About This Site

Ahoy, I’m Mike Bates; a follower of Christ and a husband. I help with support at a small remote company for work, with my spare time going towards taking photographs, sharing about video games online, walking a lot, and occasionally even writing. :)

RistrettoRambles is my personal website and blog. I’ve gone by the name “Ristretto” online for awhile now, and this site is the home for my ‘rambles’.

Here’s a few older photos of me, too ⇒

I was raised in one of the suburbs surrounding Detroit before moving to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with my wife Anné shortly after our wedding. We’ve since moved to Rhode Island for her work as a mechanical engineer.

I spent 7 years working full-time at various small businesses around Michigan, ranging from several cafes to a rock climbing gym, before taking a support role at the small mechanical keyboard company ZSA in mid-2022. I’ve taken photographs as a hobby for nearly a decade now, and I also dedicate time when I can to sharing videos about the Monster Hunter series online.

The intention is for this site to be a place where I can write about any of the interests I find myself immersed in. I hope that in the long-term I and others can look back on a breadth of writing here for minute details about tech, video games I care about, and all manner of else.

Site Details:

All writing and formatting is composed in Markdown using Ulysses and Sublime Text, with the site itself being built and hosted with Blot.im and Cloudflare as of December, 2023.

Me, Elsewhere:

You can find more from me on RistrettoRambles’ photo-site companion, called Ristrettoshots. I also sometimes post photos to my Glass profile, and you can additionally reach me on Bluesky or at my email address; ristrettogames@gmail.com.

Thanks:

Thank you to my wonderful wife Anné for supporting me in whatever I’m trying next, and thank you for caring enough to read anything I’ve written at all.

Cheers,