JT's Portfolio

What I like to do.

I'm a big fan of the back end. Automation of tasks and testing, scraping, data maniupuation and gathering are some of my favorite things. I could stare at a black console all day. Whenever I need to 'design' something for personal use I buy and modify a themeforest.net html project. I know my way around HTML/CSS and the front end. But, I prefer I'd let a UI/UX designer handle the heavy work.

Scraping / Data Gathering

Here is a short list of things I've done that are not listed on my resume as they were very small side projects.
Maintained a modified version of WebDriver that was able to bypass Distill network's from 2014 - 2018. Sad blog here
Created scrapers for Craigslist* (Python + BeautifulSoup), Amazon* (C#), Imgur, and some one off specific scraping sites per requests.
Data gathering via API. Amazon, Ebay, Reddit, Valorebooks, AbeBooks, eCampus, Biblio, and B&N to name a few.

Automation

Most of my automation is to prevent me from repeating tasks. At the end of the day. I'm kinda lazy and automation either saves time or keeps people honest. "Run this task once a week". How do you guarantee it? What if the primary responsible party is sick, or on vacation? Automate it! And of course there is an XKCD for that.
I've automated countless tasks. I especially enjoy automating tasks that are not my own. It gives me a glimpse into other people's work flows and jobs. Figuring out a solution to their problem is like a puzzle for me.
I'm pretty scrappy when it comes to some automation tasks. I've used AutoIt, AutoHotKey, python, and c# to create automations as well as other people's platforms that are based on LUA or another script language. Much of it comes down to the time required, payoff, and how often and mission critical the automation is.
Additionally, I've never been banned from a video game for a task I've automated. Sometimes automation isn't about being 'as fast as possible' but to be 'as human as possible'.

Testing

I feel that testing is one of the more important things in the SDLC. Testing starts with planning and the creation of Acceptance Criteria. One needs to think beyond just how to make the code do what it needs to do but to whom is going to use the final product. One thing I have been focusing on in the past few years is Accessibility Testing (ie, S.508, WSAG). Not only does making your site more accessibile help folks who are disabled, many of the requirements are good UI/UX design as well.
I'm available to give speeches on general testing or accessibility testing as well.

* Code Available. (I've got over 50 bitbucket repos over the past 7+ years for a variety of side projects.)