timeline of some of my work throughout the years
(the good, the bad, and the ugly)
-
2015statstrac (beta)
statstrac is an open source NFL statistics platform that provides detailed data visualization of rankings, scores, games, trends, teams, and players. I originally started exploring this project mid year when I was thinking about joining a fantasy football league and realized that I knew almost nothing about the statistics side of the game.
statstrac utilizes existing open source projects to retrieve and store raw data (the hard part), and then manipulates it to create a visual web experience. Data is cached at specific intervals to reduce server load as the overall size of the set is massive. You can read more about how it works on GitHub. (or better - fork it and contribute!)
Before starting this project I wasn't really a dataset guy but now that I see all the flexibility and opportunity they can hold I totally am. statstrac is no where close to being finished - bugs do exist and there's just still so much to do!
-
2015reddit shell
reddit shell is a web based linux shell emulator written in JavaScript that lets you browse and interact with reddit via command line. So basically, use common linux commands that would normally be used to browse a filesystem to browse reddit. Fun! (hopefully)
Because reddit has such a fantastic API, there wasn't that much legwork to do on this one. The SSH emulation was already accomplished with an existing library so the rest was just organizing and building out the different requests to make based on specific commands.
I also made an identical version for Product Hunt at producthuntshell.com.
-
2015channel PEAR
channel PEAR is a media platform that lets you discover and watch content from around the world on your favorite devices. Each user gets access to a library that they can sync with popular streaming devices such as Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast, etc.
channel PEAR was built on a LAMP stack that has been heavily modified for high traffic performance and runs on a powerful internal API. It also has a public API that developers can utilize.
-
2012Randomgur
Randomgur shows you a random image from Imgur each time you "roll the dice". The catch is that you never know what kind of image you're going to get - it could be a cute kitten or a dismembered head. (lovely) Imgur now has it's own random feature so this small project is redundant.
The concept is simple. Imgur assigns a unique ID to every image it hosts, so first we generate our own unique ID that complies with the constraints Imgur uses (I think it was a 6 character alphanumeric string) and then check if that ID exists or not. If it does, we show the image, if not we generate another ID to check. Randomgur keeps score so you know how many times you've rolled the dice and a history so you can navigate to a previous image.
-
2012NESbar / SNESbar
NESbar and SNESbar were online archives of original NES and SNES (yes, the original Nintendo consoles) you could play in your browser through a JavaScript emulator. While I did not develop the emulation myself, these sites made it extremely easy to find and play games without dealing with all the popups, ads, and adware that normally infested similar sites during this time.
Unfortunately I never found the time to release GBCbar which would have provided similar JavaScript emulation for original GameBoy games.
-
2011Take My Paycheck
Take My Paycheck (originally That's Why I'm Broke) was my first experiment with affiliate marketing. While not an original idea, the goal was to create a geeky, curated version of SkyMall where it becomes addicting to browse the site and discover cool stuff that inspires "impulse buy" feelings. (See the meme: shut up and take my money) The products all appeal to a specific niche and all earn affiliate revenue whenever someone makes a purchase after being redirected from the site.
Development wise, Take My Paycheck is one of the most boring sites I've ever built. It uses WordPress (don't hate me) and was built off a base theme that I eventually gutted entirely and rebuilt with the features I wanted.
-
2006CS-Impact
My Counter-Strike 1.6 years! So after spending countless hours playing the game, I decided to run my own game server and offer special permissions to users who paid monthly for them. Again, keeping my eye on that revenue stream... Anyways, CS-Impact.com is where I'd direct people to and they'd be able to register and purchase from there.
The first server I setup was on my Dad's old Toshiba laptop that I kept under my bed to muffle the fan noise at night. The lag was unbelievable. I purchased a hosted server after I managed to get a decent number of regular subscribers.
This is also when I first started experimenting in PhotoShop. Tutorials were my best friend until I started to learn which tools could produce a certain effect. Some of the assets are broken on the Internet Archive snapshot but you can still get a good idea of how it looked.
-
2004Metallica Craze
My first awkward and ugly steps into web development (if you can even call it that) happened when I was 12 years old and took the form of a Metallica fan site. Yep. Remember when .tk domains were a thing? Yeah no one else does either.
Looks like I used some sort of free website builder and pieced together poor grammar and flashy GIFs. I also had a merchandise page where people could buy stuff through PayPal? Yeah no, I was clearly faking that. Interesting that I had sales in mind though. (or ripping people off)
