My Portfolio

 

Website Development and Design:

  • MelissaFedak.com
    This site! Designed and developed 2011. No templates, no databases, nothing fancy. Just me, my keyboard, and Notepad++.
  • Mickie's Sweet Spot
    Site for a local business and friend. Developed in 2015 using WordPress. (And now, sadly, defunct.)
  • Driving in Japan (and Passing the Driver's Test)
    An internet guide I wrote in Japan after my own experiences with the matter. Designed and written in 2004 (and gawd, it's so very 90's; gag me with a font tag)
  • SuperMelf.com
    My previous site (still live to the world, embarrassingly enough). Designed and developed 2002
  • Riverrun.us
    Site for Riverrun Designs, a local business and artisan owner (screenshot since it's now defunct.) Designed and developed 2002.

Writing:

  • My Travel Journals
    On this site. More than a decade of experiences and blunders living and traveling overseas.
  • The Wind and the Ticks: a Lake Baikal Trek
    A hike in Siberia and the small creatures who came along, a guest blog for the UK Travel Site The Russia Experience
  • Works in Progress:
    • No Shortcut to the Sun (Gravityball trilogy, Book 1)
      Young Adult Science Fiction
      Avalae, a loyal rebel in an underground city, lives for the day she can help overthrow the tyrannical government. Ordered to kill a traitor at seventeen, she dutifully pulls the trigger. But the act haunts her. When she's assigned to infiltrate the highest office on the planet and assassinate the president, she struggles. Doubts arise. She suspects the government is not as oppressive as she was led to believe and that the rebels are the true tyrants. But she must not fail or she'll be considered a traitor. And she's learned firsthand what the rebels do to traitors.
    • Thirty-Nine Hours
      Urban Fantasy
      Lance, a lonely immortal stuck for over two centuries in the body of a 25-year-old, saves the lives of two urban professionals from San Francisco leading to the discovery of others like him, but ones who are at odds about their greater purpose.
    • The Ayara Tyranny
      Young Adult Fantasy
      When the beloved prince of the land is mortally threatened, Elise must decide whether to risk revealing herself as a powerful Ayara to save his life, knowing she'd be condemning her family and others to execution. But is the prejudice against the Ayara as undeserved as she believes?
  • Creative Writing Activities
    A collection of writing prompts collected from multiple groups I participated in.

Programming:

  • Blackjack (JavaScript)

    Click to play Blackjack right in your browser. I wrote this entirely in JavaScript in 2002.

    Features: Chips / bet changeable at any point. Watch chips change as you win and lose. If you play enough, a waitress will offer you a drink, but you better tip her or she might not come back. A Hint option will display standard guidelines.

    Limitations: You can only split once. A blackjack wins double instead of one and a half. No insurance. Max chip display is $10,490.

  • MelfBlock (Java)

    I wrote this in Java (mostly to get back into Java) in 2005. Click to play the applet. This is a simplified version of a common game, sometimes called Breakout. You can change the speed and watch the cute little happy face fly across the screen, but you cannot control the angle in this version. However, it works as a fun waste of time.

    View Java Source Code

  • System Lotto (Pascal)

    I developed this in 2001 using Delphi (Pascal) for a client. I developed this from beginning to end, including attached database and installation CD. Source not available since this is a product.


  • Kanji Challenge (JavaScript)

    Click to play right in your browser. I wrote this entirely in JavaScript in 2002.

    I wrote this to both improve my JavaScript and my Japanese. Several hundred of the most common Kanji are input into the game. (Kanji = Chinese Characters that have been absorbed into the Japanese language, often altered in sound and meaning.) There is also a kana challenge option. (Kana = Japanese syllablry.) Definitions came from a variety of dictionaries, but the alternate choices were decided by me.

  • Chesslet (C)

    This is a silly little gamelet I wrote in 1999 just to get back into C again. The point of the game is to checkmate the lone black king on the other side. There is not any Chess AI involved, but it is still a useful tool to practice endgames. To help achieve this end, the game shows you every space on the board you have protected. If the space is red, the king cannot move there. You can choose what pieces you start with (the computer player only starts with a king) then, beginning with all pieces in start position, you play out the game. NOTE: This game is very small and not meant as a serious project. However, if you like, you can download it here. (Doesn't work in Windows 7 or 64-bit OSes.)


  • Generic Guestbook (PHP)

    Back in the Heyday of 1990s web design, when people had personal web pages on geocities and built shrines to movies or authors, there was the concept of a Guestbook where random web users could sign in and say they visited. This concept is mostly gone now for a variety of reasons I can only speculate on, however, in that time, I was determined to never put a guestbook on my page unless I built it myself. In 2005, I belatedly realized my goal, learned some PHP, and put together a cute little guestbook. I put the working page up briefly, but got tired of deleting spam, so took it down. But the source is still here.

    View Source Code