About me
My name is Jason Smestad. I've been a professional software engineer for over 20 years. I've written all sorts of programs, mainly for Windows, but I haven't worked on much of anything that's public or open source. In my free time, I enjoy reading books, running, and playing video games, especially retro ones. I'm married to a beautiful Filipina, and we have a wonderfully inquisitive young boy. We three live in the great state of Texas.
Here's all my profiles, however, there's not too much to see on any of them.
About Foamplate
I had the idea to make a website back in 2007, but I never really quite figured out what website to make. Over the years I made various things, but nothing really resembling an actual website. Most of the time, I just had a splash page up, if the site was accessible at all that is. The current site became live on August 1st, 2026.
Here's my goals for Foamplate
- To meet new people whose interests align with mine.
- To let people like me meet each other.
- To share my thoughts, ideas, and creations directly with the world.
- To sell some digital goods in exchange for Ethereum.
Why Ethereum?
I like Ethereum because it's fast, secure, and I can get it up and going without going through a third party or convincing payment providers to allow me to accept credit card payments. Otherwise, I'd either have to use a professional web hosting provider which has payment features or use a third party shop provider. I don't care for either of those options. If I use a third party host, I'll not only have to pay them whatever they ask for, but I'll have to abide by whatever terms or restrictions they have. What if they don't like the content I post here? Whatever host I use could point to whatever terms I may have had to agree to and say, take down your content or we take down your site. I don't want some company to have that power over what I get to post.
Using a third party shopping provider is a bit better, but then they might have a say in what kinds of things I put up for sale. What if they don't like my wallpapers? What if they disagree with the things I wrote in my eBook? They might refuse to sell my things or tell me to remove items from my shop with an ultimatum that my shop will be disabled or removed.
I could accept payments by mail, but then customers would have to wait to have their purchase fulfilled. Anyway, who wants to write a check for a few dollars for a digital product? Cash over mail is generally not a good idea either.
With those considerations, cryptocurrency feels like the way to go. Bitcoin could work, but I like Ethereum better because transactions are faster.