I love building things. I've been doing it as long as I can remember, starting with Legos and Tinker Toys and moving through 3D virtual realities to computer programming. There's something uniquely satisfying about building intensely for days or weeks, watching your project evolve, and then flipping the switch and seeing that -- Wow! -- it really works.
Since 2007, "building things" for me has mostly meant programming. I've spent a lot of time building social networking tools for the Drupal content management system which have collectively been downloaded over 100,000 times. I was one of the first people to write an open-source status update system and later integrated it (along with new activity stream functionality) into Acquia Commons. More recently I've shifted my contract work from development to consulting and also started focusing on client-side HTML5 technologies.
I like projects that push the envelope.
Check out my experience on LinkedIn or my projects on Github. A few selected projects:
- Nemesis
- A 3D first-person game in the browser using WebGL, built in 23 hours for the AngelHack hackathon. (write-up)
- Statuses
- Provides status updates / microblogs like Facebook's news feed. This project and its predecessor have been downloaded over 50,000 times.
- UnShopMe
- An attempt to make e-commerce entertaining by creating a virtual world (sort of like Second Life) in the web browser without any plugins. You can walk around the world and shop or chat with others. If you buy a virtual t-shirt, you'll get a physical one too. Unfortunately my co-founder had an awesome opportunity in Japan so this one is on the back-burner for now.