Here’s a showcase of my open source projects, and a few stories about my past work projects. Enjoy!

My Open Source projects

SmartFormat.NET

This is a really simple project that I worked on for fun. It’s a string-template engine for .NET, which I wrote many years ago. However, as I moved away from .NET development, a kind user, @axuno, became a major contributor, and eventually took ownership and maintenance of the repo.
To my surprise, it has nearly 1 million downloads in NuGet now!

XQuestJS

A fun little “space shooter” game that you can play in your browser, phone, or tablet!

RippeyEats

This was done as a little “interview exercise”. It’s a nice little demonstration of a React, TypeScript, TailwindCSS, and Parcel development stack, and should showcase some of my coding skills.

My Work Projects

I’ve written a LOT of code in my career, but as is common, most of it lies in the hands of my employers! Here’s a couple of the interesting projects I’ve worked on, and some stories behind them.

InVision Studio

The Beginning

I was drawn to InVision by the tagline “made for designers, by designers”. I love designers! I actually wish I was one, but my technical skills have always outweighed my artistic skills. Gotta pay the bills! But I’ve always loved working as the middle-man, between the design team and the engineering team. Like a Front-FRONT-end engineer. So, I was excited to work on design software. And InVision’s designers are awesome … really the best of the best. After a few months into my employment, I caught wind of a “top secret” project … something to do with a canvas and animation … so I had to get in on that! And sure enough, I found myself working on the most interesting project I could think of! Creating an actual Design Tool!

The Project

InVision Studio was my dream project. An opportunity to not only build a design tool, but to master using it, and to even make it better.

It was all built on web technologies, too, which I loved. That kept me up-to-date with my skill set, and taught me a lot of new things I wanted to learn. React, TypeScript, and Electron are all very interesting technologies, and are skills that are in top demand. I’m happy to have those on my resume!

A Funny Story

When I first started working on Studio, it was a top-secret project. I signed an NDA, and couldn’t even talk about the project to most coworkers.
I was in a video call with a few managers, and we were discussing a 3rd party tool that we needed to authorize with our Purchasing department.
So the Purchasing department head, Shalom, asked me to add him to the project. Sharing my screen, I typed his name, autocomplete showed suggestions, and I quickly hit Enter.
He tells me “I still don’t have access” …

A few quiet seconds go by, as I slowly realize that the “Shalom” I selected was not the “Shalom” on the call. He wasn’t even part of our company.
So I had just given some stranger admin access to our top-secret application. With all of my managers watching.

Flushed, I removed him, and we all kinda chuckled at my mistake. But, how bad could it really be? Some random guy named Shalom will get an email, revealing the fact that InVision was working on something called studio-app … he’ll just delete it, and everything will be fine, right?

Still sharing my screen, I go to Shalom’s profile. And he’s the lead developer for a product called Pixate. A design tool. A direct competitor. Who now knows that InVision is entering the ring.

We all kept chuckling, as my manager asked me where they should send my last check. I didn’t actually lose my job that day, but I did spend the next week renaming all our repos with codenames, to make sure I didn’t leak that info again. And they took away my keys.

Xbox One App for AT&T Uverse

The Beginning

I worked for AT&T’s Uverse cable service (through a company called Piksel), and worked initially on their website, streaming TV and Movies, a lot like Netflix.
Before the Xbox One was announced, our company was commissioned to develop an Xbox One app for AT&T. I was super excited, to actually develop a media app for a video game console! Plus I felt all special, because this was all “top secret” before the console was released. I called my best friend and bragged that night.

The Project

I got to work with a 50” TV on my desk, and a controller next to my keyboard, so I felt pretty special. The development console didn’t actually play games, so I wasn’t really that special, but it felt cool!
The app went live, and as a Thank You gift, I received my own Xbox One console. It was a really fun project.

A Funny Story

Well, I was pretty bummed that my development console couldn’t play games. However, I was in the middle of developing my own JavaScript game for fun … so I actually bundled my own video game as an easter egg inside the Uverse App! I didn’t want ANYONE to know, since I was afraid that the easter egg would invalidate the Certification process, so I hid it really well. I didn’t even test it – because it was pretty hard to hide a video game on a 50” screen!
One night, I had to work super late, and was the last in the office. I finally used that chance to launch the game, and worked out a few bugs, and that was all the testing I could really do! I successfully shipped the game in the app.

Unfortunately, last I checked, AT&T has discontinued their Xbox One app support, so my app no longer sees the light of day. At least the game I wrote still lives on!

[last updated Sept 2, 2020]