mike
hodnick

Code

I love writing software and doing software development. I often perform software design and architecture tasks on projects and lead development teams, but I think it's crucial to stay hands on and go deep in code (including emerging technologies and design patterns) so that you can walk the walk.

My comfort zone is the Microsoft stack: Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC, WPF. The web is my sweet spot: HTML, CSS, Javascript (jQuery and I are friends). I like working end to end on web solutions - from the UI and front-end HTTP calls to web APIs and ORMs.

Lately I've done a lot of work on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, and am actively tinkering with Google App Engine, Python, and Django. I've also recently acquired an Android device and have been writing Android apps in Java for fun as well.

But enough talk about what I like to do. Here is a list of apps I've worked on. Most of them have been done in my spare time - things I've done when I could have been doing something else.

Windows Phone 7

  • Warblr - plays tweets as sound on your phone.

Silverlight

  • Mic Sampler - record audio through your computer microphone, crop a selection, and play it back in a loop.
  • g20 Nations Quiz - A quiz with a world map and data visualization feature to view results.
  • TANKS - A physics game that uses the Farseer Physics Engine.
  • Off The Air - An audio synthesis widget.
  • Twitter Synth - An audio synthesis app that plays Twitter search results as "music". This was a MIX10 10k coding challenge entry.
  • kSynth - a music sequencer and digital audio synthesizer
  • kSynth.b - kSynth's successor that has a more flexible and complex sequencer.
  • kSynth.drone - a sound canvas that allows you to perform additive synthesis on multiple wave forms. Includes frequency modulation, amplitude modulation, and other effects.
  • WaveEdit - draw your own wave form and see what it sounds like.
  • Silverlight Seuqencer - sequence a list of wave samples and make music.
  • PiCheat - a helper app for visualizing Pi calculations.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

ASP .NET

  • Visual Studio Developer Types - you know those stock photo models from the Visual Studio 2005/2008 installation screens?
  • Halo 2 Gamertag Generator - ok, so it's not live any more, but it was awesome. Honest. Given your real name, it generated a new Halo 2 gamertag for you.

Azure, Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC

This project gets a category all by itself since it covers so much technological ground:

  • 3M Visual Attention Service - a public web site exposes 3M's visual attention technology. Where will someone look at an image within the first five seconds? Uses Azure extensively - including blob storage, worker roles, and web roles. Utilizes a web-based API for Silverlight features and also supports an iPhone app (prototype).