community that shows it. My take on Mantle’s ending is that we didn’t pivot early enough from being only in the Shopify ecosystem towards other platforms such as AI vibe coding apps, or anyone building a SaaS. It’s common for this to happen to startups. Would I work with the same team again on another startup? Absolutely.

Since the end of Mantle, I have been as eager as ever to continue building. Up until the last few days at Mantle, I was still polishing our latest helpdesk product, already in production for several dozen customers, including some of the biggest Shopify app partners out there. It was nice to take a bit of a break from coding to enjoy the beginning of summer by getting outside as much as possible. My partner had to keep up with my itch for going camping. But I still needed that sense of building something. So I ended up working on a few startup ideas: investment simulators, airport radio transcription tech, a wedding website, and writing a lot more for my blog. Having a $150 Claude or Codex subscription was money well spent exploring these ideas.

Stay tuned for an update of what I’m working on next.

Otherwise, I’ve spent the past couple years focusing back on my own personal development as an engineer, keeping up with the latest AI technologies and tools, and experimenting with them. I remember the first time starting some long-running agentic coding sessions overnight and being concerned whether it would go haywire or not. It ended up being totally fine, but definitely a measurable step in trusting AI to do more for me. I’ve been focusing on using AI to speed up my own software development as well as building little apps or services for my own personal use. That hands-on experience has been great to get a feel for the latest and greatest AI technology trends.

Travel

This year’s been a great one for travel. It started out with going to Australia with my partner for a few weeks. We wanted a mix of some downtown city experiences as well as beach locations, so we settled on visiting Sydney, renting a car and going up to Nelson Bay, flying over to Hamilton Island, and then some time in Melbourne. Australia is an incredible place. I love it. I half-jokingly looked into what it takes to immigrate to Australia when we were there because the way of life and being close to a beach are just so awesome. Another big part of that trip was surprising my partner by proposing to her. She said yes, of course. And since I planned for that to happen earlier in the trip, the rest of the trip was all the more special.

In the springtime, we visited Prince Edward County. Again, it’s becoming one of our must-visit spots every year. We did the usual winery and brewery and restaurant pilgrimage, but this time we also toured a couple venues for my partner’s and my upcoming wedding. We’re looking forward to getting married in the county next year.

This summer, we knew we had a new task on our hands with our dog, Poppy. We had to introduce her to the water, and hopefully, she lives up to the ‘water dog’ part of her breed. Everywhere we went, whether it was the cottage or PEI’s beaches, we tried to get her to swim. She can now go up to her chest willingly, but going any further requires us to coax her in. It’s not yet as voluntary as we’d like it to be, but that’s still great progress.

Since my sister is living out in Prince Edward Island these days with her partner, this summer we and my extended family decided to go out and visit her for a week. We rented two side-by-side Airbnbs in a beautiful spot near the ocean. It was a great time together with family. And great meeting her partner’s family too.

The week after that, my partner and I joined up with some friends of ours at another Airbnb near Cavendish, and just had an absolutely great time eating all of the great seafood, going to beaches, golfing, and exploring the nearby towns. If it wasn’t lobster rolls being consumed, it was definitely copious amounts of oysters. One of the outings we absolutely loved was going to Raspberry Point Oyster Company and going on one of their oyster tours. Not only did we learn all about oysters and how they are farmed, but they most importantly taught us how to shuck an oyster. And the way they did that was by giving us three big boxes of oysters for all of us on the tour to go through. I probably had upwards of sixty oysters, which made me question if I was going to get some sort of zinc poisoning, but they were so delicious. We also bought a box of a hundred oysters ourselves and shucked them over the week at our Airbnb. Each evening was filled with a round or two of shucking and serving up platters of oysters. Now that I’m off the island, I definitely miss that the most.

One of the best parts of the trip, besides the oysters, was taking everyone to a hidden beach near French River. It’s one of those beaches where you have to drive on a narrow dirt path around the perimeter of a farm field before you reach the edge of the island. Everyone in the car is questioning where you’re taking them. Then you park, hike down a cliff, and there you have an amazing private, secluded beach. Loading up on beers and snacks and playing our own music made for two wonderful beach days there.

Lastly, my partner and I went out to Vancouver to visit our west coast friends. This time we stayed at their new place and got to hang out with their year-and-a-half-old. We weren’t in our usual party and stay out late mode because of this, but I still very much enjoyed the amazing restaurants, beautiful city to explore by bike, and catching up with these guys. We paid our way by teaching them how to use their new barbeque, hang some drapes, install a hanging light, and a few other small tasks. It’s fun being able to help others make their place more beautiful and lived in by lending a bunch of these DIY skills.

Cycling

Ottawa continues to surprise me. There are bike paths everywhere, including on the Quebec side, and even after thinking I’ve cycled all the paths, there are still new ones to discover. I took a wrong turn one day and discovered a beautiful path that heads through some green space up to Gatineau Park. Speaking of the park, I only visited Pink Lake early in the season. My legs weren’t feeling it to keep going on. I’ve made up for it by going out to Aylmer and along the river paths quite a few times. One of the hour-and-a-bit loops I love doing these days is along the river path, down into the centrepoint neighbourhood, east all the way to the experimental farm, then back up along the canal. It’s all on bike paths and offers some hills with a lot of availability to go as fast or slow as you want. Doing this in reverse helps change things up, and extending the route to include the river paths or going over to the Quebec side is easy enough to add on if I’m feeling more distance.

There have only been a few epic bike rides this year, either because of bad weather or just bad timing. Out in Prince Edward Island, I did an amazing 60-kilometre loop from our place near Cavendish, all the way out west to Kensington, up to Malepec Bay, across through French River and back to the Airbnb. This was such a beautiful ride because of the scenic ocean and farmland views. The roads were well kept and only a few hills were encountered along the way. The legs just had enough energy to keep me going the entire way. So good.

Another PEI ride was on a very windy and overcast day out in the eastern part. This part of the island was a bit busier than expected, but at least had large shoulders to ride on. Georgetown, Cardigan, and Montague were visited, with a stop for coffee in Montague. This had to be a quick 40k ride since the rain was coming soon, but it was worth all the scenic views. I chanced riding back on the Confederation Trail to see how my narrow tires would do on the fine gravel. It turned out fine, and ended up being a slow relaxing ride back. You can basically do the entire island via these old railroad track trails - that trail or the roads are something I absolutely want to ride more of in the future.

While in Vancouver, I borrowed one of my friend’s road bikes and just took off for a couple-hour joyride. I was already enamoured with walking around the neighbourhoods and looking at the old houses and dense foliage. With countless cyclists silently egging me on, I had to get out. I’d never been around the University of British Columbia before, so I set off from the South Cambie neighbourhood and headed generally in that western direction, taking the roads marked as bike-friendly like 10th and 8th ave. Not that many cars passed even though I was sailing through neighbourhoods with other cyclists. Once reaching the forest surrounding UBC and realizing that I could ride my bike through there, I quickly found out that I needed to slow down since the tall trees and nature were so nice to see. Once popping out on the south side, I rode north around the university. I was lucky that I crossed UBC from the south since I had quite the nice hill to coast down, bringing me back along the ocean pathways and passing by scenic lookouts, beaches, and familiar paths around False Creek. The hill back up Heather Street is a familiar favourite for its sheer steepness that I love powering up. I can totally see myself spending a few months out here during the summer just cycling around on the paths and roads, exploring the beautiful old-growth forests around UBC, or even going north up into the mountains. See you sooner rather than later, Vancouver.

And other fitness activities

I tried cross-country skiing in high school without much success. After trying it again with a friend of mine, I can definitely see the allure now: cruising along beautifully groomed tracks and getting some great cardio exercise. I’m in. I should definitely get some cross-country skis for this upcoming season since Ottawa has kilometres of groomed track nearby along the river, and a silly amount up in Gatineau Park. Not too sure how I’ll be with hills yet, especially if I’m skiing classic, but I should try out the skate skis too.

Downhill skiing-wise, I didn’t actually get out that much this year. Probably to do with missing most of January and a slow start to the ski season in December, but I’m very excited to get back to it this year and hopefully will travel out west or even to Europe to do some skiing.

Catch you next year!