John Nelson

Human Centered Tech Solutions

About Me

John sitting on the ground with his dog laying across his lap
  • better future for all icon Worked as the lead software engineer at bffa.org creating intuitive user interfaces
  • πŸŽ“ Trained professionally in software development Alchemy Code Lab in 2019
  • β›‘ Former Firefighter, EMT-Paramedic, and Emergency Room Technician
  • πŸ•β€πŸ¦Ί Training a rescued husky malamute mix named Zuko for therapy
  • πŸ₯Ύ Can be found hiking the trails around Portland with dogs
  • β›· Active with snow sports, especially skijoring
  • 🧠 Nerd for sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books
  • ⛡️ Enjoy building Lego's and models
  • πŸͺ΄ Caretaker of many houseplants
  • 🌱 Currently learning NextJS

Projects

πŸ€— empathetech.org

(pronounced β€œempathetic”)

A hug-o-tron community. Beep beep boop boop.

Personal contributions:

  • πŸ€– Created navigation bar, footer, and code of conduct components for the website
  • πŸ‘¨πŸ»β€πŸ« Biweekly Office Hours: Led demonstrations on using D3.js with React
  • GitHub logo Collaborated using GitHub for issues, code reviews, and pull requests
  • πŸ”§ Technical expert with Black Business Association of Oregon

🧰 Next.JS, React, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

GitHub logo GitHub

better future for all icon Better Future For All

(BFFA.org)
Using art to promote measuring and improving a society's ability to meet people's basic needs, empower communities, and unlock individual potential.

I created intuitive tools for exploring the SPI framework from the Social Progress Imperative

better future for all icon BFFA Map and Tooltip

View scores from around the world at a glance

Measuring 169 countries 3 dimensions 4 components 60 indicators in total

World map and Tooltip

🧰 Tools: React, D3.js, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS

🌸 Inspired by Shirley Wu's Film Flowers

🎨 Iconography by Wakey Nelson

GitHub logo GitHub

better future for all icon BFFA Stamp Book

Explore each component's definition and sources

Definitions stamp book

🧰 Tools: React.js, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
πŸ—œ Testing: Jest

🎨 Artwork by Jannah Minnix
πŸ““ Physical stamp book available at
better future for all icon bffa.org

GitHub logo GitHub

πŸ”­ Video of the Day from NASA's API

What's not to love about staring at the stars and ultra hd images of them?

Here I am making an API call to NASA, lazily because they love large image sizes.

Β©2025 Jason Kurth; Music: House of the Rising Sun (Sebastia McQueen via SoundCloud)

A Double Sunrise from a Partial Eclipse

Can the Sun appear to rise twice at the same time? This was just the case a few days ago from Les Escoumins, Quebec, Canada as our Solar System's bright central orb rose just as it was being partially eclipsed by the Moon. The featured video shows this unusual double-sunrise in real time and being reflected by the St. Lawrence River. Soon after the initial two spots of light appear over distant clouds, what appears to be bright horns become visible -- which are really just parts of the Sun not being eclipsed. Soon, the entire eclipsed Sun is visible above the horizon. In all, this broken sunrise took less than two minutes during a partial eclipse that lasted many times longer. Although the Moon circles the Earth once a month (moon-th), it does not always eclipse the Sun because its tilted orbit usually takes it above or below. Gallery: Partial Solar Eclipse of 2025 March

πŸ”© API call made to
https://api.nasa.gov/index.html
using
Tanstack / react-query

Want to know more? Let's connect!