Hi! I'm Alec. I'm a recent graduate of Davidson College, where I studied Digital Studies and Computer Science. I currently work as a software engineer at TiVo in Durham, North Carolina.
About Me
Projects
Swaptime
Add, drop, and swap courses at Davidson
New
A number of recently popular online platforms, such as Uber, Airbnb, and Tinder facilitate complex and potentially dangerous interactions between users. For users to feel confident entering these communications, developers must carefully engineer trust both in other users and in the platform itself. My senior thesis in Digital Studies introduces Swaptime, an open-source web application that helps Davidson students secure seats in high-demand courses by organizing trades with their peers.
Tragic Ways
Through the magic of misused geo-referencing, take a virtual tour of the most destructive period of the Mexican Revolution while actually strolling through the quaint and quiet town of Davidson, NC. For full effect, you'll want to view this project on a GPS-enabled device - preferably one convinced that Davidson, NC is your current location.
PC-Zus
A critique of Kanye West's lyrics and public image from a self-professed fan, this interactive exhibit encourages users to assert their agency as music listeners by rearranging and editing some of West's most controversial lines. Heads up: foul language within. This was my final project for a course on Gender & Technology.
The One I Love: The Visual Novel
This is my final "port-ject" for a course on Electronic Literature, for which we were instructed to translate some narrative work into a digital piece. I chose to re-imagine the opening scenes of the 2014 film The One I Love as a visual novel. Headphones recommended!
MSFTPatentBot
Using Microsoft's publicly available database of their 40,000+ patents, this bot tweets one patent's name and number every hour.
BuzzwordDietBot
A more playful take on Twitter bots, this account asks hourly questions in the form of Regina George's (from Mean Girls) infamous pondering: "Is butter a carb?"
The World According to Jeopardy!
If the only source for aliens to learn about human culture were the popular trivia show Jeopardy!, what sort of picture would they get? This proof-of-concept wiki, which uses only Jeopardy! questions and answers as the reference sources for its articles, explores that very question. This was my final project for a Spring 2015 Data Culture class.