Welcome to the ShrineTech Blog!

Hello officially from ShrineTech!

Hey everyone! It's been a long time since I've blogged—about two years, in fact—but it's good to be back and here with my new company, ShrineTech! My name is Chuck Gaffney. You might know me from a few things. Over the years, many have gotten to know me as the voice of the People's Choice Award-winning pup, Crusoe the Celebrity Dachshund. However, I've been on the internet for a long, long time, since the late '90s/early 2000s, in fact. Those who maybe know me from the past know me as the person who has lots of edited anime music videos on Newgrounds in the early 2000s. Back then, in 2002, I founded the site Chuck's Anime Shrine, which later became a major retailer and blog for the anime space in the late 2000s. Heck, I even did some early game reviews before the age of the "Influencer" became a thing.

Well, the entire time I've been a developer. I started with C++, was trained in Java in college, manually built my site and store using PHP, and later got involved as a lead developer on a number of cutting-edge projects for some really big companies. I'll show more details of that in our upcoming About Us and programmer profiles pages, but I've been through a number of tech stacks in over 20 years, including AI, game dev, VR/AR, cloud streaming, and more. ShrineTech is me saying, "Hey, let's all put this together!"

The Changing Tides

There have been some major changes in tech as of late. All that machine learning I was somewhat part of as far back as 2016 finally became useful. "AI," as it got bundled into, is now on everyone's mind, for better or for worse. I'm more on the positive side of what it can bring because I know what it can and can't do from being one of the pioneers in this field. For me, I used to do some early machine learning work for major brands back 7+ years ago. I've also seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in the field. There have been many projects shelved for so many years that the new tech gives me, a busy father of 2, the chance to finally work on. Here's some more details on them, the goals, and info about this blog too.

A Little About the ShrineTech Blog

Before diving into the main goals of ShrineTech, I wanted to first point out that this blog will continue to grow and will eventually post two main categories of posts. The first is one like this, written by me, one of our devs, or guest writers. Yes, there's lots of AI posts out there and we will be a part of that too, but we are not going to remove the human touch. One thing I feel about AI/generative machine learning tech going forward is that it is good practice to be transparent about when you use it. One of the main goals of ShrineTech is to impart tech literacy to the masses as it is needed more than ever. In addition to the human-written blog posts, there will be AI-generated ones. As of this posting, the first two before this post were all, as one can tell, done with AI. However, we will make it a priority to not spam those posts, and they all have their own category so that they can be ignored if you so please. We also will work to help anyone who wants to have some of this tech on their site. To any potential clients looking, we again emphasize that if you do have AI-generated content on your site, to disclose it. To be a person of my word, this site is partially done in part with some AI guidance. Some of the initial images are AI (but we also aim to pay artists for their work too as I myself am an artist as well). The logo was drafted in AI, but I used my past Photoshop work to tweak it to my liking.

What is ShrineTech, What are Its Goals?

1. The Parent Company of My Past Work and Business and Hopefully More

   ShrineTech is a culmination of my tech work over the years, with all of the projects and companies/sites/IPs I owned or created being held in one place. It is an officially licensed C-Corp LLC in the state of New York. It is also a place where I wish to give developers or would-be developers a chance at this field, to work in this field more akin to a blue-collar type of technical field, and less like a white-collar cubicle one. The latter sadly likes to prevent up-and-coming devs from getting their foot in the door. There is a common meme of "you need a Masters in CS to get a junior role." That sadly is too true. This is because those who are not tech-savvy run the companies. With the advances in technology, the realization that remote work is not only doable but more proficient, the time has come for more tech companies by tech people. One goal is to help bring developers together to do work. I have managed teams in the past and here I plan on doing the same. The hiring here at ShrineTech is in two tiers.

2. ShrineTech's 2-Tiered Hiring Structure

   As I begin this new company, by a stroke of luck and timing, a small handful of developers came to me to collaborate on our work. My father is a retired auto mechanic and my late grandfather was an electrician and electrical engineer. The way they did work was different than the cubicle farm. Some pooled their work together and profit-shared in getting more focused on the work and ensuring the right person for the various jobs was there for the right client.

   The first tier for ShrineTech is a programmer collaboration agreement. We all work together on various projects and those best suited decide what project they want to be a part of. I've been a client-facing developer for many years, so I don't mind taking that role while the associate developers are left to their work. Of course, if work grows, I will directly hire fellow client-facing developers and open up opportunities for new associate developers. As of this post, the roles are already filled, and we will be showcasing the devs who join the team. The profit share is 80/20. 80% of the project's profit for a good job goes directly to the developer/developers on said project. This gives more of a sense of ownership with the focus on helping the client right away for their needs and dropping much of the game of telephone many of us devs have to play between client, office staff, and us. Anyone who is an associate developer is welcome to keep themselves in that capacity, use ShrineTech as a reference, and the projects they worked on (with end client approval/barring NDAs). These first-tier devs are then first in line for the second tier...

   The second tier is, of course, direct employment. Associate devs get the first option for direct employment. This aspect isn't ready yet, but I wish to soon build up first-party tech and subsidiaries, and as those grow, I'll gladly hire for the roles needed. I can imagine it will first be a full schedule for the associate devs, with the need for client-facing developers to be the first direct hires.

   This represents the Agency part of our company, and if you have any questions or potential projects in mind, ping us at agency@shrinetech.io.

3. Past and Present Subsidiary Companies

   ShrineTech comes a bit from the already established company, Chuck's Anime Shrine. It was a high school project of mine that first hit the internet in March of 2002. A few years later, in 2007, a store and blog were added. The e-commerce side of it was selling various Japanese anime figures and collectibles, with over $200,000 in gross sales in 2011. Around that time, I gained the rights to another site, Anime.fm, which has stayed a bit dormant, but my most recent developer role was leading the team and building the infrastructure for a government-tier video streaming service. Anime.fm could potentially be something we want to compete with the likes of a certain crunchy site. There are also games I started but never finished, some I finished but were too simple. There's also non-entertainment technology that I have built and continue to work on, namely in the arena of fintech. There's also IoT and others.

4. The Future of This Site and More

   There are some surprises in store that I hope to show soon. Products that I hope will be of use to others, and when applicable, I will open source them where viable for others. Myself and the team of developers can be hired to work with your company on these products if that is what they can be used for. This blog/company I hope will be an education source for developers too. There are times the industry at large can be ruthless to the very people who propped it up, and I want ShrineTech to be the company for and by developers. Hope to chat more soon.

   (We do plan on comment sections, but in the meantime, visit our Discord or Twitter/X account)

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