Projects

Kastelo is a fintech company developing a number of different financial services. This is my main job I am technically a contractor but I basically work here full time as part of the development team.

Have a look at their website: www.kastelo.co.za

I am involved in frontend React and backend Python work. I enjoy working with the team and learning new things everyday.

The Scout Energy project started as a way to help solar installers and home owners to get solar installation sizings done quicker. The project is now more focused on providing a solar installer with tools to help get a quicker and more accurate sizing.

This is project is also from the Cedar Solar company. They provide an energy monitor that can be installed in a home owner or business’s premisses. This will then collect energy usage information which we use to help an an installer size the correct system.

I’m doing the webapp and backend that collects the energy monitoring data. This is an ongoing project and being constantly tweaked and adjusted.

Here is the marketing video: https://vimeo.com/677325457

Stack:

• Firebase auth and Firestore for auth and the user database
• React frontend (Nextjs)
• Material UI css framework
• NestJs for the backend handling the IOT data access
• The IOT data is stored in influxDB (I needed a time series DB to handle the volume of data)

I don’t have much time for this project anymore, so transitioning it to another developer. I learnt a lot about IOT and energy monitoring from this project.

Gatsby held a Silly Site Challenge where you could make a silly fun website. One of the important aspects was it had to be accessible and fun. They would send you a participation sticker. It’s amazing what I’ll do for a t-shirt or sticker.

So I made a little website to help me overcome some stupid excuses for not going running.

I got an honorable mention in the winners blog post so yay - Top 20

Only challenge was to make the dropdown accessible, after some hectic react code I found headless ui a great component library which offers general components that have no styles. This saved tons of code to handle the accessability of the dropdown.

My website: https://runningdeveloper.github.io/icannotgo/

I started working with Cedar Solar to help move their pump sizing system from some excel sheets to a web platform for their seller agents.

This project has since moved on to offer more features and management for the sellers of the Cedar Solar products. I do ongoing maintenance and adding of new features to this platform.

Stack:

• Firebase auth and Firestore for auth and the database
• PWA React frontend (Gatsbyjs, I need to move this to Nextjs)
• Material UI css framework
• Headless Shopify for buying products (changed to internal shop)

The JS 13kb challenge is to make a small game in 13kb. This year’s theme was 404 not found and I managed to come in the top 60. So I got a t-shirt, yay.

JS13KGames

It’s a really basic html game you can check out here: https://runningdeveloper.github.io/js13k2020/

The code: https://github.com/runningdeveloper/js13k2020

We took a train from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and made games on it. It was fun hot and challenging.

I’ve done a few other game jams and ended up with nothing. So this time I settled on doing a website in Gatsby after some fails.

I used the face-api library to make a simple wall making Tetris type game. Not amazing but I got something to show yay!

There is a great video about the experience https://youtu.be/hcPeKP9xQrE

The code and website: https://github.com/runningdeveloper/trainjam2019

This is a stripped down version of a pump sizing tool used for Cedar Solar. Used to make it easier for people to get the correct solar pump when visiting a store.

There are 2 websites for SA and Namibia with slightly different pumps and requirements. So I do some changes depending on the environment (SA or Namibia) when building the site with CI.

I used Grommet at the time because it looked ‘funky’. Now on Nextjs with Material UI.

Stack:

• Hosted on Netlify
• Nextjs frontend
• Material UI components

Website: https://pumpinabox.co.za/

Create 15 is a small side business I tried to run. I do laser cutting and engraving of wooden products for a few stores and friends.

I guess this is more of a hobby and is not my full focus, I spend most of my time doing software development but enjoy the physical outputs of the laser cutting now and again.

The website is not very good, needs more time - create15.com

Let’s Talk was a startup doing community communications through a mobile application. Giving the community a way to talk to government officials like ward counsellors.

I worked with Saya-Setona to build an MVP to pilot the idea in some areas.

The initial stack was as follows for the MVP:

• Firebase auth and Firestore for auth and the database
• React Native App (Android and IOS)
• React webapp using Ant Design for the administration website

I used this because the main objective at the time was speed and easier iterations.

Then I worked on a more robust version with another developer using the following stack:

• Nodejs backend using FoalTS
• PostgreSQL database
• Hosted on Azure as the startup was using MS products
• React Native App (Android and IOS)
• React webapp using Ant Design for the administration website

I had some fun times trying to solve problems and figuring out how to satisfy the ever changing features.

Tough to put things you failed at in the list of projects. However I learnt quite a bit from this project including having clear communication and creating boundaries between the client and myself.

I joined a project called Enter Africa hosted by the Goethe. The idea was to create 15 games in 15 African cities exploring each city. It was a mix of people with diverse backgrounds and interests.

This was a great project to get involved in, I met a bunch of people and it was quite a challenge to work on this type of collaborative art project. The project changed an morphed throughout my time being part of it.

Our Johannesburg team ended up producing a 3 part podcast series walking though some places in Johannesburg.

There is a hell of a lot of work that went into the greater project from everyone (see the details here: https://www.goethe.de/prj/eaf/en/index.html)

Props goes to the rest of the team I helped where I could and did the website for JHB.

https://walkwithme-joburg.netlify.app/

This is only scratching the surface of all the experiences and activities done in this project. I was really happy to be a small part of it.

E-Alchemy is a small website for Zelda Meyerhoff. She sells candles, oils and sprays handmade by her. Also offers some alternative healing methods for people.

Stack:

• Gatsbyjs
• Bulma CSS framework
• Sanity.io as the CMS so she can add/edit content easily
• Hosted on Netlify
• Headless Shopify for buying products

One noteworthy aspect of the site from a developer’s perspective is a card picking animation thing made with react spring, link. Also using headless Shopify to sell products, saves money on the Shopify monthly cost and I already had the website going before online shopping was required.

See the website https://e-alchemy.co.za

Update moved to full shopify website in 2024.

Not a project but had a large impact on my developer career. Five Friday is company that builds custom software for clients.

They gave me my first break as a junior with no real experience. I did 4 years here building web apps and mobile applications for external clients and some internal products at the time.

Worked with the following tech:

• Various web frontend projects
• C# backend APIs
• Objective-C for IOS apps
• Ionic for cross platform apps

I left Five Friday as I got to a stage where I felt like I was not growing and progressing in areas I wanted to go.

I really enjoyed my time here learning and working with a team of developers.

Famba Famba Tour Design Specialists is a website for a friend’s travel company that does tours and getaways in South Africa. Mostly targeted at international travelers.

This was one of the first websites I did in university using Wordpress initially with a custom theme and then over time transitioned into a plain static site (minimal js) and then into a Gatsby site. I learnt a lot and made a couple mistakes doing this website throughout the years.

Final stack was:

• Gatsbyjs
• Uikit CSS framework
• Sanity.io as the CMS
• Hosted on Netlify

I stepped back in end of 2019 as he wanted to go in another direction. He wanted a more focused SEO and marketing outfit to run the website. I am no SEO expert and it seems a little like black magic sometimes, all I can do is make websites quick and tick the basic SEO needs.

It’s now back on Wordpress, I guess what I learnt from this is sometimes just go with some tried and trusted thing with many plugins. My main goal for the static website was to make it low maintenance, fast and super cheap for me to run which I think at the time was correct.

I don’t do any of the website anymore, but if you interested in travel Famba Famba is a good friend https://famba-famba.com