Pomodoro

COMING SOON!

A simple "Pomodoro" timer, written in Python and Qt. This seemed like a simple enough concept for my first app. I'm hoping to publish it on the macOS App Store in the not-to-distant future.

The code will be open source on GitHub as well!

Just need to put the finishing touches on it.

• Date: January 2020
• Category: Code

Bedtime Minder

COMING SOON!

A simple app, with a powerful premise.

Go. To. Bed!

Regularly staying up until 2-3am was taking its toll on me. So what did I do? I wrote an app to force me to go to bed!

Bedtime Minder does just that. Aggressively.

With a nagging notification every 15 seconds, I'd challenge you to stay up past your bedtime.

Because it's certianly getting me off the computer.

I'm hoping to publish this app on the macOS App Store in the not-to-distant future. The code will be open source on GitHub as well! Just need to put the finishing touches on it.

• Date: January 2020
• Category: Code

Music, Pixels, Magic

A YouTube radio-station, streaming 24/7, and powered by Python and FFMPEG. The script I wrote runs headless on a server, and doesn't require capturing the desktop of a dedicated streaming computer.

It's a little rough around the edges right now, but it's functional.

At the moment, there's a limited variety of video game themed music playing, but more will be coming in the future.

• Date: November 2019
• Category: Code

Twitch

My Twitch channel. Last year, I spent some time live-streaming video games on Twitch. I had a lot of fun, and I've been meaning to get back into it. There might not be a lot of content there at the moment, but all my old streams are also archived on YouTube.

My channel also acts as a showcase for my own Graphics Design skills, as every asset you see, either on the channel page or on the stream, is something I've personally created. I'm rather proud of some of these assets.

Here's hoping I start streaming regularly again soon.

• Date: January 2019
• Category: Writing

astral

Astral theme by HTML5 UP! - ported to Pico.

I ported this theme as part of personal project, for use on another website. Nothing really special was added to this version, just the usual improvements.

Metadata variables have been used to configure pages, and each page is rendered as a tab/icon at the top of the site.

As usual, I've also included the ability to add CSS overrides for easy customization.

• Date: December 2016
• Category: Web

Freelancer

The theme of this very site, ported to Pico.

I was looking for a better theme to use as a portfolio for my work when I stumbled upon Freelancer. Certainly not the most flashy, but a decent and simple theme that I could port to Pico.

I did this by starting with the Jekyll Version and tweaking it to work in Pico. While Liquid is similar to Twig, a fair amount of modification was still required to change certain syntaxes and map the variables to their Pico equivalents.

The Pico version also includes extra enhancements, such as more customizable text fields, the ability to disable certain sections, and the ability to include your own CSS overrides for extra personalization.

• Date: November 2016
• Category: Web

Pico CMS Documentation

I used to frequently contribute documentation work to the PicoCMS project.

Pico is "A stupidly simple & blazing fast, flat file CMS".

But what does that mean? Good thing I wrote an About Page for them.

I revamped Pico's Themes and Plugins pages to utilize a long-forgotten "portfolio" layout built into the website's theme. I set up this gallery as a Jekyll template that generates the portfolio tiles automatically. This allows the Pico project to easily accept new submissions by simply adding new markdown files to the website repo.

I wrote an in-depth Guide that explains how to set up Pico running on Nginx.

At one point, I was working on rewriting the entirety of Pico's Documentation as a series of guides to replace the existing single-page "Docs", but this project fell through over time.

I still remain available to accept website contributions on GitHub, which you can do via the Site Repo on GitHub, but largely, I've left the project behind to work on other things.

You can find a list of my contributions on the GitHub repository's Contributors page, under my GitHub username, mayamcdougall.

• Date: July 2016
• Category: Writing, Web

NotePaper

A web theme made exclusively for PicoCMS. I designed NotePaper for my own writing sites, but the theme is Open Source and available on GitHub.

NotePaper has grown to include a number of features, including widgets, a blog-style front-page, page-specific sub-navigation, next/prev arrows, integrated Disqus and Facebook comments, easy CSS customizability, and more.

The NotePaper Demo Site (which features the readme) includes extensive documentation on how to use and configure all the available features.

Also included are two sub-themes, one that is a color palette swap of the default and another that is entirely different. These are mostly included as an example of how you can create your own customized sub-themes using only CSS.

NotePaper represents a decent amount of work, and the time I spent learning the ins and outs of PicoCMS. Whether you're a seasoned web developer or a newbie, check out PicoCMS, and give NotePaper a try.

• Date: June 2015
• Category: Web

Writing

My own personal writing blog. I started this as a place to put works of writing that were not part of my main story. While there isn't much content here at the moment, I hope to return to it in the future and post semi-regular content.

• Date: March 2015
• Category: Writing

Devil's Advocate

This blurb is a bit out of date, as I never got around to finishing the story. I still hope to at some point. For now though, you should definitely still read the 3/4 of the story that I finished.

My own personal work. Devil's Advocate represents my first serious writing attempt. Though a work-in-progress, my hope is to find time to finish the story within the next year.

Devil's Advocate is the story of a young man named Axel, who is quite literally the right-hand man to the Devil. The story takes place in a single, expansive Afterlife. There is no Heaven, only a "Hell", though most people would find it quite comfortable.

Axel spends his day-to-day (after)life as a keeper of the peace. He is tasked with tracking down disruptive individuals and sending them back to the Devil to be judged for their deeds. It's all business as usual until a strange group of criminals learn to cross the borders that divide the Afterlife. What are their motives, and how did they gain this power? You'll have to read to find out.

• Date: November 2013
• Category: Writing