I have recently started to work on a cool side project which I am super excited about! I am currently building a Chip-8 emulator as a pure C++ Turbo Native Module and using React Native Skia as the rendering engine.

This was project that I had in mind since I was in college. However, at the time it seemed way too complicated and somehow never found the time and motivation to actually start it.

A good question that may come, is: Why C++? The reason I chose C++, is, because I want to deepen my knowledge in React Native. More specifically, understand how JSI and Turbo Modules work in React Native.

After writing C++ for a few days, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I was actually enjoying the language. Last time I have written C++ code was in high school and my memories weren't so pleasant then... xD

It's also surprising, how much I have learned about CPUs, memory, reading binary data and bitwise operation in just a few days. It helped me gain a lot more knowledge on these subjects and actually understand them on a practical level.

I will be posting more updates on this project in the next couple of weeks! Stay tuned!

P.S. For anyone interested, I am using the following Chip-8 Technical Reference manual.

One of my all time favorite movies is Alien(1979). The story, art direction, sound, everything in this movie is a masterpiece and I have came back to watch it many times throughout the years. However, there is one particular thing which I really love in the movie, is the User Interface!

Here is a compilation of the UI elements created for Alien Romulus(2024) movie, based on Jason Forrest Hogg's incredible work.

I really hope to see the "retro-sci-fi" UI design used more often. It's a timeless design that brings me so much joy!

I am a huge fan of the Elite Dangerous game that was released in 2014. This was my first space sim that I felt in love and to this day is one of my favorite games to spend evenings in.

Recently, I found a great video by Mark Moxon (which, by the way, has an amazing blog!) about the first Elite game that was released back in 1984 for the BBC Micro. The crazy part is that Ian Bell and David Braben, the authors of Elite, managed to squeeze an entire 3D graphics engine, 2000 star systems, 8 galaxies and a full galactic economy into just 23K of beautifully crafted machine code!

If you can, spare some time and watch this amazing deep dive into the world of Elite!

Today I have released a major update to andreizgirvaci.com. Adding Logs along the regular Articles. Logs, are basically short Tweets that live on my website.

They also should help bring more context to my articles as I will try to share my thoughts more often without having to finish writing an entire article.

I have also made some small design changes in hopes of making the website more accessible. Hope you enjoy!