About

Hi, I'm Rovi Decena! I'm a software developer with a lot of side projects.

Probably too much.

what is this

A blog.

After enough time spent making long, rambly descriptions on YouTube, or bombarding my friends with development details, I figured that a blog might be a better outlet. For the most part, I'll be posting about stuff I'm working on, or have worked on— behind the scenes, retrospectives, etc.

My projects tend to revolve around these three topics:

• code (the main one)
• music (secondary)
• game dev (usually code + music)

Not to say that I'll only be talking about this stuff... but I'll probably only be talking about this stuff.

audience

I try to keep my posts simple enough so that anyone interested in whatever I'm talking about can follow along, even if they may not fully understand everything.

...having said that, most of my posts are written and edited impulsively, so the quality may flucuate— part of which includes the possibility of me going too technical (or even the opposite).

site details

Here's some technical details about me, the site, and some stuff I do.

stack

This site is built using Eleventy, a static site generator. I use Cloudflare for both hosting and domain registration.

creating, editing, and updating posts

I alternate between writing posts in Notion, Pages CMS, and simply just editing the source code directly.

music

I produce music using Waveform Free.

(Yes, I am using the free version of a paid DAW.)

(No, I don't plan on getting the paid version.)

sound makers

Vital is my main, general-purpose synth. If there's a synth in one of my songs, chances are that it's this.

Spitfire LABS and BBC Symphony Orchestra are my main source of "real" instruments.

Occasionally, I'll use Decent Sampler, but it's always been somewhat buggy for me, so I tend to steer clear of it.

Ample Sound's P Lite is my goto when I need a "real" bass sound.

I use a bunch of different drum sample packs, but I generally gravitate towards a select few from CIRCLES, Cymatics, and Stiickz.

Also, I play the guitar.

mixing

The core of my mixing is done with Kilohearts Essentials, a collection of effects plugins. The main ones I use from their collection are the Compressor, Distortion, Delay, Gate, Gain, Limiter, and Reverb.

TDR Nova is my regular EQ, dynamic EQ, and spectrogram. It's arguably my most used plugin, even more than Vital.

If I need a decent amount of reverb, I'll use Valhalla Supermassive.