Dan MacDonald

We developed a prototype system on a very limited budget for early situational awareness during a major regional disaster. The prototype was successfully deployed in Jamaica in 2013, but further development has stalled due to a lack of funding.

Early situational awareness immediately following a catastrophic event such as a hurricane or an earthquake has been demonstrated to reduce casualties enormously through the correct deployment of (limited) resources in the hours immediately following an event. Our system replied on a low-technology limited infrastructure analysis tool that could be started immediately (without the need to mobilize a coordinated response center) and is fed point data reports from "community reporters" using handheld devices. This system allowed planners to develop an understanding of the scope and scale of damage within 15-30 minutes after an event.

The Peninsula Yoga Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching Iyengar Yoga in the Saanich Peninsula area. I was brought on board to assist with their website and mine their registration and member data from a MySQL database to assist them in their daily operations and planning.

I was part of a large team, mostly working remotely, to redevelop a large medical insurance database and move them from a series of disparate data sources (including COBOL and Excel spreadsheets) into a single integrated system based around Oracle 12c. I worked on a number of different components, including PL/SQL packages for member and dependent reinstatement, various reports, and PL/SQL packages for data validation and verification in a rules engine.

I also worked extensively as part of the data conversion team and was tasked to write, test, and optimize PL/SQL packages that would convert source data into new structures. I was responsible for about 6,000,000 records. I was only one of about eight enrollment streams. Once the conversion process was tested for data correctness, we had to optimize the code so that when we did our data loading during the "Go Live" event, my part of the conversion had to be completed within two hours (I got it to one and a half).

It was immensely satisfying to have participated in the Go Live event that went off without any major hitches.

I was part of an agile team of developers and QA people involved in the redevelopment of a series of Jakarta EE Spring web services to support a large automobile warranty supplier. We took a microservices approach and developed about 20 services, each with 5-10 endpoints. The data was all stored in an Oracle 12c database. We had daily scrums and two-week sprints coordinated through Jira. All documentation was maintained in Confluence and Apiary.

I developed an 8-lesson course for 11-13-year-old scouts to introduce them to programming Arduino-based microprocessors. I wrote entire lessons, put together the kits, and led the youth through the lessons. We used Adafruit Feather Huzzah (ESP8266) microprocessors and programmed them in C. I wanted to introduce the kids to lower-level programming than they commonly got in their traditional school courses. The material was pretty simple, but we covered LEDs, buttons, reading and writing data to the cloud (MTQQ), temperature sensors, and analog input (photoresistor).

The details of this project are covered by an NDA, but in general, the system was developed to allow two-way communications between an Nvidia Jetson TX2 and an Arduino Mega Uno, to read multiple buttons and switches, and to control LEDs and stepper motors in pre-defined patterns. The Jetson Tx2 captured and processed images through a camera, and that information was sent to the Arduino to incorporate into its sequencing.