Hello, my name is Brian, and I love solving problems with code. I currently work at DocSpot in Sunnyvale, California as a back-end developer. I work on a custom Java codebase with a focus on selecting, downloading, and indexing data from the web. It's fascinating work that combines elements of NLP, probabilistic decision making, data sanitizing, building APIs, and writing services that support concurrent operations on a massive SQL database by internal and customer-facing tools.

My best skill is self-teaching: I am curious, an avid reader, good at breaking problems into small chunks, and careful, scientific observation.

Other skills: HTML, CSS, Javascript, Lua, Java, C, git/GitHub, Vim, Emacs, Linux, Calculus, Linear Algebra, ODEs.

In my spare time, I study functional programming via Clojure/ClojureScript, Scala, and Haskell.

Selected Work

Once Upon a Tornado

This program takes multiple large text inputs (works of classical fiction, in this demo) and processes them via Markov chaining to generate literary mashups on on the spot. Markov chains are a predictive analysis tool used by several large companies (Google's PageRank algorithm relies on them, for example.) This implementation is written in Clojure, from algorithm to server, and uses Ring, Compojure, and Hiccup.

What's Up? Weather

This program uses HTML5 geolocation and the Open Weather API to display the user's local weather. It selects a background image based on the kind of weather the user is experiencing.

Simon

A webpage rendition of the 'Simon' game, with a lot of animation and user interaction. This is one of my most 'stateful' webpages - great practice for keeping things clean via function composition.

Maze Explorer

I have always loved mazes. I was reading about maze generating algorithms one day and started experimenting, and this is the result (so far). The program builds a maze and then lets the user explore in different modes, based on what gear they decide to bring along. Use vim or arrow keys to explore.

Twitch.tv Channel Surfer

A frontend for the popular Twitch.tv platform. Users can search for their favorite channels, which are loaded asynchronously via API calls. An image of the current stream is loaded and results can be sorted by activity.

Connect with me via:

GitHub

Email

FreeCodeCamp