Projects
When I'm not coding for fun and profit, I'm often just coding for fun: collaborations with friends, exploring intellectual curiousities, or just goofing around. Sometimes they're fruitful, but more often they just end up becoming a fun excuse to push myself and learn new things. Therefore, much of this is a graveyard, so please mind the bones!
| Cloud Cover | A simple wrapper for Amazon's CloudPlayer. Blog post coming soon... |
2011 |
| Wuxtry | A lightweight CMS, not much beyond an in-line page editor. Wuxtry was basically a one-line PHP include that could be added to any page. It would identify all content areas on a page automatically (or allow configuration to specific them by CSS name/class) and allow the user to perform WYSIWYG editing on the content and save changes directly. Collaborators: Michael Witwicki, Johannes Booy What killed it? A few potential security issues essentially killed it, and the yearning to WANT a database to back it. Mostly, there are so many great CMSes out there, there's no need for another. |
2008 |
| Adagio | Upload your MP3s to S3 or another cloud service, and stream them. What killed it? 1000 other similar projects. |
2008 |
| Viddles | A video CMS and training system. I built the bits that converted AVI, MOV, etc (using a library called ffmpeg) to flash video format. My collaborators build a delicious user interface. Collaborators: Michael Witwicki, Johannes Booy What killed it? 1000 other similar projects. No bites from potential clients. |
2007 |
| Reciplunk | The idea was the ubiquitous dilemma of the bachelor: "Given the contents of my refridgerator, what tasty concoctions can I make that's not just meat + condiments in bread?" To this end, I scoured the internet for recipes, and using my background in Information Retreival, extracted the ingredients, measurements, and cooking directions of 90,000 recipes, and aggregated them into a searchable database. My collaborators envisioned a virtual refridgerator where a user could input the contents of their refridgerator and cupboard (along with some assumed ingredients every kitchen should have, like salt and butter), then search for recipes they could execute. Collaborators: Michael Witwicki, Johannes Booy What killed it? For starters, there were some potential copyright issues with the recipes we collected that we were not comfortable with. We also had trouble validating the recipes, or being able to judge whether or not they were any good. We also found mates more competent at cooking than us, and sort of became apathetic :) |
2006 |
| mlink | mlink.org was a URL shortener predating now-ubiquitous services like bit.ly, is.gd, t.co, and goo.gl. What killed it? MediaTemple (hosting company) shut it down -- they didn't want me running it in their grid. As similar services sprouted up, it seemed moot. |
2005 |
| Vorlof | A windows macro editor for a game called "Dark Ages". Basically, in order to progress your character, you had to mash a lot of buttons to gain experience performing skills. Vorlof automated this task by pushing the buttons to perform various button combinations for you so you didn't have to mindlessly press buttons for hours. What killed it? I stopped playing the game. |
2003 |
| Struct | A primitive CMS that had some fairly interesting (for the time) ways of creating navigation systems. Collaborators: Rick McEachern What killed it? It was starting to feel like "Just another CMS" |
2002 |
| Mediahole | A web application that scoured the web to discover shoutcast/icecast radio stations, aggregating them into a searchable database with real-time content information. For the time, it was pretty advanced. What killed it? Live365.com, Shoutcast.com, and RealMedia. |
2000 |
| Acrophile | To boldly scour the internet, identifying acronyms and discovering their expansions (meanings)! Collaborators: Leah Larkey, Paul Ogilvie What killed it? It was a research project at UMASS, and culminated in a published paper. |
1999 |
| Fishnet/Hampshire College Grep | Essentially an intranet with news aggregation, consuming feeds from national and local media sources. This was when this stuff was hard! Collaborators: Jared Benedict, Ben Moore What killed it? I graduated. The site is still around, and has evolved considerably since then. |
1999 |
| 1943 | Rewrote the arcade classic "1943" in Shockwave/Lingo. This was back when people still used the word "mutlimedia", and Flash was scoffed at as "Shockwave Lite". What killed it? Flash. Also: web standards. |
1998 |
| ShockSave | A windows utility for embedding a flash/shockwave animation as a screensaver. What killed it? Abandonware. |
1998 |
| ScreenSnatch | My first windows application. Press a button, take a screenshot, save it as a JPG on your desktop automatically. What killed it? There's a shortcut built into the OS to do this now. |
1998 |
| LogoSaver | A windows screensaver application that animated an image (logo, photo, etc) around the screen. What killed it? It probably still works, and may even still be running on a Windows 98 desktop near you. |
1998 |
| Intrakit | I don't even remember. Something about a prototype user interface system for children with lots of interactive visual cues. I built the interfaces, you'd think I'd remember more about it. Collaborators: Ariel Benjamin, Duran Goodyear What killed it? My memory? |
1997 |
| SheepQuake | A mod for the original Quake game that transformed all players into sheep, and all character voices into a series of baaahs. I'm not saying I'm proud of this, but it still makes me smile. What killed it? It's probably still out there... |
1997 |
| Skydiving Paper Cows BBS | I ran a computer bulletin board system out of my bedroom in high school with a 386 and a couple of modems. I learned to code by fumbling my way through it's C source code to make modifications. I also established a network for several BBSes to share messages and news called MooNET. If you're reading this and have any idea what I'm talking about, I salute you. What killed it? The Internet. Also: phone bills > my paper route. |
1994 |
