Jack builds random things on the web because he wants to.

Based in Bristol · available for projects | talks | ideas

Project

Simulating flocking behaviour with Boids in three.js

Boids is a simple algorithm for simulating flocking behaviour between multiple agents. In this project I looked to create a three.js based browser compatible version that is exportable as a customisable webcomponent.

Developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, boids simulates the flocking behaviour of birds. The name is a shortening of "bird-oid object". Three simple rules; separation, alignment and cohesion — are enough to organise the whole flock.

View project

Interactive

Project

Tinder for your music. Build yourself a perfect match with Re:Tuned

Swipeable music discovery uses your recent Spotify activity to build a new recommendation profile and deliver a new playlist right to your library.

Built as an experiment in making discovery feel physical again. Say no to to whatever music Spotify pushes your way and find music similar to what you like.

Discover

Writing

Gardenbrain. Where I write about what interests me.

To have a gardenbrain is to think like a gardener. Create the right conditions for your knowledge to grow by linking ideas together and adapting to feedback as you learn.

I write on substack where I mostly focus on AI and software engineering management.

Project

A graph-powered film club tracker

An exploration into graph databases with Neo4j while building a fun tool for friends.

Using graphs was definitely not necessary to track our weekly film selections. But leveraging the tool morphed into a slightly over-the-top hub for our increasingly elaborate statistics and awards ceremonies.

Graphs allow for very quick lookup over edges rather than columnar data and the linked nature makes sourcing complex data into much simpler queries.

Project

Your yearly reads in a pile

I wanted a way to visualise my yearly reading as something more physical than cards on a screen, so I built Bookstack to display a roughly to scale render of the books themselves.

Connects to the Hardcover API to pull info about the users reading and the book data itself.

Your yearly reads stacked into a pile and gravity-tested in 3D. Drop the stack and see how the year actually balanced out.

Stack

Project

Learning inverse kinematics with interactive toys

While exploring some ideas for website interactivity I got interested in learning more about IK specifically cyclic coordinate descent. This cheap IK solver is fast enough to run in most environments where an accuracy is not required.

I experimented further bringing in some animation style techniques such as stretch and sqaush and oscillation to make the overall interaction feel more dynamic.

Interactive

Games

Building games as Dead Internet Society

Chasing dreams of an Indie sleeper hit building games with Godot.