Homepage | William

About William

I like creating things! Especially things that involve 3D software or are tangible.

Also, I consider myself a team player. I'm told I communicate well, and while I like doing my own projects, I value supporting the work and growth of others.

Finally, I like to learn new things. I pick up skills reasonably quickly, so people often lean on me for advancing projects that are mechanical or software related.

I grew up in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and now attend Oberlin College where I am majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. I expect to graduate in May, 2023.

Creating Things

A dog digitallly painted in thin air. It is almost a sculpture.

Virtual Reality: This painting program was fun to develop. Trying it out for the first time, I painted my dog George. We liked him a lot.

A video game screen with a spaceship landing on the moon. It is firing thrusters and careening toward a landing pad.

Artificial Intelligence: The program I wrote with my friends eventually steered this ship better than we did.

A digital sculpture of a bear's head, partly retopologized.

Blender: Do I Blender? Yes!

The background from the home page. It is a neon-lit scene, with blocky surfaces and a swirling pool of fog in the center.

Design: I'm using Blender to experiment with this design for my site's homepage. I want to reflect the color scheme of the whole website and also draw focus to the center of the page.

There are three photos. On the left, a sawdust-covered hand next to a wood carving of a blocky chain. On the top right, a kirigami Empire State building. On the bottom right, a pop up card consisting of many layers of colored paper, representing a couple sitting with each other.

Woodworking and Kirigami: Digital work aside, I also like making manipulable forms with wood and paper. I formed the chain from a single piece of cherry.

Team Player

The people looking at this picture don't know what it is either.

Open Source: I founded an Open Source programming club at Oberlin. A few of us contributed code to a computer program that we dubbed 'Time Stretch.'

A small child stands on a wall of stacked apple crates, with a huge pile of apples behind him.

Eagle Scout: What's going on here? My service project started as a photo scanning project to help the Biglerville Historical & Preservation Society promote the region's apple-growing heritage on their website. My team got permission to set up a table at the local fair and gather anecdotes from long-time community members. Their stories enhanced the project considerably. (It turns out that on the day this photo was taken, tons of apples were transported within the plant using a conveyor of water.)

A 17-year-old giving a thumbs up next to a target, where an arrow has pierced his soda can.

Scouts BSA Counselor: At the in-between age of 17 this scout was fairly passionless during camp, and routinely stayed to help me pack up the archery range. He cheered up one afternoon when I proposed that we fake this impressive shot and submit it to the camp slideshow.

A quidditch player stepping over William as he falls backward in the mud, wearing a keeper's headband.

Quidditch: Go Obliviators! (I'm the one eating dirt.)

A Feng Shui coin hangs on a sky-blue thread as a pendant.

Inclusion: Scouts BSA welcomed young women into its program in 2019. This pendant was given to me that summer by one such troop who expressed that they always felt welcome on my archery range.

Learning Attitude

A cutaway view of a house, drawn in a software program.

CAD: I taught myself SketchUp for fun when I was in elementary school and helped my parents design our timberframe house. When I was drawing, I got to stay up late.

Dance: Learning Salsa, Cuban style!

Many people face the camera for a photo.

Programming Competition: In this regional contest, my team, “O(4)”, learned as much about communicating as we did about problem solving. We earned second place!