About | Jason De Arte

My name is Jason De Arte & I’m a C/C++/Python software engineer (and NOT a writer) that’s been working in and around multiplayer video games since 2000.

Yes, I work at Blizzard. But nothing here relates to Blizzard Entertainment, all opinions/thoughts/ideas expressed here are my own and have no basis in this reality (nor Blizzards). If I say “hats are cool”, that does not mean my employer is researching hats, hat licensing, hat games, or hat technology of any sort – that would be a stupid presumption. More likely it means that I’m getting older, my hair is thinning, I don’t like sunburns on my scalp, and it’s hard to find a hat that fits on my XXL head. Damn cro-mag occipital bun

RE: My name, “De Arte” (Dee-Are-Tay)
It is a name that frustrates the heck out of my French co-worker Nico as it appears to him as a horrible mash up of Italian, French and Spanish spellings and pronunciations. Long story short, the old family name was “Darley” (or D’Arly on one version of the family tree my sister found) but it was changed to Newcomb some time in the 19th century when the widowed Mrs Darley married Mr. Newcomb and her boys changed their name to Newcomb.
Fast forward to my parents (recovering hippies) that wanted to give me the old name – but wanted to “jazz it up” first (my dads words). Being that my mother apparently failed high school french, that jazzing up meant to French it up. And now my name is “De Arte”.

On the plus side, I could be a Newcomb – which is a shortening of Newcommer. Or in the modern lingo: Newb. And that would suck at work.

RE: JSON DART, had to register it. Info here

RE: One zero zero one zero one zero (1001010) – it’s a rote phrase that I tend to mumble when people say “So, you’re a programmer… for computers and stuff?” just to geek out. It’s not a magic number, it’s just the first letter of my name “Jason” converted into binary. US-ASCII-7 “J” == “74”₁₀ == “1001010”₂. /*itoa((int)'J',szBuffer,2);*/

-Jason

// todo: bribe a writer friend to write better copy. Maybe something with vampires or haunted sinistar arcade boxes