Hi! I'm Todd.I'm a full-stack developer with 20 years of experience.I love building applications thatDO REAL WORKand sites thatTELL GREAT STORIES.

My current focus is Serverless Web Applications, specifically withReact (Next.js), Prisma, Planetscale, and Tailwind CSS.

After completing my BFA from York University, I pursued my passion for music and the recording arts, and completed a diploma program at the Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology. Following that I secured a position at a studio in Toronto, and worked on many album projects as an Audio Engineer, including a Juno Award winning album for Toronto Mass Choir.

During that position, the opportunity arose to contribute to an online eCommerce Music web site to sell albums (physical CD's) for the company. A more experienced developer built the initial version, while I worked on the front-end dev and became the site maintainer.

After leaving that job, I took some temporary work as an IT Technician, until I was able to secure a Front End Developer position at Zeppelin Communications. This was my first agency position, and was great experience for working with high end clients.

The most important project I worked on there was as a Developer for the Cineplex Galaxy Theatres national web site. We managed this important site with a small internal team. Intially I managed the front-end work, and within 3 years, I was managing the whole site as a Full Stack Developer.

This project was in the design phase when I joined Zeppelin Communications + Design. I was closely involved with the initial design, and then went on to build out the front end implementation of the website. Working with a Senior Web Developer who built the back end of the site, I was able to get up to speed on how ASP.NET worked and eventually became the sole maintainer of the site, both front and back end.

The time was great experience in learning how to work on an important site with millions of visitors. Downtime was unthinkable, and we worked hard to keep the site up and running at all times.

When our first child was born, I made the decision to leave the agency and work closer to home. As part of that plan I launched a startup with a partner called Connect Media Solutions that focused on selling ads to local businesses in a custom printed flyer. My partner sold the ads, and I was responsible for the design and development of the website, and the management of the print production.

In addition to the marketing company, I also launched Resonance Media + Design, in order to provide web design and development services to local businesses. I worked with many clients over the years, and built a number of web applications and sites for them. I also provided web hosting and management services.

Projects of Note: 

• Elearnology Inc - Click To Learn LMS
  • Rebuilt entire Online Leader LMS as a serverless platform using Next.Js, Vercel, Planetscale (MySQL), with S3 object store on Linode.
  • Migrated user data from MSSQL database to MySQL database in Planetscale.
  • Migrated ORM model management from Entity Framework in .NET to Prisma in Next.js.
  • Priorities for the rebuild were:
    • Moving to a more modern stack
    • Improving performance
    • Moving from monolithic server hosting to separate specialist vendors for each domain (app, db, object store)
• Elearnology Inc - Online Leader LMS
  • Designed and built a custom LMS (Learning Management System) for eLearnology where they could host their xAPI formatted eLearning courses for their many corporate clients.
  • Many clients were in the Recreation space (City of Markham, Newmarket, Toronto, Halton Hills). Built and managed system for 8+ years.
  • Built custom LMS sales eCommerce cart with Vue.js front end.
  • Added custom Zapier API integration to allow clients to sell courses with external platforms and add the new students to their courses in the LMS.
• 
  Parks & Recreation Ontario HIGH FIVE National Database
  • Provided development support for the national web application for HIGH FIVE Canada program for 4 years. This was a legacy .NET web application with an MSSQL database.
  • It was a very large application with many features and a complex database schema (1000+ stored procedures).
  • It managed training and certification records for hundreds of thousands of users across Canada with over 10 years of records.
  This project was very challenging as a developer, because it required balancing an understanding of the original (undocumented) application design, versus the way the staff understood and used the application in the present, against the need to make changes to the application to meet new requirements.
• George Brown College
  Choices Career Course
  

  

  

  
  • Built and configured course and course modules on George Brown's Canvas LMS, including custom theme changes via CSS and Javascript override files.
  • Added custom Javascript functionality to Storyline360 eLearning modules in order to send students' answer data to the API endpoint on eLearnology's external server.
  • Created a custom API endpoint on external server for automatic generation of a Student Action Plan PDF of Course results. Generation of the PDF required AODA-compliance Accesibility for screen-readers as well as custom fonts to match the Course branding.
  In order to deliver the PDF Action Plan requirements, I had to integrate the Apache FOP Design library into the application. This gave us the flexiblity to deliver an accessible PDF along with the graphic design requirements.
• Engine Control Systems Distributor Warranty Portal
  • ECS was a manufacturer of specialized emission-reducing exhaust products for industrial vehicles.
  • Built web application to all ECS to streamline the management of their North American Distributor Warranty programs.
• Dottlers Custom Shoes - Automated Video Rendering System on AWS
  • Goal of startup was to create a system to create a high top shoe that was printed with a custom design. The design would be submitted by various artists around the world. The design that had a minimum level of pre-orders would be manufactured.
  • The client had a requirement to be able to generate turntable animations of the shoe with various design patterns.
  • I created the Blender 3D template for the shoe model and render scene, and created custom Python scripts to ingest a JPG file with the design. Blender would then render out all the frames of the animation as PNG files and combine them into an MP4 video file.
  • This process was hosted on an AWS EC2 instance which I helped to set up.
• Digilease Online Lease Management System
  • This web application allowed the customer to obtain and manage lease agreement information more easily from university/college students who were applying to lease properties. The app greatly streamlined their existing paper-based application process.
• 
  Centreville Amusement Park Website and eCommerce Ticketing System + Server Management
  • I created a new web site for Centreville Amusement Park, which required guest information and marketing details, as well as a fully functioning eCommerce Ticket Sales system.
  • I built the eCommerce system with an integration with Moneris as the payment processor. Integration with Verified By VISA and Mastercard Secure authentication was also completed.
  • Custom receipts with dynamically generated barcodes were created.
  • An admin tool for redeeming the tickets at the ticket booth on location was also created. Staff could scan the printed ticket barcode with a barcode scan wand.