My Projects

Code

My work as a freelance software developer

Be Right Back!

My dog Tinkerbell suffers from separation anxiety, meaning that she can’t be left alone in the house. I sought help online, and came across a trainer named Julie Naismith who specializes in this issue.

Her method involves gradually training the dog and tracking the sessions in what was then a rudimentary web application. As her user base grew, she wanted to improve the app’s features, and I threw my hat into the ring to become the lead developer on the project.

The project started in 2020, and after rebuilding the app with a modern tech stack (Ruby on Rails, React), I continue to work on improving and adding new features.

Pathways to Care

Pathways to Care is a community-driven and youth-led systems change project committed to transforming the mental healthcare system for Black children, youth and their families.

Originally created by Nomadic Labs, I joined the project in 2022 to develop some new features, including:

an intake form to allow mental health clinics to submit their information to the site, and be added to the map
updating the webpage to include the latest content from their Instagram feed
adding a live search functionality to the map of mental health services

RISE Cities

RISE Cities is an organization that shares and supports innovative and scalable solutions for Resilient, Intelligent, Sustainable and Equitable cities.

Their website is another Nomadic Labs project, and I joined to build a new page for the Fellowship program. The page contains a neat little SVG map, which was a fun challenge to build.

Virtual Tour of Hong Kong and Japan

This one is purely a hobby project. I wanted to create a slideshow of my 2023 vacation pictures to share with my friends and family, in a format that wouldn’t bore them to tears. In the past, I’ve edited slideshows into videos with music, and this time, I decided to take it one step further, and make it interactive.

To put this together, I used Svelte to handle the routing and navgiation, MapLibre to drive the map animations and transitions, and PhotoSwipe to make the photos expandable and zoomable.

Prose

Pieces of writing that I've published

The Strange Separation of Jacob and Rob

This is a book that I ghostwrote with a survivor of sexual trauma. The story follows his recovery and the impact that the event had on the rest of his life. I spent a lot of time interviewing and collaborating with my subject, and I greatly value the experience and his friendship. The book deals with difficult subject matter, but in the end, I believe it carries a message of hope.

For more information, please visit this site.

The only difference between Jacob and me is that he is Jacob and I am me.

The difference between us causes our stories to branch away from each other at the moment that the woman utters those words.

“I’m going to kill myself.”

Subtitles

chapbook by bird, buried press

The skyscrapers, the ships on the Huangpu, the Bund; they form a sepia-toned photograph, like what I’m seeing now already happened a long time ago, before my arrival in Shanghai, even before I was born.

Kale Chips

Shanghai Literary Review, Issue 1

All of these meanings blend together to make a perfume, and ⟨乖⟩ is like a magical pair of tweezers which, depending on the angle at which you pluck, extracts the essence of vanilla, or lavender, or rose.

The Storm

Spadina Literary Review, April 2017

Because by the time the lightning started, the blunt violence of the storm had already beaten from us all sense and reason, wiped us so that we were blank like a fresh sheet of paper. The storm wiped us, so that when the lightning came, it filled our empty spaces with wonder, and something like joy.

100% Original

The Danforth Review, Issue 35

I went into the job interview not knowing what to expect.

He asked me only two questions.

The first: “Do you have any experience in shopkeeping?”

“Yes,” I answered.

He asked his second question: “Can you keep a secret?”

Opening Night

Postscripts to Darkness, Volume 4

Our final act is unlike the others. There is no magic here. Only Nature itself.

Unknown and Unseen

On Spec Magazine, Summer 2013

We have mastered the construction of part number 6725D. Our fingers are so familiar with the motion that we can do it without thinking. It will eventually be combined with other components, made by the other teams, to form a whole. After it’s been fused with those pieces, 6725D—the part that we know so well—will be unknown and unseen.