Damien Guard's Avatar

Damien Guard

@damieng.com

• Software engineer @MongoDB (EF/C#) • Was @Auth0 (SDKs), @GitHub (Atom), @Microsoft (EF), @Xbox (Web/Sec), @Netflix (Players) • Font designer, dad to twins, 8/16-bit fanatic, C# fan ❤️☮️

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28.06.2023
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Latest posts by Damien Guard @damieng.com

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As somebody who works in tech this is utter BS. Platforms can always be upgraded and at a minimum allowed to live.

Shutting this down was a choice. Just like me calling my Nissan dealer in a minute to take my name off the waitlist to test-drive the new Leaf is a choice.

#nissan

24.02.2026 11:26 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Friends don't let friends have a crack at pixel fonts in shipping products...

23.01.2026 18:05 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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My latest track 'Overdrive' is a homage to the era of early 3D graphics and classic PlayStation vibes 🎮 Available now on all major music platforms: fanlink.tv/ovdrv

20.01.2026 17:40 👍 135 🔁 43 💬 6 📌 2

What's artistic about moving a pencil or brush left, right, up and down?

15.01.2026 11:21 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

AT Protocol?

+++ATH

14.01.2026 16:31 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Kids were off school Friday due to the storm so printed out a math worksheet from learningresources.co.uk

Yeah that's not how you divide decimals. Now if that was a multiplication sure... but divided the answer is 4.

11.01.2026 18:58 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Intuition is all you need.

Math is the language of the universe.
We made it feel terrifying.
It doesn't have to be.

Made a thing 💜
unmath.ai

Share with someone who was tricked into thinking math wasn't for them!

05.01.2026 22:02 👍 20 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
A screenshot from my Itch sale. 122% of my goal. 769 contributors. Etc etc

A screenshot from my Itch sale. 122% of my goal. 769 contributors. Etc etc

I don't write promo posts on vacation, but I could post screenshots I guess 🤔

itch.io/s/158296/40-...

28.12.2025 18:41 👍 97 🔁 38 💬 1 📌 1

Download silently in background then on next launch ask to apply.

Not "hey there's a new version out", "click to download", "You can get back to work", "Me again, click to update!", "This might be a while", "Tada, here's my release notes. No, that one thing you're after, we didn't do that." detour.

11.12.2025 11:53 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

We thought continuous rapid releases were going to be great but we missed something.

Constant interruption to your users.

Every few days Resharper, Cursor, Zoom and a others pester me to drop my work so *they* can update.

People have work to do. Your updates are a disruption.

11.12.2025 11:53 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Yeah shame about the confusing name! Feel free to send me a dsk that won't load and I'll see if I can figure out why with the debugger.

10.12.2025 12:21 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Let me know if you need anything! Disk Image Manager, hardware wise or any other tech assist.

Great to see all this being preserved!

10.12.2025 11:20 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Thanks! Love the font by the way!

09.12.2025 12:51 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Blood Rain - DamienG An 8x8 pixel font with Dark, brooding and oppressive.

Any chance you could change the name of this to avoid confusion?

I put a Blood Rain pixel font out in 2007 that's already quite popular damieng.com/typography/z...

09.12.2025 11:51 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Also doesn't need WiFi, use any data, require micropayments to advance or demand to update every time you want to play.

08.12.2025 12:25 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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HTML5 Video Cheatsheet: Optimizing videos for the web - DamienG Creating videos for your page can be tricky, especially if you ensure your videos load quickly, play smoothly, auto start, and work across all devices and browsers.

HTML5 video is a still a bit of a pain with codecs, auto-play, formats, quick-starts, optimizations...

I've dusted off my internal cheat-sheet, made it more accessible and put it up as a post. Enjoy!

damieng.com/blog/2025/12...

05.12.2025 12:47 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

No we've seen stack overflows that are new. And this is just on automated tests key alone real world apps with deeper call hierarchies.

28.11.2025 18:56 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Another .NET 10 gotcha...

The CLR is now "smarter" at determining if previously heap-allocated things can instead be allocated on the stack.

macOS has a smaller stack size than Windows and Linux so if you've "tested" your app on .NET 10 and think it's ready to ship... well... test on macOS too.

28.11.2025 07:46 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Today I learnt that Sony UK's TV support center thinks the Consumer Rights Act 2015 does not apply to them and that their warranty and terms & conditions are all that matters.

Oh, and that they will not give out details or where to send escalations and complaints.

Or repair a £2.300 TV.

Nice.

27.11.2025 15:13 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The point of reviewing a PR is to find objective issues with it. It's not to tell the author how you would have done it line by line.

Nobody can correctly guess how you would have done it nor that your way is free from scrutiny by way of being the reviewer not commiter.

27.11.2025 08:58 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Here I am again, back figuring out another C# 14 LINQ edge case we hadn't known about.

Clients are upset that our LINQ provider isn't "working" and yet the C# compiler is giving us what was an Enumerable.Contains(a, b) now as a MemoryExtensions.Contains(a, b, null)

Sigh.

24.11.2025 19:30 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Depends on the LINQ provider but EF typically hashes the tree and compares it to a SQL command it already built for that and then re-executes it with the new parameters.

That kind of parameterized query then is optimized on the server-side to avoid re-parsing and helps avoid cache eviction.

13.11.2025 09:25 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

And all it required was that they break every single LINQ provider ever published!

13.11.2025 09:22 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

It just shows the C#/Roslyn's total distaste for expression trees.

For years they've claimed they can't add anything to them for fear of breaking existing providers.

But they just proved they're happy to break providers when they it's something they care about - users be damned.

12.11.2025 18:06 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Yup, been warning people about that for a while.

It's a pretty shitty experience, especially if you're using old LINQ providers.

The Roslyn team have lost focus and are sacrificing real-world usability for their actual customer base chasing empower benchmarks.

12.11.2025 17:53 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0

In unrealistic empower benchmarks that engineers keep specifically optimizing for.

12.11.2025 17:51 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Was there in August for a concert. Impressive stadium but large enough that getting to the right area/entrance was both confusing for us and it seems, staff - mulitple false attempts and misinformation on going through the right gates even though it all joins up one way or another.

28.10.2025 12:40 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

"Rest assured..."

The universal sign of "You're going to be disappointed with my inability to resolve your issue in about 5-10 minutes."

28.10.2025 11:06 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I left the USA and moved back to Guernsey in 2020.

27.10.2025 18:45 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A small boy attempts to to hack the executive debugger environment on a Xerox Alto at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle circa 2019.

A small boy attempts to to hack the executive debugger environment on a Xerox Alto at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle circa 2019.

I loved that place soo much - was heartbroken that there was no long-term plan for its survival in place.

Here's a pic of my then 3-year-old son using a Xerox Alto! Where else in the world could that happen?

27.10.2025 16:32 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0