My name is Derek Andersen. I go by the username Dechrissen across the internet. Here's a brief history of my life.

I have a lot of interests, but the ones that have stuck with me the most over the years are writing, working on projects, programming, and video games. These also tend to overlap — for example, I like working on projects that involve programming, often they're game-related, and I like to reflect on them through writing about them.

I've loved video games since I was a kid in the 90s. Here are some of my favorite series.

From the early 2000s through to high school, I really just liked games and being able to get lost in them. I gravitated toward adventure games rather than sports games or anything based too heavily in reality. When I was young, I really liked making games (board and card games). I wrote about it here, but long story short: nowadays I don't entertain the part of my brain that led to that game-making as much as I should. I'm trying to get back to it.

In 2013, I started going to college, where I studied engineering to start. It didn't land for me, and I eventually switched to computer science. At the same time, I was taking Japanese language courses, and learned that I found linguistics vaguely interesting. So after a few changes in academic direction, I ultimately landed on linguistics as a major. Since I was focusing on Japanese at the time, much of my academic writing related to its structure. In 2018, I completed my Bachelor's in Linguistics. After that, I decided to pursue graduate school to focus a bit more on computer science and its overlap with language. In 2021, I completed my Master's in Computational Linguistics.

If you're curious about my academic work, you can peruse it here — it's publicly available.

I've worked in the tech field since I graduated, exclusively in the language technology / machine learning / NLU space — first for a company that creates voice assistant technology for use in automobiles, and later for a company that has a focus in wearable technology (AI assistants).

In 2019, I got into speedrunning Banjo-Tooie on Nintendo 64. I don't speedrun anymore, but speedrun livestreams are still something I like to watch in my spare time. I often find myself preoccupied with the games I've played dozens of times (trying to find new ways to play them, like speedruns and randomizers) rather than being interested in newer games.

Around the time I was speedrunning Banjo-Tooie, I worked on a few projects and tools related to the Banjo speedrunning scene. The first blog post on this website is actually an overview of the Banjo speedrunning community website, a project I led which is partly what inspired me to start my blog.

Toward the end of 2024, I worked on a romhack of the Gen 1 Pokémon games which enhances the solo gameplay experience — it's my love letter to Gen 1. Please check it out. I also made some videos about it.

Generally, I enjoy tinkering and working on projects, both tangible and programming-related. Here's a list of blog posts related to some projects I've worked on.

Other things I like: watches, Game Boys, cigars, pour-over coffee, firearms, typography, stationery, Dachshunds, running.