atlas/ritco

she/her | software engineer & creator

about

Heyo, I go by Atlas or Ritco online. I'm a software engineer by day and a web dev cat by night. I love doing anything creative I can get my hands on and have a passion for making things. I'm 100% a project hopper, so I'm always working on something different and like to cycle through current projects.Feel free to chat with me about literally anything on my social sites below!

A small subset of my endless amount of hobbies and interests:
- drawing, art & animation
- videography & film
- software & web development
- arduino & hardware/software tech
- theme park ride tech/design (especially animatronics and ride vehicles)
- costumes & costume tech
- creative writing
- aquascaping & aquariums
- plants & gardening
- business/project planning

_{gallery at fa}

Projects

Click project images for details

Web Apps & Websites

Video Games

Robotics

scarves and coffee

Web Application - Solo Project

Project July 2011-Present, Joined/Became Owner July 2021
A Klaine fanfiction archive

Klaine is the ship name of characters Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson from the Fox TV show Glee. Scarves and Coffee was the Klaine fanfiction archive while Glee was on the air from 2011 - 2015, garnering 20,000+ registered users and over 100 million written words. After the show's finale, website resources, interest, and function steadily declined until the site officially went offline in Jaunary 2021.In June 2021, I teamed up with one of the original creators/owner of the site to bring it back to life and preserve some of the most important years of queer fandom culture. I was able to piece the database back together from a 2013 backup and a zip file of ePubs. The original site was run on a copy of the open source project eFiction, but is now running on archive software written by me specifically for the site (Archipelago).The site was re-launched in June 2022 (scarvesandcoffee.net). I serve as the administrator and developer.

archi.works

Web Application - Solo Project

December 2020 - Present
A network of fandom and fan work archives

Archipelago Archives is an online community that will allow anyone to create, moderate, and customize their own archive of stories, art, forums, and chats. All archives are hosted on one central web app with different communities and subaccounts for each archive, like a Discord Server or a Subreddit.This project is currently still being worked on, but an initial version is being used by and developed for Klaine archive scarvesandcoffee.net. The expanded version of the software that will allow users to create their own archives is expected to launch sometime towards the end of 2022.

Photobox

Web Application - Solo Project

February 2022 - Present
Catalog and share family photos and family trees

I started Photobox as a way to catalog and share old family photos we collected after my grandmother passed away. After sorting the physical photographs by relative date, I scanned each one and added them to the database. This way, I was able to catalog details for each photograph, such as the place it was taken and the story behind it before the memories faded and share it with the entire family in a way that everyone could access it.

The Stack

Back End
I chose Python and Django for the backend because I wanted to get the basic utility launched as soon as possible and I was already familiar with the framework. Django also has a lot of built-in administrator tools that would allow me to start cataloging the photographs within hours of setup.Front End
Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, JavaScriptData
AWS RDS PostgreSQL, AWS S3Deployment
Heroku, GitHub/GitLabI did not use any task tracking software since the project scale was so small and I did not plan for continuous development.

FurConWatch (coming soon)

Web Application - Solo Project

Coming Winter 2022
Furry convention/event information and news site

FurConWatch, FurryConventions.com, or FurSync will be a website dedicated to providing a central, comprehensive, and accessible database of past and future Furry conventions and events.I will be working on site development and maintenance myself from top to bottom. Development on FurConWatch is in the planning phase and is expected to be started in Summer 2021 with launch in Fall 2021. Progress can be tracked on the Twitter page @furconwatch.

Coda the Musical Robot

Arduino Robot

April - May 2018
A funky little robot that dances to its own music

Coda is a musical robot whose main goal is to aid others in having a good time through the use of music and sometimes even a little dancing. Coda’s name has a musical origin; a coda is the last few measures of a musical piece, typically differing from the main theme and added on to give a sense of closure.While Coda does have the ability to be driven around on two wheels controlled by the joystick on the controller, the main attraction is its ability to play music based on the room’s mood, or rather, the light. Using the power of a photoresistor, Coda is able to determine the amount of light in the room/area and play music according to the specified modes chosen on the controller.There are four main modes, as well as a few extra features that alter those modes. The first of the main mode is the “volume toggle” mode. When activated, the volume of the currently playing song will be altered based on the light in the room. The second main mode is the “genre toggle” mode, or more accurately, the tempo toggle mode, where different songs will be played based on their genre/tempo, that correspond to the light in the room. The third main mode is the combination of the two previous modes, but where both genre and volume toggle together. The fourth main mode of Coda is the “party mode,” which is where the entertainment comes in the form of flashing lights, and a little robot dancing.The other features that alter these four main modes add another level to Coda’s musical abilities. The most important is the “light mode toggle”, which reverses the effect of the light level effects on the first three main modes. The initial state upon startup is the normal light mode, where less light means lower volume, or a slower tempo song. With the activation of this toggle, however, the effects are switched, and less light means higher volume, or a faster tempo song. Another feature on the controller is the mute button, that will mute/stop the music. The final additional feature is ability to give Coda a voice in the form of a series of random phrases, honking, and beeps.Coda was created as a final project for a microprocessors class lab. He was never fully completed and has since been shelved.Demonstration of current progress:

Asteroid Field

MATLAB Arcade Game - Solo Project

Completed April 2019
A simple, space-themed, pixel-style obstacle game

Asteroid Field is a simple obstacle game where users guide a spaceship through an asteroid field.CODE

Salvo

Desktop App Game - Solo Project

Completed March 2019
A two-player, Battleship-like game

Salvo is comparable to the popular game Battleship. The goal of the game is to sink the other player's battleship by taking turns guessing where the opponents ship may be.This project was written in C# using the .NET Framework and the Visual Studio IDE, with additional assets, backgrounds, and layouts created in GIMP. By entering another user's IP Address and port, it can be played over WiFi on two separate computers.

Photography

Equipment