Engineering
Coding
Art
My projects involving art in any way. Whether that is, graphic design, music, drawing, or fabric. The first of these I was exposed to was music. I began to learn the violin around 2010, and since then I have been active in the field. I am currently in the Ward Melville Chamber Orchestra. I also branched into music composition and arrangement more recently. As for graphic design, I was introduced to Figma during the pandemic. Over time, I have gotten pretty good at designing and even got the opportunity to design for GunnHacks. Lastly, my grandmother and mother are excellent seamstresses and knitters. Over time, I have picked up some of the skill. I started with sowing around 3rd grade, and started projects later in middle school.
'22
A large collaborative Christmas gift for 11th grade.
Every year at Gunn High School, the orchestra holds a white elephant gift exchange. My friend is known for going above and beyond every year, and this year (2022), we needed to top everything so far. The year prior, he, another friend, and I recorded a cover of "Fallen Down" from Undertale. This year, we wanted to make a full on music video of the famous song, Bad Apple!!, with everything being recreated by us. Creating the video was obviously my part, given my experience with making Bad Apple. How I decided to do it this time, was to collect a few "light" and "dark" images from everybody participating in the project, and then using them as pixels in the Geckoinator9000 I created earlier.
However there was a problem with that; because of how the Geckoinator works, it would only pick the darkest and lightest of the images and nothing in-between. So, I actually needed to write a new program. I took the original code, and modified it to first filter the input images into "light" and "dark", then the pixels of each frame into either "light" or "dark", then randomize which respective input image replaces the pixel. I then ran the program in batches of 1000 frames a day. Then, ffmpeg the frames together and we had the video done.
For the music, we decided to arrange a nonet, with a singer, 5 violins, 2 cellos, and a table as percussion. Over a weekend, I started off the arrangement by creating the skeleton of the score and all the main rhythms and melodies. Then my friend did all the polish and fixed all my mistakes as well as adding percussion. We then distributed the sheet music to the 9 participating musicians. I recorded the Violin V part and when everyone was done recording, another member edited and mixed the tracks together. My final task was to make a credits frame, which I did in Figma. For white elephant, we also pulled part of my geckoroll video to insert at the end. Then the video, audio, captions, credits, and geckoroll, were combined together to produce the final video.
'22
When I was visiting London in the summer of 2022 before 11th grade, I visited Notting Hill Market. There, I purchased a pure black hat at a shop. Back home, I sew on some white ribbon to add a white ring and bow on the hat.
'21
A customizable mosaic maker created in 9th grade.
With the already massive amount of geckoimages, I wanted to do something using the entire collection. However I did not know what, and it eventually came down to whatever would let me play Bad Apple using them. I settled on creating a mosaic maker which replaces pixels in an image with the geckoimage that closest matches the pixel's color. It also works with theoretically any set of images as long as there are enough of them.
After the basic framework was finished, I introduced a feature to improve the quality of the images using Floyd-Steinberg dithering. I also introduced batch processing and multithreading in order to be able to process videos, and of course...I would probably consider this one of my if not the most technically challenging programs I have ever written. This used a lot of skill involving array processing and algorithms I learned from CS50x.
'21
This very website! (started in 9th grade)
This is the product of over a year of development, designs, and redesigns. This journey technically started when I took Cs50 in the summer of 2021. The second to last assignment was to make a homepage for yourself using HTML, CSS, and JS. The page I designed at the time was not really a serious attempt at a homepage, and more of a testing ground. The most impressive part of the website was playing Bad Apple in ASCII complete with synced audio. You can find that version of the website here. Some time later, I returned to start a serious attempt at a personal website. Before I could get started though, I wanted to have a design down. At the time, I was into the art-deco style, and wanted to try to emulate that in the design. My first few designs were were focused on blending the content more like a poster than a website.
Unfortunately, my artistic talents were not sufficient for such a complex design. So, I was back to the drawing board. I decided to keep the theme of unique coloration with a deep orange background and blue-red balls as the central element. This version is still up here. I am still relatively proud of this version of the website, especially of the spheres. When the window was wide enough, the pattern would actually repeat itself using some CSS trickery. The projects section also got its general design and categories in this version. Slowly, I continued to improve the design.
However, because of the complex JS and code involved, this iteration of the website was slow and resource intensive. The projects section was also outdated. The third and current version of the website began with design once again. This time, I wanted to simplify things. I decided to split each category into its own page to make organization more clear. For the new color scheme, I used a mint green background, and white accents. Originally, I was going to use a list type structure for the projects, but it did not work out very well. After extensive versions, I finally settled on the current square tile style with pop-up window description. All designs can be found in the Figma. Implementing this website should have been relatively easy, but it became a nightmare. First, I decided to not use JS at all, and everything had to be HTML CSS. This was the biggest head scratcher of the project. Very few people have attempted to do what I set out to do, probably for good reason too. Somehow against all odds, I ended up with this completely functional website, with no JS! By now, my projects list had grown substantially. I had over 60 different projects that all needed descriptions, links, and photos. This was the other nightmare. If I were to do this completely in the IDE, I might even say it is impossible. Instead, I created a spreadsheet and wrote out all the information there. Based on this, I wrote another program to convert the spreadsheet into HTML, which could then be copy pasted into the website; and finally, here we are.
Website Github • Website (this) • Cs50 Website • Old Website Github • Old Website • Figma • Spreadsheet • Translator Github
'21
A collection of software for the Gecko Collection started in 9th grade.
After the Gecko Collection started to grow beyond the 400 mark, some software integration was necessary. The first integrated software to be completely was Geckobot. With help from a friend, we used Google Drive API to fetch a local copy of the drive folder. Geckobot had simple searching, browsing, and even sent users daily images on a subscription service. I used the experience I gained from Geckobot to eventually build a standalone website for browsing the collection. This was complete with filtering, sorting, and searching.
I ran into the upload limit on Firebase for the images though. To move the images off of Firebase, I made a locally hosted API which the website would use. The API is coded in C# and fetches images from Google Drive like Geckobot. I was able to eventually get my API onto an https connection and update my website to pull from it. This had the benefit of being accessible for other projects on the internet.
Website • Website Repo • API • API Repo
'20
A hackathon project related to chess in 9th grade.
Every year at Gunn High School, the United Computations club would hold GunnHacks. Gunnhacks is a hackathon where you can get together with up to 3 others and work together to create a project. Before I became an organizer for GunnHacks 8.0, a couple friends and I and participated in 7.0. For our project, we decided to make online chess, but with a twist! There would be a set of bonus rules which can be added to each game and combined to create a unique experience. My role in this project was management and music, and I also contributed to the code, art, design, and ideas. Eventually we had generated over 250 rules we could add, however only 15 would be added in our final version.
For music, I composed 3 tracks in a swing style. Originally I planned to record the tracks with my violin, but due to the time constraint I used the default piano sound. As part of management, I organized and typed up the Devpost page. Even though we did not place in the competition, we enjoyed working on the project together and produced a product that we are proud of.
'20
A collaborative art project created by my friends and I started around 8th grade.
Also known as geckoimages, this consists of variations based on a doodle one of my friends made in 7th grade. There are now almost 1000 images total, I have contributed 274 of them as of October 2022. A lot of my projects here use the Gecko Collection in some way (e.g. my logo for my 3D designs, basis for the Geckoinator).
'20
A wearable velvet cloak started around 8th grade.
Around 2020, the Joann in Palo Alto closed. Before closing, they had a grand sale of everything left on their shelves and I went with my mom to check it out. On one of these expeditions, I found this bolt of turquoise velvet and I knew I wanted to make a cloak with it. Before getting started, I researched how to make cloaks. After figuring out that you need a 180 degree piece of fabric. I used Autocad to draw a suitable design. Then, with help from my mom, I made sewing patterns which I used to cut out the cloak. Over winter break, I used a combination of sewing machine and hand sowing to stitch the parts together. After the cloak itself was complete, I needed a clasp to finish it. I was going to purchase one, but I decided to 3D print one instead. I designed a modular clasp that let me design decorative elements in the future which could then attach to the existing clasp. The bare part on it's own also looks quite good. Unfortunately, the project went on hiatus when I moved to New York and it sat in my closet for more than a year. Finally, in the fall of 2022, I decided to finish it. Because of the increased cold of New York, I bought some warm fabric to line the inside of the cloak. After sewing that on, I finished by finally sowing the clasp onto the cloak.
'20
A model of a fountain from a video game made in 9th grade.
At this point, I had experience designing functional items. I was interested in trying out some artistic modeling though. Usually, people use programs like Blender for this, but I decided to use Inventor because I was familiar with it. The object I wanted to design and print was the fountain from the City of Tears in Hollow Knight. The original purpose was as a decoration for my geckos, but I decided to use it as a desk ornament instead. Inventor is not meant to be used for artistic purposes, but most of the fountain being symmetrical made it surprisingly easy. When it came to the top of the fountain where the statues are, I experimented with the loft feature to create the bodies. To assemble the fountain, I just used superglue. I was pretty happy with the final product, and it was pretty good looking.
'20
A video game centered around an escaped gecko in California, started during 8th grade.
After beginning to code with Unity, this was my first project using it. Intended to be a rhythm game combined with a platformer. Unfortunately this project never got properly finished, the current prototype demonstrates the basic mechanics and a sample of a level. Although the game never got finished, most of the game was already planned out, like the core mechanics, story, and music.
Also, no geckos were harmed in the making of this game.
'20
A collection of music written for The Crest, my unfinished video game, in 8th grade. This was my first large scale composition project and took me around a month. Although not completely finished, I am still relatively satisfied with the outcome.
'20
A hand modeled version of a skyscraper from the game Hollow Knight designed in 8th grade. It was meant for my geckos, but was never constructed.
'19
An arrangement of "Megalovania" by Toby Fox. I made this in 7th grade when Undertale was booming in popularity, and I was interested in possibly playing this in the school orchestra. After I pitched this to the teacher, the orchestra actually got to read through it. Although we never got to perform it at a concert, this project was what started my interest in arranging music.
'19
A crochet scarf made in 7th grade.
In early 2019, I had recently learnt how to crochet from my grandma. I wanted to test my skills, so I decided to crochet a roll-up scarf. I had to make the scarf itself, then a band which could be used to keep the scarf rolled up. I worked whenever I had free time, and finished in about a month. After finishing, my dad bought the scarf for $20.
'17
A card themed comforter made in 6th grade.
My first major sewing project. I made this twin-sized cover in 7th grade after learning how to sew in 5th grade. The bottom side (blue) is made of a cooler fabric, while the top side with the ace of hearts is made of a warmer polyester.
