Nerd Show and Tell: Meet Sr. Developer Ed Emanuel

May 2, 2023

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In this edition of the Nerd Show and Tell we chat with Ed Emanuel, Senior Developer at Font Awesome. Ed started programming at the age of 12 years old with a TSR 80, and hasn't looked back since. As part of Ed's ongoing learning, he has been working on a new text-based game based on the Oregon Trail known as Space Awesome since last year. As Ed created Space Awesome, he also used it to learn Vue.JS, and the graphics are Font Awesome space-themed icons.

The discussion also includes a look at the recent work that Ed and Mike Wilkerson have been doing on the Icon Wizard project. He also shares his love of 3D printers and Dungeons and Dragons.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:02:27 Working with Dave and Travis at Font Awesome

0:04:07 Creating Custom Icons with Font Awesome Pro

0:06:34 3D Printing and D&D Miniatures

0:10:31 Exploring Icon Themes and Favorite Font Awesome Icons

0:12:11 Space Awesome Game Launch

0:14:02 Text-Based Games and Working at Blockbuster Video Warehouse

0:16:20 Discussing Ed's Interest in Dungeons and Dragons

0:19:21 Conversation on the Popularity of Dungeons & Dragons and Role-Playing Games

0:21:51 The Role of a Dungeon Master in Dungeons and Dragons

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Highlights

Well, I think I can thank my brother in law for that one as well. When he started dating my sister, my older sister, they played DND and kind of introduced me and my other siblings to it. So I played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons back in the late eighty s a little bit. And then we didn't have any of the books. So we kind of homebrewed our own game for a while, just like everyone else. We kind of stepped away from it for a while and then, let's see, it's been five or six years ago actually.

It went well. We had lots of traffic the first couple of weeks. Not as much since then, but when I designed the game, I wanted to kind of respect people's time. It does not require a huge investment in your time. You can sit down and play it for five to ten minutes, and while there are a lot of secrets to discover and things that you probably won't encounter your first time through. There's no timers. There's no anything that requires that you come back and play it every day.

Well, I think we have a 20 sided dice that belongs in there. We have some swords, axe, the wizards hats. We have a bunch of icons, the cloak, the skull, stuff like that. I think there's probably definitely a few icons we could add along those lines. Some more DnD themed things. Oh, we have a dragon icon already, but I think there's some other monsters that would be cool to add some kind of slime or gelatinous cube or a beholder, but I suppose we couldn't call it a beholder.
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