Justin Goodman


Links:

This site is mirrored: main, github

About:

I'm Justin, current software engineer and problem solver. My wide range of interests and abilities center around a common theme: creative expression. From web/app development to film editing to music composition, I am passionate about expressing my creativity through media that others may enjoy. When I'm not at my computer or studying, you can find me swimming, biking, running, playing racquetball with my friends, or tutoring classmates in Computer Science.

Interested in collaborating on a project? Email me at jugoodma@umd.edu. Interested in getting to know me first? You can find me on LinkedIn and GitHub. Cheers!

Opinions are my own.


Projects:

Song Per Week

At the start of June 2022, I challenged myself to produce one full song per week for one year. I produce electronic music in FL Studio.

See the full playlist of 52 songs here on YouTube.

See my musings on the project here.

Locator

I attempted to write a version of Apple's "share my location" feature. You can see the project here. It may still have bugs.

Lantern

I like open-source software. I also like doing things myself. I also like solving problems that already exist, since I can apply my skills while usually learning new things. One such example -- real-time location tracking and sharing. There exist multiple "solutions":

I say "solutions" because these are just things people are "allowed" to use. Sure, there are other open-source implementations (OpenGTS and Traccar and maybe even gps-logger (OBS plugin)) but those are lame. So, the obvious solution was to build my own scuffed implementation, from scratch, complete with testing suite for maximum stress-testing. Plus, the name for the project is cooler. Check out Lantern here on GitHub. You can also check out the live version running on this site here. Though, you will need to contact me if you want a live demo.

GPSRace

COVID-19 canceled our favorite sport season, so I helped my brother build out a site to host and compare GPS race files. Check it out here.

The website used to be reachable at https://gpsrace.cc but has since been taken down (probably due to cost). You can see it on The Internet Archive but the maps and segments no longer work.

Corners

A simple pen-and-paper game my friend and I created. Check out the project here.

I recently (March 2024) re-wrote the game using Preact and my newfound technical skills as a real Software Engineer. Check it out here.

REU-2018

University of Rochester data science Research Experience for Undergraduates. My partner and I created novel Amazon Mechanical Turk interfaces to build three datasets for training computer vision models. See the data manipulation and interface code we wrote here.

Ti-84 Programs

My old Ti-84 calculator programs. I imported the binaries from my calculator, and wrote a python program to translate them to readable TI-BASIC code. Check out the project here. My personal favorite: Cookie Clicker!

Behavioral Economics Android App

This application communicates with FitBit web API and Google Firebase to store and use participants' sleep and activity data. The researchers using this app want to determine if they can use incentives to cause people to sleep more. I taught myself Android application development to complete this project. Check out the project here.

Home Linux Server

I built a Ubuntu server at home over one of my winter breaks. I built it out of an old HP computer (TODO -- insert picture). It became unreliable (the computer was probably over 10 years old), so I migrated everything to a Raspberry Pi 3. I've since migrated the server to an Amazon Lightsail instance. I used to host and manage my brother's WordPress blog (now defunct). I currently host this website, and plan to use the site/server for future dev projects.

DataLeague 2016

This was created in 24 hours for an open data hackathon in which we were tasked to find a use for a list of open data sources. See the project here (although, I don't think it works anymore due to API changes).


Fun Stuff:

Academic

I did a slew of projects during my Master's:

I wrote a thesis [UMD archive] during undergrad! You should check it out if you're interested in Twitter advertising. You should also check out the paper I helped publish, of which my thesis extends -- What Twitter Knows: Characterizing Ad Targeting Practices, User Perceptions, and Ad Explanations Through Users' Own Twitter Data.

If you're interested, the *.tex source for some of the documents on this site are available here. On a related note, I wrote a textbook for UMD CMSC250. You can view its progress on my GitHub page.

On yet another related note, I also like teaching. I was an undergrad (and grad) teaching assistant during my years at university. I most frequently taught CMSC250 -- Discrete Structures (Mathematics). Feel free to send me an email to request my official course evaluation reports (performance metrics, and anonymous student feedback). For some teasers, you can read some Reddit comments here (fall 2018) and here (fall 2019).

Other

I'm working on a blog -- posts are written in markdown and statically generated with python. If you lower your expectations, you can check out my writing here.

I like exercise, so I made an interface to view all of my favorite workouts here Current status: need to add more workouts, and a button to select a random workout.

I also like to cook, so I made a (similar) interface to view all of my favorite recipes here. Current status: I have some recipes I want to remember, but have not made an interface yet.

I love the video games Rocket League and Terraria. I've sank more hours into those games than I'd like to admit.

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Live streaming: Sometimes I stream on Twitch.

Music production: Here's my SoundCloud account. And my (currently) empty Bandcamp account.

Video editing: Here's a 10-minute documentary I edited for my high school's Rho Kappa history group. This is the second edit, with minor tweaks. The first edit is here. The final edit is here. I don't remember if there was a "local" Wicomico County competition (I was only the video editor). There was a Maryland state-wide competition which I think the group won first place in the "Senior Group Documentaries, sponsored by Wegmans" category. Ironically, I cannot find an archive of the winners on the MD Humanities website, but you can see their names on the Internet Archive. The MD Humanities site also has an annual report from 2016 with the group on page 3 of the pdf (page 5 of the printed document; "MARYLAND HISTORY DAY" heading) here. If I recall correctly, the group of students were juniors, so I'm not sure why they competed in the senior category. Unfortunately, I don't think they placed in the national competition -- see Internet Archive here.

Other other: I played trumpet for 8 years from 5th grade through 12th grade. In high school marching band, senior year, the local news station filmed us practicing marching band in the gym. You can see it here on YouTube, though I have no recollection of this happening. Some other videos here and here.

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