I am an affable, self-motivated individual who advocates clean, considered code that others can understand and reason about. The next topic I would like to explore is accessibility in the browser. Tech-wise, I am very interested in Elixir/Phoenix/Live View.
My 2018 Pluralsight Skill IQ scores
| Skill | Score | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Typescript | 268 | 98th |
| Javascript | 245 | 94th |
| Angular | 258 | 97th |
| React | 196 | 78th |
| Skill | Score | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| HTML 5 | 210 | 84th |
| CSS | 243 | 94th |
| Git | 202 | 81st |
| GitHub | 203 | 81st |
Initially part of a two-person front end team, I now am technically a lead developer. On a two person team, that means our day-to-day relationship has stayed the same but I have additional responsibilities to the rest of the company as well.
The same co-worker and I pushed for a transition from Agile to Shape Up, which began in 2019 with some trials and then completed in 2020. Is process evolution is ever complete, though? Since the transition, we two have designed several new or improved features which are currently in production.
This was my side job after college graduation. I was my first client, and started with nearly zero knowledge. Today, I maintain a couple sites, using very simple GitHub Pages workflows. Though I have had less need for freelance work since starting with Flixpress, I still actively maintain a website for Post Playhouse and myself, as an actor.
I maintained some backend code, but mostly worked on new front-end projects, often as the solo front end developer.
When I began working at Flixpress, the company was not using any version control for their code. Files typically lived on a network drive and were edited from there directly. The system worked well for them in the beginning, but of course it became untenable as the codebase grew. I took it upon myself to help the company transition to Git. Today, all major new and ongoing projects at Flixpress now live inside repositories on each developer’s machine with its origin stored on GitHub. It is rare for anyone to run into a Git-related problem anymore, though when they do, I am always happy to help.
In early 2018, Flixpress was hired to create a Javascript library to replace the functionality of a legacy ActionScript codebase that read XML documents to create interactive video experiences in Flash. Ultimately we decided to move forward with a rewrite in Typescript resulting in a Javascript library with a DSL which would allow novice Javascript developers to create video experiences in the browser. The decision to use Typescript meant that the code for the project was mostly going to fall to me, while documentation would mostly be my boss’s responsibility.
Flixpress took on a new project near the beginning of 2018 called Micronews. The goal was to automate an entire news broadcast recording from a browser connected camera-with-teleprompter setup. The client should be able to create all the copy, CG elements, upload over-the-shoulder media, and choose different camera angles from one application. That same application would then prompt and record the anchor. This project is ongoing as of December 2018.
The template browser at Flixpress.com used to call the server on every user interaction and re-request a list of every template available on the site. This was the default behavior of a DNN plugin that was used to navigate through the list. I suggested a re-implementation of the browser that only made one server request (other, DNN related page requests notwithstanding), and was highly responsive.
I re-implemented the old browser with a new design and, because I opted to use a client-side library (React), the responsiveness is far superior to the old implementation. The widget no longer makes any additional server requests (aside from downloading images) after the first request to a single text file that houses all the information for Flixpress’s available templates.
I have categorized many of them below
A PWA that to help my wife and me memorize lines. I may polish it up and create a service for actors.
Custom tool for Post Playhouse which takes show dates and renders out a calendar ready to be captured and printed in a full color brochure.
Open Source, MIT.
Open Source, MIT. jQuery plugin replace formatted strings in your HTML with a responsive <picture>.
Open Source, MIT. A small, dependency free Javascript helper library that I created for myself.