![Reese Armstrong](https://res.cloudinary.com/read-cv/image/upload/c_fill,h_92,w_92/dpr_1.0/v1/1/profilePhotos/iLGiTkygwnUiTyPOqsbcENpBt1o2/deb7580a-867e-4d3b-a7d9-c996d05d1506.jpg?_a=DATAdtfiZAA0)
About
I am a creative technologist who approaches building software & systems from a place of creativity and artistic expression instead of science.
I'm also an active left-wing organizer on and off campus, working to build a more democratic society.
Volunteering
Hard Fork is a democratic community for creative technologists founded to combat the rampant cults of personality and startup founder culture in other online programmer communities. We are open, diverse, and inclusive and allow anyone to contribute to the organization.
I am the current co-chair of the LASA Young Democratic Socialists of America, a chapter at my high school. I built up the organizational structure, got us listed as a chapter, and in a state where we can confidently take on real campaigns to win change. We are fighting for democratic reforms, fairer workweeks at school, and international working-class solidarity.
I've built up Obl.ong, a cooperative public utility providing .obl.ong domains to members on both software and organizational fronts. I lead the engineering of the Panel, which is the core of the registry and administration dashboard.
I was a lead organizer of Hack Austin, a nonprofit hackathon for high school students with over 15 attendees.
I lead a small Hack Club at the Austin Central Library Teen Center to teach other teenagers the magic of programming.
I designed and operated the website, brand identity, and technology systems (like email servers) to allow Ladies Let's Talk to focus on providing their services. I also was on occasion hired to do larger projects.
I successfully lead a campaign and petition with over 175 signatures to rid the Austin ISD school district of the software "I-Ready" during the pandemic.
Projects
United is free and open membership software for collective organizations, allowing robust tracking of membership, expirations, email broadcast tools, providing single-sign-on for members, and more.
actionview-svelte-handler is a Ruby on Rails Action View template handler for Svelte that fades the build step into the background. It allows you to just write .svelte.erb views that work like you expect.
Panel is an open-source domain registry panel built on DNSimple and Ruby on Rails powering the core of the Obl.ong registry. It has a public-facing dashboard allowing anyone to administer their domains and an admin side for administrators to approve/deny domain requests.
RactorDNS is a concurrent DNS server built on Ractors with a simple and expressive API to integrate into your projects.
I developed a leaderboard system for the LASA Foosball club, which uses TrueSkill ratings to rate players when they play.
I forked PactMaker by ActiveCampaign, updated and modified it, to create an in-house system for signing waivers electronically for hackathons. It has since been used for HackPNW and Hack Austin.
Certifications
This certificate is proof of my knowledge and skill with visual design in Adobe Illustrator.
This certificate is proof of my knowledge and skill with visual design in Adobe Photoshop.
I received the highest achievable exam score in AP World History, which pertains to basic proficiency in modern world history.
I have an active amateur radio license, callsign KJ5DAR, which permits me to transmit messages over long-distance radio.
I passed the AP Computer Science A exam, which pertains to basic proficiency with Java.
This certificate is proof of my extensive Linux experience and knowledge administering desktops and servers.
Work Experience
I designed the main website, brand identity, and numerous apparel designs. I also took the photos used on the website and in promotional materials.
Speaking
I spoke about how to build member-first organizations that are open, democratic, and transparent through ensuring that the core of your organization isn't separate from your membership.
I gave a talk about getting started making a personal website, and a quick intro to Git and GitHub.
Side Projects
turbowarp.sh is an extension that allows for the use of SSH over WebSockets! This requires some setup on the server side to allow for SSH over WebSockets (via websocat or websockify), but otherwise it runs entirely independently in the browser. It uses a Go SSH client compiled to WebAssembly to have a fully-fledged client.
A tool to store attributes in handy singletons for Rails/Action Dispatch sessions, designed for use in multi-action flows.
I built a small Ruby DSL that allows for the building and rendering of charts using the Observable Plot library via the bun JavaScript runtime.
I wrote a small esbuild plugin to generate bookmarklet URIs.
I created a website where people can cURL it from their terminal to get the latest transaction data for any transparent organization on Hack Club Bank.
I installed Ubuntu on my Acer C720 Chromebook alongside Chrome OS using Crouton.
Writing
My reflections on the Hack Club organization after years of organizing; the issues I have with it, and the reforms I believe are necessary to make Hack Club a more vibrant, transparent, & democratic community.
Me and a group of members wrote the initial by-laws for Hard Fork, which are rooted in democracy and member power as well as giving flexibility to make decisions easily.
Simple Online Directory Access Protocol is a simpler protocol for exposing a directory of people over the web through Webfinger and JSON-LD.
A collection of my tips & tricks on how to print high-quality and long-lasting custom tees.
Awards
Our project, a membership tracker won most comprehensive at the Hack Club Leader's Summit hackathon.
My team and I qualified for the semifinal round of CyberPatriot XV (15), the National Youth Cyber Education Program run by the Air Force Association. This puts us in the 97th percentile of all teams (~2400) across the nation.
Education
I'm currently pursing a distinguished achievement high school diploma at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy.