My name is Tarek, and I’m based in Ojai, California where I am raising my new family. It feels good to be developing for the crypto community again and to be surrounded so many motivated people from all over the world.

Within a month of joining Starbase, my family and I had to evacuate our home for over two weeks due to the Thomas Fire, which grew to become the largest wildfire in California’s history. The fire missed us by less than a quarter mile.

The fire coming over the mountain during sunrise.

It came within .25 miles of the house.

The Starbase team reaction was incredibly supportive. It reminded me of why I fell in love with the crypto community in the first place. I remember reading a multitude of posts on Bitcoin Talk where people helped each other out and thinking, “Wow, these are my people.”

Before Starbase

I built and maintained hundreds of websites through various agencies, built a few short-lived cryptocurrency games, and was a consultant for various crypto startups. Before using my computer skills professionally, I managed an organic farm at the Esalen Institute. I also worked as a machinist with CNC machines at Titan Speed Engineering who unfortunately lost everything in the fire.

My Favorite Project

My favorite project was CryptoClash. A game where users would play coins against each other in 5 minute intervals, similar to a horse race. CryptoClash used our own Javascript framework which borrowed ideas from Redux and React. Keeping dependencies to a minimum, we still incorporated a couple awesome libraries. D3.js and Three.js were used to build out charts and game visuals. The game visualization was fun to build with the help of Blender and Terragen, but my favorite feature was the randomly generated round names. Each of the two words that comprised the round’s name could be clicked on and then the definition would appear. Over the course of the project I would add interesting words I found to the naming dictionary and slowly over time it became my personal dictionary. The game was only live for a day, but we hope to bring it back someday.

Clash of Ephemeral Platitudes

Onwards

Starbase has been a joy to work on and I am very grateful to be included in this team. I enjoy the heavy scrutiny that goes into each commit. There’s so much talent around me and the technology has real potential to change the way blockchain projects get funded and launched.

Tarek