My employer's website had a need to expand the functionality of bxSlider, a popular open source responsive image slider.
As my first real forray into contributing to open source, this was a fun little project. You can see my contribution to it on GitHub.
Because I had content that was loaded dynamically based on slide position, I thought that using the browsers forward and backward buttons would be convenient for customers browsing our products. After finishing it, I spent some free time at home reworking and integrating the tool directly. As of right now, my pull request hasn't been accepted, but I still think it's useful.
The end result of the implemented project is available at PlanetLabel.com
I found Chuck after doing quite a bit of google searching, I wanted to combine my love of programming and music together. I thought all I would end up with was making simple beats with synthesizers, even after I watched Ge Wang present at TED in this video. But I was intrigued, and wanted to learn more about Chuck.
After playing around with it for a few nights, I have the below example of a working effects pedal in Chuck. It could definitely use some love and more features, but it will come around evenetually!
The code I have so far is available here.
I love the idea of open source software. Though politically I am more of a libertarian, the socialist approach to software development seems like the way to go. I firmly believe the future of technology is in people learning, innovating, and developing free software. It is going to be a great future!
Because of this, I try to develop in and with Open Source software whenever possible.
Though I haven't currently been able to put much development time into them as I would like, projects I work on will surely be available from my GitHub profile.