Hi! I'm Ace.
I make solutions.
I make solutions.
My name is Ace, and I'm a fresh graduate looking for work.
I graduated from California State University, Sacramento with a 3.7 GPA and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, with a minor in Mathematics and a certificate in Game Design. In school I learned Java, C/C++, Python, and SQL, as well as how to manage deadlines and work with others. In my work as a freelancer and web developer I have gained skills in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap, PHP, Wordpress, Sitecore, and Drupal. In a range of personal projects and interests, I have also picked up proficiency with various tools for 3D Modeling, graphic design, and game development.
My experience working with others have given me strong communication skills, and my love of creative pursuit has given me a passion to make the absolute best product possible within constraints. I'm used to working on deadlines and within requirements, with client oversight and with clients who have very little industry knowlege. I hope my broad range of skills can be of use to you!
Email me at admin@ace-development.com so we can make a deal.
I look forward to working with you!
-Ace
CSU seniors are required to participate in a group oriented senior project, which involves client meetings to obtain requirements and two-week sprint style AGILE development. I led a team of seniors to create a software solution for the civil engineering department: a VR driving sim that can be used to collect reaction data. Driving simulators that exist on the market are extremely pricy, and our aim was to create one that requires less expensive tech by utilizaing Unreal 4's native virtual reality compatibility. In this project I worked on C++ code, assets, UX design, and practiced a fair bit of management process as I fell into a team leader role.
In Python using Tensorflow I wrote a neural network to identify a mushroom's edibility based on a photograph. This project required merging two datasets, by training a convoluted neural network to make predictions about a mushroom's characteristics based on a photograph, and another to identify edibility based on those characteristics. The resulting neural network has a precision of 99% and an average recall of 96%. The full writeup can be read in this report. This project only works on agaricus mushrooms but could be scaled to apply to more genuses with the injection of new data.
To help speed up the workflow of a small mom-and-pop business, I created a simple piece of accounting software tailored to their needs. I wrote this from scratch mostly with PHP and mySQL. The initial idea was to generate invoices that matched what the client had been painstakingly creating in Publisher. To do that with haste and efficiency, a database was required to fetch customer data. At first I included a guide to phpMyAdmin and left the client to try out interfacing with the backend themselves, but after it became apparant that would not suffice I created an easy-to-use front end user experience to wrap around the mySQL database instead.
This project gave me experience communicating with non-technical clients about requirements and expectations. I also had the valuable experience of finding that the old requirements were insufficient and needed more development. The client is happy with the product and hasn't gone back to using Publisher.
In my university coursework I took a game architecture class and I am very proud of my finished product. It uses a student-built engine and utelizes collision physics, procedural map generation, listener architecture, 3D sound desgin, and AI fuzzy logic decision making. I wrote this mostly in Java with some python scripting.
I think this game could use improvement particularly on its graphics, so as a hobby I have been reworking it in Unreal using C++. Stay posted for updates.
A local barber had a shop set up he'd like to advertise as well as an online shop and online tutorial series. I recommended Wordpress to easily suit his needs, particularly because it would be easy for him to maintain with his lack of technical skills. I then set up his shop, forum, and online classes for him on Wordpress and now he is happily doing business internationally.
A local community web page was sorely in need of a revamp, not only on the front end but also the back end. There was no content management system in place or procedural generation of content, and the old layout was some of the most outdated non-intuitive design I have ever seen.
I remade the site incorporating given photos and content along a theme the clients selected. I also tailored a javascript file that was easy to update for when the community wanted to add a new business to the list of board members, update a photo, or add or modify an event in the community calendar. I wrote this page from javascript, HTML and CSS, using some open-source javascript libraries for advanced features.
A small business was suffering from a terrible web presence on account of an ancient, ugly, flash-laden home page. I designed a new site for them with their content management system of choice, Wix, however they quickly found that the site was still performing badly due to slow performance on older computers.
As an answer to their site's speed issues I rewrote it using pure HTML, CSS and Javascript. The design was almost entirely up to the specifications of the client (please don't judge me for their love of Comic Sans, it is not mine). I also enabled Google Analytics on their website in order to keep a pulse on how their advertisements were faring. Their business is going stronger than ever and get a consistent number of conversions from their website.
In college I interned at the California Department of Transportation in their web department and helped them migrate their site in a critical time period. Some days I fixed up to 90 pages a day.
For this project we used Sitecore CMS. I worked mostly in HTML and CSS. To speed up my workflow I made frequent use of RegEx to find compliance issues, errors, and bad coding practices. I also got experience with Google Analytics and WCAG web accessibility requirements. And, of course, I got a lot of practice working in a team.
I made this in Blender 2.8 over 7 hours. I utelized UV mapping, shader materials, particle effects, scultping, fluid simulation, and lighting composition. You can almost taste it.
This was made as part of an art course in university. In this course I learned the fundamentals of 3D modeling, art, and composition, including materials, lighting, shading, modeling techniques, materials, bump mapping, UV mapping and composition.
For copyright reasons I must remark that I do not own the IP of the subject matter of this piece, because she is a character from League of Legends. I made this as a birthday gift to a friend who is a big fan of the character and the artistic style of Alphonse Mucha. This piece took about 20 hours and was made in GIMP.
While joking with a group of fellow software developers, we remarked how many 'million dollar app ideas' our friends and family have brought up to us, and how a lot of them are such a generic combination of 'niche industry' and 'top 20 app', that we could write a random generator to come up with these 'million dollar ideas'. So I went and actually did it.
This was built in an afternoon using PHP, MySQL and Ajax and hosted on a spare machine I run under my bed. Some of the ideas aren't even bad ideas.
Contact info available on request.
After talking to me, I'll be surprised if they don't put you in charge of the whole company.
Their demeanor is very professional and they are certainly going to be a successful computer scientist, whether Ace chooses a career in industry or academia. They get along well with other students and will make a great team member.
Our department would have fallen apart without you.
If only they could be cloned....
If you have a project you'd like me to work on, or a position on your team, please contact me. I am always excited to put my skills to good use.
Email: admin@ace-development.com
