wizard-type guy★ pixel jake ★ click him
I'm Jake
Early adopter and always remaining curious. I run a homelab with a lot of parts and I build locally, tinker constantly, and never turn a profit, so I keep a day job. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to say hi, listen to tendies.fm, or cast some votes on supergoodgreat.com.
Move your mouse around him, click him, or pick him a look.
My wife made one of these too. Hers is pinker: therealmelindaroberts.com ♥
★ about me
I'm Jacob Taylor, a builder of things in Los Angeles. By day I manage QA for the Gamedev Automation Tooling & Efficiency team at Epic Games. I've been in software since dropping out of a CS degree over a decade ago, somehow landed in QA and product, and have enjoyed the ride at Riot Games, GameStop's NFT marketplace and a couple of AI startups alongside a lot of skilled folks.
Off the clock I run a small fleet of servers at home: two RTX 3090s serving a 125-billion-parameter language model, an assistant app that writes code and designs parts for my 3D printer, a 24/7 internet radio station with an AI DJ, and a cable-driven crane in the shed that picks things up with a 3D-printed claw. If it can be self-hosted, it is.
my stats
fun facts
- my radio station has never had a human DJ
- the crane is named after a cartoon hook
- I designed and published a board game. ask me for a copy, I have plenty
- I write haiku and ride motorcycles, not at the same time
- married to the CX diva next door
★ builds & projects click 2 open
GATE: I manage the team that makes the QA org faster.
- Part of the QA generative-AI tools group: AI-first productivity tools, and the harder job of getting people to actually use them
- Before GATE, QA manager for Fortnite Battle Royale's seasonal content as part of the Director's group
- At Epic since September 2023
A decade-plus of QA, product and people management.
- QA manager, Fortnite Battle Royale seasonal content, Epic Games (from 2023): accountable for the QA teams behind gameplay, maps, engagement, events and performance, up to 14 direct reports, plus hands-on QA lead for gameplay
- Freelance web dev and product/project manager: Next.js frontends, pitch decks, live demos, investor calls
- Senior technical product & project manager, GameStop Blockchain (2022–23): product owner for nft.gamestop.com
- QA manager and delivery lead, Riot Games (2017–22): esports first, then League of Legends sustainability and events. 91% less unplanned downtime in China in 2019 vs 2018, and a quality framework the whole company adopted
- QA engineer at Domo, Degreed and Grow (2014–17): mobile test automation, a native Android app held under a 1% crash rate, QA programs started from nothing
- ISTQB-certified Advanced Level Test Manager. Yes, I will find the bug. Question is whether we'll fix it.
My own software on my own hardware: a local language model and the apps around it, with nothing that phones home.
- Two RTX 3090s serve a 125B-parameter mixture-of-experts model for my chat assistant, email summaries, CAD generation and the radio DJ
- A priority gate in front of the engine so my own requests always jump the queue
- Power-capped and temperature-logged, because the server lives in a shed in LA
24/7 stream with AI-generated music, an AI DJ and cover art rendered on another GPU.
- Music generated locally, song by song, with a program director that plans the day
- DJ breaks written and voiced on the fly between tracks
- Streams to YouTube from a dedicated encoder box
An app suite wrapped around a language model running on my own GPUs, so the assistant and everything it touches never leaves the house.
- Chats, plans and runs multi-step tasks with real tools, asking before anything risky, then writes up deep-research reports when I want receipts
- Describe a part in plain English and it writes the CAD, checks the geometry, slices it and queues the print
- Also programs my 24/7 radio station, paints the cover art, makes music and pixel art, and builds little web pages on request
Super good or great: weigh in, then see how everyone else reads the words we use.
- Pick a side on a scale that stays level until you do
- Missing a word? Suggest one
- Embed the scale on your own page
Y2K pages for my wife and me, with pixel-art dolls that face your cursor.
- Plain HTML, CSS and one small Python server each, hosted at home through a Cloudflare tunnel
- Sprites generated with PixelLab and graded one clip at a time
- Guestbooks that land in Discord
✧ studied: computer science, 2007–2011 · dropped out, went to work, never looked back
★ guestbook ✧ contact me
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thx 4 signing!! it'll show up once i've seen it.