For my final research project at magnet, I naively decided to build an educational webapp using Django, a web-framework that I- within context of what I know now -knew truly nothing about (aside from it being professional). I wanted to demystify coding for students, teaching python in the way I would've taught my younger self. Even if the user didn't retain any information about programming, if they understood that it is simpler than it seemed, I would be satisfied. In other words, I wanted to "Bridge The Gap," hence the name.
At the time I didn't even know what a web-framework really was, let alone the beast that was Django. I had my work cut out for me.
So I got to work. I started with the Django poll-app tutorial. After hours of coding on bus rides, car rides, late nights, early mornings, things working, COUNTLESS things breaking and being troublesome, and creating 3,000+ words of course content, I finished the website and looked up with weary proud eyes that I learned Django, and better yet, I understood what I was doing.
While I had no time left to learn ANYTHING about making the website look good, it worked, all 30+ pages of dynamically rendered content. I went to the Georgia State Science Fair with this project, where I received 5th place honors. But the real accomplishment for me was definitely learning a professional web-framework which I hope will serve me well. Even if I never touch Django again, I am much more confident in my learning abilities!
Although it might not be up, you can try to check out the site here.
You can check out the source code for the site on my Github, here.

From the moment I saw Hugo Cornellier's video, I knew I had to make my own daily picture video, but it wasn't until I started manually editing the pictures that I realized this process needed to be automated.
The concept was simple (but took me a few years of working on and off to figure out): take every image in a directory, grab each images eye coordinates, and then do some basic math to align the coordinates to some set coordinate (which would be some initial photo you choose). Then, save the new image. After getting this concept to work, I realized more transformations of the images were necessary to achieve a great result, such as scale and rotation. This led me to apply some math I learned in my pre-calculus class, such as arctangent (thank you Mr. Hornbeck)!
When I started this project in 2019, I barely knew how to open files in python let alone work with OpenCV and Mediapipe. However, as I've learned more through my facial recognition research project, object oriented pygame project, and many other projects along the way, I gained skills along the way that helped me bring this idea to life. This project is almost a direct depiction of my coding progress over the years.

December 12, 2023 update: The project has reached a near complete state! I've written the documentation and contributing guidelines on the repository.
Check out the repository here!

Recently, I began my first freelancing project for Rockdale Career Academy's upcoming car show. This opportunity was made possible because of Mr. Jesse Smith advocating for me, thank you so much!
I build this website from scratch using HTML, CSS, and JS, as that is what I'm most comfortable with currently. In the future, I want to learn other javascript libraries, and pick up tailwindcss as well (even though it seems odd, I think it's worth a shot! Let me know what you think if you have experience with tailwind).
I was allowed full control over this site, from design, to building, to hosting: what you see was all created by myself.
I tried to pay great attention to detail, from perfecting animation delays, to mastering the responsive design: I wanted to make sure that whoever comes across this page notices the effort I put into it.
This project is nearing it's end, you can view the website here, or head to RcaCarShow.com!
If you're interested in hiring a freelance web developer, please reach out! I'm looking to work on a bigger project with a fully functional backend as well!
Let me know what feedback you have, and I hope to see you at the car show!

In the second semester of my 10th grade year, a great idea began to take shape. Given my experience teaching myself about building computers, and coding, I thought I might be able to pour into the future generation (I say that like I'm far removed from students who are only a few years younger than me) by teaching them about technology, something I personally felt was lacking in my pre-high-school education.
After getting in touch with CJ Hicks elementary, I was very graciously granted a 30 minute slot after their school ended to teach about technology! Due to limitations in my schedule, I wasn't able to meet with the students as much as I wished before the year ended, but I knew I helped light a spark for coding in some of the students. Some of them would come in and show me what they coded at home, and others would be smiling ear to ear when I taught. I felt honored to be given so much freedom to teach ANYTHING I wanted (seriously, no one was looking over my shoulder for the presentations)! I even surveyed students before/after to see their growth/feedback they had, and I sent the feedback to the superintendent and a few other important people who helped make this a reality!
You can check out the anonymous feedback here (excel file).
Due to lack of flexibility in my schedule, I wasn't able to continue this in my 11th grade year. However, through my privilege of driving, every other Friday I'm teaching at Davis Middle School! I'm very excited about this because I will have all year with these students, as opposed to only a few sessions across a semester. Also, these students are more mature and can grasp the concepts more easily. I'm only a few weeks into working with these students and it's been an absolute joy so far, I really cannot believe I'm going to be able to work with them all year. I can't wait to see what we accomplish.
I'd like to thank Mrs. Baskett, Mr. Cook, Dr. Wakefall, Ms. Price, Ms. Chambers, and Mr. Dyer for all giving their help in allowing me to teach in many different ways.

I started messing around with HTML, CSS and JS about a year ago after working on my Django site. I spent maybe a few weeks learning CSS and immediately felt super cool, so I quickly hosted a website I was working onto github pages- it was really bad. Don't believe me? Check out my initial portfolio page right here.
But, going into the summer, I was motivated by my good friend Roderick Sneed to make some moves and continue to learn more about a weakness of mine: front-end. The plan was for me to learn ReactJS, and javascript- 2 things which I knew little about. I started this website in April, working on and off for a few months.
I never planned for the website to look like this, every feature I've added has just slowly evolved the website more and more until it took on a shape of its own that just seemed to fit.
I'm most proud of:
(1), making this website, in my naive opinion, quite complex. I didn't have much of a guide to learn about the proper HTML, CSS, or JS structures, so I really am just learning as I go along, and it seemed to have turned out alright.
(2) The scroll effect. I didn't have a tutorial, but I had perseverance and A LOT of patience with myself (seriously, this effect was super buggy at the start, nearly gave up). The only assistance I had was AI to help me come up with a way to slowly increase a value such that my images would slowly speed up and slow down on hover! I thought this effect was clean and very fun to interact with as a user.
(3) The project card effect. I once again didn't have a tutorial for this effect, I had an idea and with it a vague notion as to what the structure of the effect would need to be, so I got to work. This project card effect was the first lengthy effect I created on this page. It had a ton of bugs so I'm not even going to mess with the nasty CSS I created.
Please let me know what you think of this website, what some improvements could be, or just what you like about it!
Finally, I would like to thank my friends who gave me feedback when I asked for it, I would like to give a special thanks to Prakash who inspired a lot and held me to a higher standard and was brutally honest, and to Roderick Sneed, who is kind of the reason I decided to revamp this website in the first place given our great conversation on the bus ride home that one day. I would also like to thank Mr. Jesse Smith who taught us Java in my AP CS class. It made transitioning to JS pretty simple, as JS and Java are syntactically very similiar- who knew.
P.S. this website was inspired by many portfolio websites, but none more than Oliver Qiu's, it's really a coincidence how many interests we share (guitar, coding, and music artists)...

I began research for this project in my 9th grade year, and I was very excited to take a dive into what would be my biggest coding project to date.
From the sources I read, it seemed that there was some amount of quantifiable racial bias among popular facial models. Initially, I not only wanted to test for myself if these sources were accurate, but I even wanted to train my own model (which I soon realized was unrealistic).
Heading into my 10th grade year, I began reaching out to institutions with databases that had not only thousands of images, but demographic data as well. The one that seemed to fit my needs best was the 10k US Adult Faces Database.
After receiving access to the database, I got to work. Aside from using OpenCV for dealing with the image reading and writing, I wasn't sure what was the best choice was to find a numerical value for the "percentage confident" in the algorithms assessment. I was initially planning to use haar cascades or perhaps Dlib to return this numerical value I sought after, but I eventually resorted to Googles's MediaPipe Facial Detection Solution.
Honestly, because I couldn't seem to find a very objective comparison that related directly to racial bias, I had to use Google MediaPipe's '% confidence assessment,' which is the weakest part of this project. The '% confidence assessment' doesn't seem to be too important in racial bias form what I understand, however it was the only solution I had at the time, and working with big data was also exciting.
I made a pretty rough way of writing the data to a file, which included the image path (so that I could derive the image's demographic information later on), and then appending a numerical value. I separated all of this with a semicolon so I could later split the file and access the information (looking back, this was definitely not the best way, but it worked!). You can check out one of these data files I generated here.
With the data in hand, I couldn't just plug it into an excel sheet, I had to use MatPlotLib, a library I learned for this project.
Although this project might've not been well received by the judges (as I only managed 2nd place honors for my efforts), the value I gained was much more valuable than any award.
All info related to this project (research paper, source code, graphs) can be found here.

My older sister got a guitar for Christmas many years back, but she never truly played it. Like many other guitars, it sat collecting dust. I tried to learn the guitar in the summer of 2018, but I didn't take the right approach. I was just trying to play 'a hundred chords a day,' and I wasn't making music, so I put it down after about 2 months.
Then the pandemic happened.
You can see where this is going. I picked up the guitar again, this time with determination, or rather, a sort of desperation to have something to distract myself. I'd always been so impressed with the guys who knew guitar, how they effortlessly played cool songs and made their own riffs. 'This will never be me, I will never be this good,' were some of my initial thoughts.
I started with Justin Guitar as I heard good things from the course (Justin is seriously the #1 reason I play guitar today, check him and his music theory course out if you're interested in guitar!).
I look up and a few years have gone by and I am intrigued by the mystery of music theory and I love all things guitar. I'm playing with my church's worship team, I'm working on some songs and trying to learn some advanced fingerstyle pieces.
I could go on an on about how this instrument has changed me by opening up new relationships and giving me opportunities, but I would first like to thank Mr. Danny, who graciously gave me his red, 1998 electric guitar shortly before he passed away. Without him, I would be much less of the guitar player that I am today (seriously, I wouldn't have been able to mess around with distortion, working with DAWs, or many other techniques limited to electric guitar).
Secondly, I HAVE to thank my great friend, Jairus Butler who graciously gifted me his amazing Fender champion 20 amp, without Jairus I wouldn't be able to even use my guitar! I'm so blessed to have good friends who look out for me.
There's really too much I can talk about, so I'll digress by saying I'll be playing this instrument, learning its secrets and intricacies for the rest of my life, forming lifelong relationships along the way.
Check out the hardest song I've learned to play so far, right here.
Check out my attempt at improvising over a rock backing track, right here.
Check out a little guitar riff/song I made for a friend here. Just a quick thing I sat down and recorded for someone's special day.
You can, if you want, check out this original (not a cover) photosynthesis song I made for my AP biology class...right here. It's pretty corny but I guess it might show my first attempt at working in a DAW and recording guitar (although it was in audacity as opposed to Reaper as I hadn't learned of Reaper yet). Special thanks to Jairus for helping me out with the song!

I've been raised in a Christian family, but I wouldn't say it was until the summer of 2022 where I really took this faith on as my own.
I've become very interested in apologetics and the more I think about my beliefs, the more I realize the importance of intellectual consistency. What I mean by this is realizing the true implications of your beliefs, for me, the implications are obviously eternal.
I'd like to clarify my beliefs, because the title of 'Christian,' has become increasingly vague. I believe that no amount of good deeds I do could atone for my sin against a Holy, righteous God. I believe in the resurrection of Christ, and that through it, and it alone, I am justified. I'd like to add: it's not that I try to live 'holy' to earn salvation, it's that I try to live 'holy' out of thanks for the grace given to me. I'd ideally like to say my #1 goal in life, if I truly am convinced of this, is to unashamedly proclaim the gospel, which I of course don't. I will always fall immeasurably short of the standard I want to hold myself to; please know I don't want to act like I'm greater than anyone.
Aside from that, whoever you are, I encourage you to weigh the evidence yourself and follow it wherever it might go.
Personally, I believe that the case for Christianity is not unreasonable. I wrote a 16 page research paper last year "Investigating the Legitimacy of Christianity," if you're interested, please check it out here (I think the paper is lacking in a many, many ways due to deadline constraints and similar reasons (for example, I literally have NO counterarguments for the entire second half of the paper because I ran out of time), but consider checking out the great sources).
Check out a message I gave at my high school through our YCI (Youth-Commission-International) club last year right here.
Finally, a quick thanks for reading this far: I understand this might be unconventional, but if I'm truly convinced of this, which I am, I'd be disingenuous not to include this on my website. If you were looking to know who I really am, this is me.