Christian J Kesler's Development Portfolio

About Me

I'm an engineer who is interested in a wide variety of things, including software, additive manufacturing, aerospace technology, and nuclear energy. Software Engineering stood out to me as a discipline since it can be experimented with almost for free.

Some things on my mind lately include Machine Learning, Antarctica, Magnetohydrodynamic Argon Thrusters, Thorium Fueled Molten Salt Reactors, and Resin 3D Printers.

I truly enjoy programming when I know that what I'm creating is useful, and web applications have become my default approach. I'm currently hooked on NodeJS (assessing a switch to Deno), and have been working on a couple of custom packages to help modularize my existing projects and speed up development for future ones. They include an authentication system and an e-commerce product manager.

I have yet to explore low level programming for things like microcontrollers and robotics, but that is an area I'm eager to dive into at some point in the future. I'd like to design and program a Resin Printer that can use a servo arm with angle and rotation to hold the baseplate at creative angles.

Several of my most recent projects have been leveraging OpenAI services in their core functionality, and there are a staggering number of possibilities with the GPT models. GPT-3 has proven extremely capable in most circumstances, and GPT-4 is clearly a significant upgrade. A speech interface for ChatGPT is on my todo list, but there are other more pressing projects that take priority.

It's hard for me to talk about projects I've already completed since I've mentally filed those away for future reference; the upcoming projects are always more exciting. In the past, I have created programs including a Discord bot written in Javascript that serves as a TTRPG currency tracker, a Client CRM written in the Laravel framework with PHP for Trailhead Marketing that served a variety of business critical functions, a Hotkeys and Keystrokes Assistant written in Python to help speed up everyday tasks, and a variety of NodeJS Express webapps that serve as websites for several small businesses (as well as my portfolio which you are viewing now, although there isn't a lot of complicated backend work going here).

Latest Projects

New

Uglesoft - Custom Web Solutions for Small Businesses

Uglesoft Web Solutions is a small business that offers website development, publication, and maintenance to other small businesses.

ugle-auth - A NodeJS package on NPM for User Authentication and Session Management

This NodeJS package contains functions for connecting to a SQLite database, CRUD methods for User Accounts, and Login and Register functions that accept and return session objects. Passwords are hashed using a secure algorithm before being stored in the database to improve security. This package was built to serve the needs of Uglesoft clients.

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ugle-index - A Pagination and Filtering front-end utility on NPM for designed for Express integration

This NodeJS package includes a pagination and search filtering frontend utility that can be easily included in Express projects.

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LinuxGPT - A Natural Language Interface for the Linux CLI

This Python program listens for its name in the Linux CLI and utilizes Artificial Intelligence to convert the natural language query that follows the command into valid Linux commands, which the program executes. This project helps bridge the gap between natural language and Linux CLI syntax.

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Eagor - A Hotkeys and Keystrokes Assistant

This Python program listens for specific key combinations to activate specific functions, which send predefined keystrokes to the computer to quickly accomplish a wide variety of tasks. This program excels at repetitive tasks such as providing git authentication credentials or including a signature block at the end of your emails.

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Work Experience

Programmer - Insight Global (Aug 2022 - Present)

While working with Insight Global, I've learned a tremendous amount about Software Development Pipelines and Development Cycles. Specifically, I've become familiar with the Scrum methodology as tracked via Atlassian's Jira, I've grown to love Docker containers for software deployment, and I've tuned my ability to accurately estimate my future productivity towards a project feature.

Full-Stack Developer (Founder, Owner, and Operator) - Uglesoft LLC (May 2022 - Present)

Uglesoft Web Solutions is a small business that offers website development, publication, and maintenance to other small businesses. During my time with Uglesoft, I have worked with clients to help define their online business needs, developed rapid stylistic prototypes to showcase, and deployed client websites to production hosting services.

I've learned a lot about web development, specifically how to better put myself in the perspective of the user. Sometimes I get too caught up in the intricate details that I lose sight of the overall picture, but I'm working on correcting that.

Full-Stack Developer - Trailhead Marketing (Mar 2022 - Jul 2022)

My time at Trailhead Marketing was my first professional experience as a Developer, and I honestly enjoyed it tremendously. I was the only developer on staff at a small sales and marketing firm, and the legacy CRM (that I had been tasked with replacing) completely crashed shortly after my arrival. It was a high pressure environment that needed a production solution to keep the business operational, and I was able to deliver.

I created a LAMP stack (Laravel, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) CRM deployed to AWS that interfaced with the legacy database and was production ready in less than a month, allowing the company to resume normal operations in less than a week after the crash. I was also able to coordinate with the IT Manager to reconfigure the AWS services we were utilizing and save the company approximately 30k per year.