Avery Vine

I am...

About Me

Hi, my name is Avery! I'm a developer based in Ottawa, Ontario, studying Computer Science (Mobile Development stream) at Carleton University and currently available for hire. I am a focused, goal-driven individual who strives to bring enthusiasm and a high standard of professionalism to the workplace, both in independent and team environments. I have experience in many areas of programming, and I enjoy playing the piano and video games in my spare time. As a soon-to-be graduate and a former WWDC scholarship winner, I am ready to apply my wide range of both work and personal experience to new and exciting challenges.

If you want to find out more about me, please don't hesitate to contact me. I also have a blog that you can check out!

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I play piano in a big band and trumpet in a concert band some evenings.

TripAdvisor

Software Engineer - Restaurants B2C

January 2019 - June 2019

TripAdvisor is the largest travel site in the world, packed with user reviews about hotels, restaurants, and attractions across every continent. As a member of the Restaurants B2C team, I was responsible for working on some of the user-facing restaurants-related features, bug fixes, and improvements. More specifically, I worked on the TripAdvisor iOS application.

While I was there, I got the opportunity to build upon my existing skills as an iOS developer, working with experienced colleagues to ensure I learned to use best practices to write strong, clear, and reusable Swift code. Among other things, I spent a significant portion of my time working on further advancing the new Nearby Restaurants map/list combo view that launched just after I started.

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The TripAdvisor headquarters in Needham, MA is home to over 1,000 employees - approximately a third of all TripAdvisor employees worldwide!

TripAdvisor Canada

Software Engineer - Restaurants B2B

May 2018 - August 2018

Turns out I actually worked for TripAdvisor during two different co-op terms! This was the first time I worked for them, before they offered me the opportunity to work at their headquarters in Needham, MA. As a member of the Restaurants B2B (business-to-business) team, I worked to develop software that restaurants can use to improve their listings on TripAdvisor - anything from on-site ads to animated slideshows of pictures to a multitude of other features.

During my time at TripAdvisor Canada, the company launched an API to allow advertisement agencies to manage ads for their clients (restaurant owners with many locations). This project marked my first contribution to a significant coding project at a company, and it gave me the chance to put my expertise in Java to the test.

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Peacefully working on my laptop in the TripAdvisor Canada lounge room.

TravelClick

Integration Specialist

May 2017 - Dec 2017

TravelClick is a company that specializes in solutions for the hospitality industry. The Ottawa office worked with the Guest Management Solutions (GMS) product, which sent out guest confirmation emails, allowed hotels to conduct surveys, and much more.

TravelClick was my first co-op position. I worked as an Integration Specialist - my job was to connect hotels with our databases by installing the GMS software on their servers. I monitered data feeds, wrote extensive documentation, fixed elusive bugs, and completed several significant code changes, all while ensuring clients were satisfied with our service.

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The trophy awarded to the winners of TravelClick Ottawa's in-house sports tournament (spoiler: my team won).

Carleton University

Undergraduate Research Assistant

May 2016 - Sept 2016

During the summer of 2016, I volunteered to complete some research with a Computer Science professor at Carleton University, Dr. Doron Nussbaum. At the time, he was researching algorithms to find the shortest path to a moving target. The position began as volunteer work, but he was able to secure a grant for the project, allowing me to work full-time.

My time working under Dr. Nussbaum was very useful, as I was able to learn many programming best-practices, develop my critical thinking skills, work on the clarity and conciseness of the documentation I wrote.

Carleton University
I spent Summer 2016 researching algorithms for the fastest path to a moving target at Carleton University.

Science Student Success Centre iOS App

Carleton SSSC Companion App

As a mentor at the Carleton Science Student Success Centre (SSSC) and a member of the Computer Science team, one of my tasks was to develop a mobile application for the centre. The app, compatible with both iPhones and iPads, displays all of the centre's upcoming events (with optional pre-event notifications), provides students with quick access to the centre's Resources page, and offers a full-fledged assignment tracker and grade calculator.

There are two components: a mobile front-end that displays information to the user, and a Node.js server that provides an API that the app can use to retrieve event-related information. With the iOS application complete, the rest of the Computer Science team is working on an Android counterpart, to achieve feature parity with the iOS app.

Want to see this project? View -
Science Student Success Centre iOS App
This app provides an easy way for students to view SSSC events, access SSSC resources, and calculate their current/potential grades.

Cyclo

WWDC 2019 Scholarship Winner

I wrote this game as my application for Apple's 2019 WWDC scholarship competition. I made it over the course of 10 days, incorporating various technologies and frameworks for the first time in any of my projects, including Swift Playgrounds, SpriteKit, and AVFoundation.

I was fortunate enough to be selected by Apple as a winner, and was able to attend their 2019 WWDC conference in San Jose, California! Over the course of five days I will be attended various workshops and networked with a multitude of iOS and Mac app developers from around the world. In the months following, I also took a bit of time to convert it into a full-fledged iOS app, which can now be found on the App Store!

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Cyclo
I wrote this using Swift Playgrounds over the course of 10 days, and it won me a spot at Apple's 2019 WWDC!

WingIt

News Article Political Classifier

As the final project in my Intelligent Web-based Information Systems course, we were given the freedom to explore a project topic of our choosing, as long as it integrated the course contents. My friend and I built Wing It, a web application that can determine the political leaning of a given news article through content analysis. In addition, the application recommends articles concerning similar topics from left wing, centrist, and right wing news sources.

We used a range of technologies and algorithms to complete this project including Jersey, MongoDB, crawler4j, Naive Bayes analysis, and more. In the future, we hope to continue to improve this project by implementing features ranging from unsupervised learning for training purposes to better contextual recommendation.

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WingIt
When a user enters an article, its political leaning is analyzed and recommendations are made from news sources with alternative political leanings.

Personal Website

Personal Profile and Resume

I first developed my website in January of 2017, in preparation for my first co-op job search. I had just completed my web development class, so with that fresh motivation I taught myself to use the w3.css framework, enabling quick and easy development.

Looking back in November 2017, I realized that my website looked a degree amateur-ish, so I decided to revamp my it using my newly-acquired understanding of Bootstrap 4 - creating a responsive, modern website that can properly represent me as a developer.

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Personal Website
My website's first iteration, from January 2017.

Two Buttons

The Reflex Tapping Game

I first began developing this application when a friend came to me, requesting that I make an app to help her with a demonstration for one of her classes. After a short time, I realized that this had the potential to become a full-fledged app, so I pursued development beyond just the basic stages.

I eventually completed the app in June of 2016, however I was unable to submit it to the App Store due to developer age restrictions. After a short wait, I paid the developer feeds and completed the submission process.

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Two Buttons
I developed and released an iOS app that tests your reaction time during my spare time.

Quests of the Round Table

Classic Board/Card Game, Digitized

This project was a collaboration between myself and three classmates for one of my courses, Object-Oriented Software Engineering. In this physical card game turned digital, players vie to become the winner (Knight of the Round Table) by completing quests, participating in tournaments, and more.

I taught myself Unity and C# for the purpose of this project, as using Unity made the graphics development and integration significantly easier. In addition, as it was the focus of the class, I integrated several design patterns into the code, including Mediator, Strategy, and more.

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Quests of the Round Table
In this multiplayer card game, players compete to become a Knight of the Round Table.

Notepadd

Music from Text

This website was the hackathon brainchild of myself, two of my friends from Carleton, and a Waterloo student. Notepadd takes in whatever text you give it, and generates a song based off of average sentence length, punctuation usage, and syllabic breakdown - all while using iambic pentameter to determine what notes to play. The user can select either a major or a minor chord progression, and modify instrument volume while the song plays.

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NotePadd
I helped to create this website that turns written text into music at a hackathon.

More Info

Blog, resume, and more!