My personal projects

Most of the time, I am chipping away at a personal coding project. I love working on these as I get to complete a something from end to end, including the design, development, deployment and maintenance. These projects often need skills that I currently don't have, so I will spend a lot of time reading and learning so I can get the job done.

Here are the most recent personal projects I have worked on.

Searchle

Check it out at: searchle.net. Stack: React.js

Searchle is not just a game, it's a learning experience. By guessing the word, you tap into the collective curiosity of the internet, offering a peek into global consciousness. Join the thousands of daily players and be part of the Searchle community, a space for curious minds looking for a unique, thought-provoking challenge.

Smug Chicken

Check it out at: smugchicken.com. Stack: Angular 15, RxJS, Node.js, MongoDB, Heroku, Firebase and Twitter API.

What happens when you blend AI and Wordle? Smug Chicken! 🐔

Smug Chicken is an image-based word game where players must guess the two words entered into an AI art generator to create the resulting grid of four images.

I got the pleasure of working on this game with my long time friend, Haydn Kenny. This was a refreshing change as I usually work on web development projects by myself. It was great to be able to workshop ideas and create the best possible product.

So I guess the question is now, are you a smug chicken today?

WhereTaken

Check it out at: wheretaken.com. Stack: Angular 14, RxJS, Node.js, MongoDB, Heroku, Firebase and Twitter API.

I am a big fan of the daily games that became popular during COVID times, e.g. Wordle, Worldle, Flagle etc. I decided to build my own called WhereTaken. You have 6 chances to guess what country it is based on a single photograph.

I used Angular 14 for the frontend with RxJS to create a completely reactive application. The game also keeps track of how many guesses people took to complete the game as well as their first guess. This information is passed to the Node.js backend and stored in a MongoDB database. That data is then used to show the global daily stats when users have completed the game.

I also have a Twitter Bot active for the WhereTaken twitter account, which is made using the Twitter API. It will automatically tweet yesterday's photo and answer, the stats from yesterday and will retweet a post related to WhereTaken.

The frontend Angular app is hosted on Firebase and the Node.js backend on Heroku.

Retro Snake

Check it out at: playretrosnake.com. Stack: Angular 14, RxJS and Firebase.

I made this game while trying to improve my skills in creating reactive apps with Angular and RxJS. The game has a global state object which all components subscribe to. When a user presses the WASD keys, it will update the global state and change the direction on the next frame of the game.

This game is hosted on Firebase.

Odds Pony

Check it out at: oddspony.com. Stack: Angular 14, RxJS, NodeJS, MongoDB, reCAPTCHA, Firebase and Heroku.

I built this application when I wanted to work on a project that handled massive amounts of data. This application scans thousands of odds, which come from an API and gives users useful insights.

I have no interest in gambling/betting, but this was a great opportunity for me to work with an external API, process data and present it back in a meaningful way. Users can sign up for an API key from the data provider, and I make a percentage of those sales. It has created a nice monthly passive income for me.

Your budget summary

Check it out at: yourbudgetsummary.com. Stack: Angular 13.

I made this project a couple of years ago. It is an application that will take in your income and expenses, and display your budget summary in a nice table at the bottom.

When I built this, I had been working at RAA for a number of months and had started to gain some knowledge in Angular. I wanted to work on a project, end to end to reiterate some of the things I had learnt.