Projects
This page lists some of my personal and academic projects, both computer-related and not.
Current Projects
- Personal: eBook creator. An app that takes (especially multichapter) online fanfiction and original stories and transforms them into eBooks for easy reading on tablets. I was semi-inspired by the way Archive of Our Own allows you to import the chapters of your fanfic from a different site.
- Personal: Novel title randomizer. A tool for writers to use to generate titles for their work.
- Personal: Parallelization of my Honors Thesis program. An improvement to my undergraduate Honors thesis that uses parallelization to improve performance.
Possible Projects
- Personal: Anime fan social site. There are very few sites where anime/manga/Japanese culture fans can go for social interaction that doesn't involve a forum. Originally, I had an idea for a dating site for otaku, but I later extended the idea to cover friendships.
- Personal: PHP image gallery. This came to be after I saw a post for the creation of a image gallery on rentacoder.com. I wondered if I could do it, and it's fortunate that I didn't bid on the project because I had problems. I'm still a beginner at PHP, after all. I plan to make it publically available when I finally finish it.
- Personal: Link Database. Since becoming interested in website design/development, I've had more than a few websites, and each of those websites had their own link pages. I want to combine all of these pages into an easy-to-use, easy-to-search database that also allows visitor submission, site review, and Google page rank integration. I couldn't find a free script that does all of these things and seamlessly integrates into my website, so I plan to create my own using PHP and SQL.
- Personal: Pick-a-Flavor Designs. This is a web design system based on CSS Zen Garden and the eFiction skin system. People create their websites by using a standard template and then can easily change their design by changing their style sheet.
- Personal: CSS Zen Garden Submission. I'm a big fan of the CSS Zen Garden website and would like to submit a design of my own. I'm not a very good graphic designer, however, and that is a major requirement. I still plan to try. Perhaps I can find a graphic artist to team up with.
Past Projects
- Semi-Academic: Web Editor for a water crisis-related mobile app. I volunteered for a project being undertaken by the Computer Science/Engineering/Physics department that was developing a mobile app to help Flint residents find clean water and other resources during the water crisis. The app was already complete, but there needed to be a way for the staff in University Outreach to easily update the information so my task was to build an editor. It was completed February 2016.
- Academic: My Honors Thesis. After my off-campus study I am required to write a thesis based on the experience. I chose "using interactive genetic algorithms for website design". I became interested in genetic algorithms during the summer program at Georgia Tech. I found a paper by a team of French researchers that used an interactive genetic algorithm to create website designs, but it uses vectors instead of bit strings. The project consists of two parts: a paper and a program. I've finished the paper, but I'm still designing the program. It's more complicated than I thought it would be. I successfully completed the program and the thesis December 2012.
- Academic: Senior Capstone Project. I worked with a group of three other Computer Science students to create an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) app for an Android tablet. It was successfully completed April 2012. Screenshot 1 | Screenshot 2 | Use-Case Diagram.
- Personal: PHP content management system. I decided to create a sort of content management system because the existing ones are far too complex for my needs. I have a website that offers fanfiction recommendations that was very difficult to manage. I decided to use a database to store the recommendations, which makes it easy to me to add new ones to the site. I originally started it over spring break in 2010, but ran out of time. This project was completed September 2010.
- Personal: Database-driven user interface. I wanted to create a UI that will link the chapters of my fanfiction together and automatically create "table of contents" pages. My programming language of choice for this was PHP and I also wanted to use an SQL database. This project was completed August 2009.
- Personal: PHP Template System. This has interested me for years but only recently have I actually begun implementing it. My personal website, Anime Etc., now uses this concept. I used code found in a PHP "how to" book as a base, but it required you to put the page content directly into the PHP template. I decided to change it so that it took the content from an external text file. This project was completed December 2008.
- Academic: The Influence of China and Korea on Japanese Cultural Development. My Winter 2009 term paper topic for my Japanese history course. For my honors election I wrote an additional 3-4 pages, bringing the total to 10. This project was completed in April 2009.
- Academic: Locating and Applying to Summer Research Programs. I'm required to complete an off-campus study as an honors student so I applied to several summer technology research programs. I basically Googled a lot, visited the websites of university computer science departments, and visited NSF's "Research Experience for Undergraduates" website. I decided to apply for a summer program, but I could have contacted a professor directly and asked to work on his or her project since the honors program provides funds. This project was completed when I received my first offer in early March 2009. I ultimately decided to participate in the Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering/Science program at Georgia Tech.
- Semi-Academic: Popup Course Descriptions. I maintained a few websites for academic departments and wanted to make the display of course descriptions more visually appealing. I used JavaScript to create miniature webpages dynamically and inserted course descriptions into them. This project was completed Fall 2007.
Dropped/On Hold Projects
- Academic: Nursing game. Two nursing professors want to create an educational game and approached the Computer Science/Engineering/Physics department for help with it. A group of students took this on as their senior project but didn't finish. I volunteered to help finish the project. Another student and I created a "level editor" for the game in Java, which allows professors to add new lessons to it. I'm now the only student working on it. I, personally, also created four PHP scripts that connects the game with a MySQL database. Student login information and grades are stored remotely. The project was put on hold in 2011.
- Academic: Web Cookbook. This was to be my Capstone (or senior) project. Yes, it has been done numerous times before and students have previously used this idea for their project. It's manageable for the three of us, though, and I get to learn another web development language that I was interested in anyway (Ruby). I'm not sure about the status of it, or whether or not the two people I worked with have already completed the Capstone. I'm more interested in a different project, though.
- Personal: Bridging SMF with eFiction. The bridge that's included with eFiction depends on the forum existing first. From what I've gathered from the eFiction support forum, it's very difficult to bridge a forum with an already existing eFiction installation. But what if I tried to bridge it indirectly to eFiction? It involved PHP programming. This project was discontinued due to my decision to discontinue using the forum.
- Personal: Bridging Coppermine Photo Gallery with eFiction. I want to bridge Coppermine with my general anime fanfiction archive so that: 1) users only need to have one account, 2) a user's fanart submissions will show alongside their fanfiction, 3) I can display fanart on the main pages of my archive. I've had to fix two errors caused by the standard Coppermine-to-eFiction bridge and have reached a roadblock that I can't seem to find a way around. It involves cookie authentication across subdomains and the fact that I already have my eFiction archive bridged with another eFiction archive. This involves PHP programming. This project was discontinued due to continuous problems with Coppermine and being unable to contact the person who originally wrote the bridge. An alternate data sharing method will be found.
- Personal: Duplicate Image Recognition Software. I would like for this to become my software engineering Capstone project but I have no idea if that would be possible. I'm interested in creating software that will be able to identify duplicate images when compared on a pixel-by-pixel basis (or not, if there's a better way). This project was discontinued.
- Academic: Web Development Certification. While maintaining full-time status at UM-Flint I also attended Mott Community College for a certificate in website development. Four of the courses I took while dual-enrolled in high school apply to this certificate so I decided that it wouldn't take very much time at all to complete it. I currently only have three more courses to go, but it has become very difficult to take any of them. I have taken a database class at UM-Flint that I want to apply to the certificate, but I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to since it's an upper-division course. This project is currently on hold.