Sign in

Dan Hiester

@majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social
654 followers 261 following 412 posts

Lighthearted takes on UX, creativity, and other goofy things—by a technology wunderkind who grew up to be a product designer, and former agency developer. Was really into Poppins before it went mainstream. Currently in Seattle.

PostsRepliesMedia
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
One of many reasons I started an “embellished retro” first person shooter game engine as a passion project: I think it’s ridiculous that players have to sit through long compile times so companies don’t have to provide builds that are ready to go. This Stream review of Borderlands 4 sums it up:
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
So, a while back I started working with AI to build a game engine for boomer shooters. Not a one-shot “hey fable make a game” kind of thing. A renderer written in Rust with a curated list of technologies for retro styled FPS. No real content yet. Building features first. And features are landing!
120
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
A while back, I decided that if a lot of people are using AI to push out of their technical comfort zone and into mine, then I should use it to break out of mine, too. So I started building a game engine, inspired by Quake. One feature at a time. Today was foundations for moving platforms!
010
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
I feel like Claude just did that thing Leslie Nielsen did in Airplane where he explains what a hospital is and then says “but that’s not important right now.”
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
I randomly decided to ask ChatGPT to generate an image of what it thinks I look like based on what it knows about me—partially as a test of myself, and seeing how much I’ve shared with it. Here’s the thing: It accurately depicted the hair I *wish* I had. 😂
010
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
The fine print at the bottom of the screen says no endorsement is implied… but I don’t knoooowwww… I certainly feel like an endorsement has been implied here. 🙃
020
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
This is my favorite random spam test since “Have you disappeared into the darkness?”
A text message that says, I bet your mailman still knows you by name.
110
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
I feel like it’s worth sharing that I’ve literally had a bad dream where my phone’s screen cracked, and I tried to just keep looking at messages like it wasn’t the end of the world, but the cracked screen cut my finger and it started bleeding all over my screen. Go touch glass, indeed!
010
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
What if I told you that user generated content is the problem, not the solution? 🙃
A user review of the Ubuntu distribution for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Review title: “My dogs name is Ubuntu”. Review text: “LAY DOWN UBUNTU”
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
I found myself explaining Geocities in a chat with some younger designers, and I think I stumbled over a newfound respect for Comic Sans. 🙃
010
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
If you want to see which AI platforms are most desperate to win for winning’s sake, long-press their app icon on iOS and see if they have a shortcut for starting a new chat.
100
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
WHO TAUGHT YOU MATH?!?!
Screen shot of a social media activity summary indicating “1 new follower; 200% increase.”
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Me: It’s Saturday morning. I don’t really need to look at LinkedIn. LinkedIn:
Screen shot of the LinkedIn icon on an iPhone with a badge indicating 19 notifications.
100
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
media.makeameme.org/created/one-...
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
lol so I saw an email from Nextdoor that mentioned this giveaway offer, but in the email the title was really badly truncated, so I swore it looked like they were giving away a pile of sticks and thought “oh damn that is so what dogs would post on buy nothing groups!”
020
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
A reminder to AI product teams: Most AI doesn’t READ THE ROOM yet. 😆
010
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Wwwwhhhyyyyyyy do we keep assuming someone can only be one thing?
130
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
This was a reply to a LinkedIn post encouraging others to post fewer hot takes, less posts written by AI, and more posts about lived experiences—to build our personal brands with more authenticity. Hilarious! But it also exemplifies why using AI in spaces meant for humans damages your credibility.
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Having worked with location before, this is fun. Just now, Apple Maps on iOS shows this as Gulf of America… until I zoomed in a little more… but when I started this post and looked at the map again, it changed. I can imagine so many layers to the API for this.
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Just saw this on Spotify. I can’t tell if this is an error message, or if it’s actually an entire state of mind. 🙃 (Or, why not both?)
Screen shot of a message in a monospace font that says, “no healthy upstream”
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
That’s like people asking me, “Is your dog a Golden Retriever?” And I’ll say, “No. He’s actually THE MOST Golden Retriever.”
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
I came up with this joke years ago, but I continue to be surprised / impressed by the longevity of Axios, so, here it is again. Hope it makes you chuckle! #javascript #typescript #js #ts #jsnerds #peacenerds
A screen shot of the Axios home page hero section that’s been playfully altered to say, “Stop trying to make .fetch() happen. It isn’t going to happen.”
040
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
The utility classes for font sizes, line heights, margins, paddings—all of it can be configured however you want. You can even use CSS custom properties! So I’m doing it. I feel like I’m designing something with Tailwind that doesn’t look EXACTLY like every other Tailwind site. Digging so far!
A screen shot of some test content from the AstroWinds theme for Astro, with the custom typography configuration Dan set up for this new project.
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
I am a little curious about how this got shipped this way. I know designers love to say “This is what happens when engineers do design,” but I think even engineers know better than this. It does go to show you that you can’t just slap Tailwind on something and call it a good design!
110
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
What if I told you that user generated content is proof that users are the problem, not the solution? 🙃
A list of “Popular AI characters” including “Step Sis Sarah” (sibling love, drama guaranteed), “Therapist,” and “My Girlfriend” (Your best friend till the end).
100
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Oh, wait! If I flip my phone sideways, that email I got says something completely different. So, forget Ed content, I guess!
000
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
I’m not sure what “Ed content” is, but an email told me I should recommend it, so here we are. Check out Ed content, I guess.
200
Dan Hiester @majtom2grndctrl.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
It truly has been a wild year for me on LinkedIn. “I like your LinkedIn posts” has started to feel like a comedic leitmotif. But this? This feels like a whole other level. I still remember posting a Nielsen listacle to my cubical wall *cough*teen years ago. This is wild.
010