Projects

What is this?

The Projects page lists various projects I have worked on, am working on, or have supported in some way. This list will continue to change over time. For a running list of my freelance work, please visit The France Hopper Company. You may also want to view my Resume.

Personal Projects:

Personal projects are projects I work on in my spare time and individually.

  • The France Hopper Library (June 2014 – 2015) – A fully functional OPAC for my personal book collection powered by Koha.
  • PowerShell scripts (September 2013 – March 2014) – A lot of my internship in Melbourne required creating PowerShell scripts to automate various things. Some of them were easy, others were a royal pain in the ass. For that reason, I’ve released a handful to GitHub.
  • IFTTT: User (2012 – present) – Most of my IFTTT recipes are private, personal ones, but you can see my public ones here.
  • Waze: Area Manager, Tinton Falls and Princeton, NJ (January 2013 – July 2013) – I helped write the maps for Waze.
  • Yam It! Button (2012) – A button (actually a link) for sharing the current page to Yammer. It no longer works due to a change in Yammer’s URL schemes and has been retired.
  • The France Hopper Network (2011 – present) – You’re viewing it!
  • Room entry detection system (2011) – Overview | How It Works
  • Reorchestrations (2008 – December 2015, end of public distribution) – The least often updated of my hobbies. Public distribution was discontinued entirely in December 2015.

Web Development:

Various websites and/or web-based applications I’ve developed.

  • The Friends of the Portland Streetcar (19 December 2019 – Present) – Designed and maintain the website for The Friends of the Portland Streetcar, a community organization that was formed as the former Citizen’s Advisory Committee was disbanded earlier in the year.
  • Portland Streetcar Proof-of-Concept (19 December 2015) – A port of the Portland Streetcar site to a responsive design. It was done to do something productive for three hours on a Friday.
  • Cupcake Carnivale (2012 – Present) – I designed and launched the website for Cupcake Carnivale, a cupcake truck in Philadelphia and New Jersey that now has a café storefront.
  • Route 96 Tracker (20 November 2013) – I wrote this after Yarra Trams launched its newest tram, the E-Class. It’s a really sexy tram and I couldn’t wait to ride it. Since it was to be exclusive to Route 96 at its launch, it made it very easy to track where it was. All you had to do look for it on TramTracker along route 96. The Route 96 Tracker lists every single stop along Route 96 (in both directions) to see what the next three tram types will be for any given stop. Because WebPID uses old code and the E-Class is very new, WebPID lacks an image for it. So, to find the E-Class, all that has to be done is look for a stop with an incoming tram with no image (96a and 96d excluded). This will change if WebPID ever receives an update (it’s still written for MetLink). You can now fork it on GitHub. Note: WebPID has been retired on account of its age. This may stop working without warning. Please visit yarratrams.com.au for tram timetables and information.
  • The Falconaire|Online (2006 – 2010) – The online edition of The Falconaire, my high school’s newspaper. Co-founder, Lead Webmaster.

Public Transport:

I like public transport. It took spending six months in Melbourne, Australia to realize that, but there’s a lot of really cool stuff that goes on behind-the-scenes in the industry. These are projects I’ve done on and for public transport.

SEPTA – Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority

  • Project Getting There (18 August, 2014 – July 2015; end of regular support) – Find scheduled arrivals at SEPTA bus stops using the Stop ID. Take it for a spin here and feel free to fork it on GitHub. Built using the SEPTA API. Note: This runs on very old code and may stop working without warning.
  • Route 13 on Friday the 13th (13 March, 2015) – A dare from SEPTA to ride trolley route 13 on a Friday the 13th. I accepted.
  • A Day on SEPTA (10 December, 2014) – You can do a lot on SEPTA with a One-Day Independence Pass. This is a video shot in one day while riding as much of SEPTA as possible.
  • 15th Street Station Grand Re-Opening (4 September, 2014) – After years of construction, the new 15th/Dilworth Park Station opened, giving a peek into the future of SEPTA stations.
  • SEPTA Regional Rail (July 2014) – In July of 2014, I won a monthly Anywhere pass for Regional Rail from an I SEPTA Philly competition. With SEPTA’s permission, I decided to put it to good use by riding all of the Regional Rail network.

Portland Streetcar

  • Redubbing the NS Line (Released 15 February, 2016) – A month-long project to re-dub the Portland Streetcar NS Line in its entirety. I did a low-res 720p export of existing footage I had and ran it through Logic Pro to extract the original audio. Details of every stop were recorded in a Pages document, and recording started with just reading off the entirety of the needed audio. The audio was recorded using a Shure SM7B microphone connected to a PreSonus AudioBox 22VSL connected to my MacBook Pro. The audio was then cut into chunks and aligned with the original audio, stop by stop. The first pass of aligned audio was duplicating, “The next stop is,” to mark where every stop was. The audio bit for each stop was then put in place in a second pass. The third pass involved placing repeated audio at the correct stops, such as, “Doors to the left”. The fourth pass involved manually ducking the dubbed audio over the original. The final pass checked timings, missed audio, and re-records of audio that had artifacts and/or other issues. The finished audio was then bounced from Logic and added to Final Cut Pro, where the original audio track was removed, and the completed dubbing put in its place. Some small video edits were then made before the finished project was uploaded to YouTube.
  • Portland Streetcar Proof-of-Concept (19 December, 2015) – A port of the Portland Streetcar site to a responsive design. It was done to do something productive for three hours on a Friday.
  • Portland Streetcar Loops (24 November, 2015) – A day of filming on each of the three Portland Streetcar loops.

Drexel Projects:

Projects I’ve worked on at Drexel for Drexel-related reasons. These projects were usually worked on with others.

  • Project Getting There (18 August, 2014 – July 2015; end of regular support) – Find scheduled arrivals at SEPTA bus stops using the Stop ID. Take it for a spin here and feel free to fork it on GitHub. Built using the SEPTA API. Note: This runs on very old code and may stop working without warning.
  • Project K-Car (June 2014 – July 2015) – Canceled. Was a project to provide near real-time information for SEPTA’s trolley routes, but the logistics of the Center City tunnel made it too difficult to be viable.
  • WebServ (2010 – June 2015) – A file and web hosting service for all registered student organizations of Drexel University, provided by TechServ.
  • Hub (2011) – Final project for INFO151. A web application built using Javascript to demonstrate what was learned in class. You can break it here (Discontinued December 2015).

Zelda Reorchestrated Projects:

Projects I worked on while at Zelda Reorchestrated. These do not include projects worked on when it re-launched as ZREO Studios.

  • Twilight Symphony (TPS) / Project Maranello (2007 – February 2013) – Multiple roles:
    • Provided feedback on early works for the project (2007 – roughly late 2008)
    • Financial support
    • MAGFest panels A/V support (January 2013)
  • Radio Hyrule (2008 – 2021) – The Voice; Formerly Relay Server Provider
  • The ZREO Community Forums (2008 – 2013) – Directly in charge of the ZREO forums on Gemakei.
  • The Official ZREO Podcast (2008ish – 2010ish) – The Official ZREO Podcast (TOZP) was a podcast that brought ZREO fans the latest ZREO news.
  • IRC operations

Beta Tester:

These are projects in which I was or currently am a beta tester and can disclose.

  • iOS apps (for several developers) and iOS itself.
  • Certain leading technology companies.
  • Chrome Canary: Because the bleeding edge of the web is more fun.
  • Radio Hyrule iOS App (2013 – Early 2015).
  • Wakfu (roughly late 2011 – 2012) – I got involved with Wakfu after seeing a very early demo of it at the 2011 New York Comic Con. At the time, it was advertised as an MMORPG with virtually no NPCs and much of the game controlled by its users. While it did end up having a fair amount of NPCs, the players still very much have a considerable amount of control over the game’s worlds.
  • zOMG! (~2009-2010) – From 2007ish to 2010ish, I was a fairly active member of Gaia Online, who was looking for testers for its much awaited MMORPG, then called Gaia Battle. The game underwent massive changes since it started, but it was very interesting to watch its development.
  • Various PlayStation games: Mainly PlayStation Plus exclusive betas and public betas, but a few closed betas too (I cannot specify which).
  • HOP Fastpass (March – July 2017) – A new fare card for C-Tran, Portland Streetcar, and TriMet. It launched to the public on 5 July, 2017. Some coverage from local media can be found on the Resume page.

Kickstarter:

Because I’ve now backed more than a small handful of Kickstarter projects, I am no longer individually listing each one. To see what I have backed, please see my Kickstarter profile. I do not respond to solicitations for backing.

Everything Else:

Other projects that were done for non-personal reasons. May have been done individually or collaboratively.

  • Skip Beat! Subtitle Proofreading (Work done June 2016, released November 2017) – How often do you get to say you worked on an anime? As part of the Kickstarter for the US release of Skip Beat!, a call for volunteers was put out to work on the subtitles for the episodes. I volunteered to break out my digital red pen and was assigned to work on episodes six and seven.
  • The Falconaire|Online for Google Currents (2011) – A special version of The Falconaire|Online built for Google Currents.