Hi!
My name is Zander, and I'm an 19-year-old programmer. I have been writing code for around a decade
of my life. I enjoy experimenting with new technologies and finding handy ways to solve random problems.
I am in my first year studying Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
I am currently an engineering intern at RackN.
Projects
I have experimented with a handful of projects over time. Below are some projects I'm proud of.
Engauge
rust
typescript
react
full stack
discord bot
2020 - present
Engauge is a Discord bot I started working on in early 2020. It is used to track
member participation by means of message and voice activity and consequently quantifying this data
with video game-like levels and experience. It is one of my most feature-rich projects
to date, with a bot backend and web API written in Rust and a frontend written with React
and TypeScript.
Raytracer
rust
raytracer
school
2021 - 2022
This raytracer project is my current work for my apprenticeship project at the University of
Wisconsin-La Crosse. It is a rewrite of an older project
in Rust, designed for maximum performance. Over the course of this school year, I am working with Dr.
Kenny Hunt to research rendering and optimization techniques as a way to further my understanding
of high-performance computing, especially with parallelization.
I worked with Unity for about a week to create a Cube World-inspired terrain
generator, character controller, and building system. I became acquainted with Unity, its architecture,
shader programming, mesh optimization, and more with this project.
Brickadia projects
js
crystal
rust
library
open source
2020 - present
I have made quite a number of small projects for the server wrapper Omegga
for the game Brickadia, ranging from simple rotating hints that appear in
chat to seamless teleporters. I have also written two (Crystal and Rust) save serializer/deserializer libraries, as well
as my own experimental server wrapper.
Discoid and Qubit
c#
discord bot
2015 - 2018
Discoid (eventually renamed Qubit) was my entry into the Discord bot development world. It was a multipurpose bot with
features ranging from gambling and clans to custom commands and alerting keywords in chat.
By the end of its lifetime, it was being used in over 30,000 unique Discord servers, which
is still my most successful project to date, despite my programming abilities having improved
significantly.
Blog
Care to indulge in some occasional ramblings?
Ender-3 Pro: Getting it working
March 17, 2022
I was recently introduced to the great world of 3D printing first hand when I helped my dad assemble his new printer. Micro Center is currently offering a great deal on these Creality Ender-3 Pro printers (get one for just $100), so it was a no-brainer to pick another one up for myself and experiment with it. If you're anything like me, setting it up to the point where it works and it works well was an absolute nightmare, so I'd like to take this post to go over some of my problems and hopefully alleviate your setup process. If you're here for the steps, jump to the Marlin setup part of this post.
The Gizzard Wizard
November 29, 2021
...is what my mother calls it. Admittedly, the name King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is a bit of a mouthful. Normally I'll mention it to someone and the obvious response is "what kind of name is that?" In all honesty, it's a great name, but I feel like it might be a bit of a turn off for some people, which is a shame. A little over a year ago, I started listening to said bizzare band, and they've since taken over my music taste. I decided to take a bit of time to write about them and what it is I enjoy so much about their music.
Test Post
August 17, 2021
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