Hi!
I’m Emile Nijssen,
and this is my portfolio.
It shows what I did,
and the things I love to do.
I’m a dutch guy, and my passion is to make awesome things that people love to use. I am a technical person and know how to realize something, but also am I socially capable of understanding problems and people.
At the moment I am studying Creative Technology at the University of Twente. Additionally I work as a freelance web developer. If that isn’t enough, there’s my spare time in which I realize my own ideas into reality.
But in the end, I just want to make our world a better place, and I think technology can help us greatly with that goal.
Just to make a point about an article posted on Tweakers.net I have developed a tool that downloads Spotify tracks as MP3 files, and tags (ID3) them accordingly.
While it shouldn’t be used to infringe copyright, it was a fun and educative project for me!
View the source on github: https://github.com/WeeJeWel/spotify-mp3-downloader
Many student residences use the website http://www.eetlijst.nl to notify each other that they want to join dinner tonight. However, I found that my roommates regularly forgot to subscribe, which resulted in eating more pizza alone…
I have developed a tool that pushes a reminder and later the overview of Eetlijst.nl to the WhatsApp group of the residence. It’s now used by various residences throughout the Netherlands.
For the company Zilverfling I made a website to showcase their portfolio and company information. The website consists of multiple pages, a photo album and a custom google maps background for the contact page.
For SQUAL I did the front-end coding of an interactive map viewer for Sport Centrum De Scheg.
For the course Serious Gaming, which is part of my New Media specialization, I have made a ‘game’ where a player can control a physical quadrocopter with a Virtual Reality headset. The user can talk to the drone and invoke commands such as ‘take off’ or ‘start recording’. Steering is done by moving the head in the desired direction.
The project was graded with a 9.
In this course a business plan had to be made. Together with Stefan Witkamp, Jelle Pingen and Michel Lamoré we have made a business plan for Project Acedia.
At the final pitch at the end of the course we have won the first prize, and our business plan was refered to as ‘investor ready’. The end result was graded with a 9.
For the first time a local TEDx event will be organized by six students in Twente. I am part of that team because I really like TED.
Within the team my responsibilities are external affairs, IT and the stage design. For the IT part I have created the website and a ticket generator and scan system.
The event will take place on October the 11th. For more info, visit www.tedxtwenteu.nl.
This is a very small project but still worthwhile mentioning. It’s a little game that shows pictures of UTwente students, accompanied by four studies. The player has to guess the right study by only looking at the photo.
It started as a joke but gained a few thousand hits on the first day. It tought me that social media can be incredible powerful to spread something that makes people laugh!
Play the game at http://raaddestudie.weejewel.net
For the course Animated Narration I got the assignment to tell a story by using animation. I decided to make an interactive tutorial on the very basics of the Arduino. Mainly to explore my interest in the use of technology for education.
The end product was a simulation that takes about five minutes to complete. It teaches anyone without prior knowledge how to connect a LED, a resistor and how to make it blink by programming a tiny bit.
It tought me some things about visualizing information, and how to teach something that I as an engineer am already familiar with (which is hard!).
A live demo can be found at http://create.weejewel.net/courses/an/
For the GOGBOT Festival, with four other students we created an art installation named Google Birth.
It consists of a touchscreen monitor, and a breeding chamber. People could customize their yet-to-be-born childs in dramatic ways, making them think about the impact genetic manipulation might have in the future.
For Smart Environments I had to make something ubiquitous. I chose to design a shopping cart system that enables customers to shop faster and more easily. The final result was an android application connected to a server with a lot of functionalities.
This was a showcase using barcodes. The real product would consist of a shopping card, where products were tagged with RFID stickers for example.
For Study Association Sirius I designed & built their multilangual website. It has a lot of association-specific features on top of WordPress like commitee management, an activity calendar and a direct link with the University of Twente’s authentication service.
At the time I made this app, the dutch bank ING did not have an App for android. They did have one for iOS, so it was a little bit frustrating. So, I just built one myself.
Unfortunately after the app got attention by hitting the frontpage of dutch tech-website Tweakers.net ING called me and threatened to sue me if I didn’t made it unavailable immediately. Luckily I got a lot of positive responses :-)
A PHP script to get your balance is available here.
Calling someone fast on the University of Twente was really hard, so I developed an app for Android where you could type or speak a name, resulting in the contact information of that person.
A lot of people use Picasa to store their pictures. I’ve made a simple tool to showcase them on a public screen. Just enter the username, sit back & relax.
Two high-school classmates asked me to build a website for their music. I usually don’t do charity programming work, but as I liked their music and they were really motivated I made an exception. And I’ve always wanted to do a music website :-)
The result is a clean design (I did everything but the logo) and a manageable website using WordPress.
Visit http://www.toniquemusic.com
For Sandra Fluttert, a soprano opera singer, I designed & made a personal website with videos of her performances. It’s based on WordPress, so she can update the website herself.
For Eagerly Internet I did most of the front-end coding for a remake of Tivoli, a very popular Music Venue located in Utrecht. In 2010 Eagerly also asked me to do the front-end coding of the first version too.
For Eagerly Internet I did the front-end coding for RASA, an international Music Venue located in Utrecht.
For Eagerly Internet I did the front-end coding for Doornroosje, a Music Venue located in Nijmegen.
My study, Creative Technology, did not have a Study Association when I started there. Three pilot students took the initiative to start S.A. Proto. After they had done the basics, me and five other students took over by committing ourselves to becoming a board member for one year.
In this time we have done a lot. But mainly I have learned how to work together, how to communicate, how to be both resposible and fun at the same time and of course how to run an association.
It was a great year and I recommend everyone to search an association they like, and become an active member there. It really is a lot of fun!
For Eagerly Internet I did the front-end coding and WordPress integration for Type22, and their child website Scan&Fly.
Study Association ConcepT contacted me because they wanted an information screen for in their community room. I built one for them, and it is now displayed on a large television there.
For Eagerly Internet I did the front-end and WordPress integration for Staatsbosbeheer’s De Grote 5.
In 2010/2011 I was part of a committee of S.G. Daedalus, where we organized an event where there were 6 ‘cases’, on which 6 Industrial Design students would work for 6 hours in a glass house in the city centre of Enschede.
This year there is a new edition, and I made the website.
What do you do when sitting on the toilet? Probably nothing useful. This is why I realized an idea I got while being bored.
The project is nothing more than a cradle for your smartphone, with some instructions and an NFC chip behind it. When you put your phone in the cradle, a 3 minute TED Talk will start playing to keep you occupied.
You can find more information on http://toiletted.com.
The final assignments of the course Programming with Structures was to use a flocking algorhitm in a C++ application, while also using a Kinect.
Together with Stefan we’ve made a bird simulator where the player is the leader when interacting with the Kinect. If there is no player, the birds will behave as decribed here. Next to that, they will also avoid the airplane at any cost.
We were graded with a 10 :-) You can download the source (C++, XCode) here.
For the course Ambient Screens I did a project with four fellow students. We have designed & built a platform for Home Automation & Integration of various things you use in your daily life. It is a hub where your e-mail, facebook messages, calendar appointments but also light control, music etc. comes together.
The system embeds speech recognition as well as gestures using a Kinect. The main goal was to make daily tasks easier and less-intrusive.
For the project, we have built the display, a night stand with phone charging capabilities and lights that can fade to any color. All is wirelessly connected to the main hub. The idea is to enable 3rd party developers to build apps for this system, to create an industry standard for home automation. But for now, it was a proof of concept!
We were graded with a 9.
Click here to watch a demonstration video
ProTube is a tool for collaborative DJ’ing at parties.
The idea started at my Study Association, where we have a community room. I got a lot of requests to play specific music. That was annoying, so a weekend later there was this tool that allowed students to use their smartphones to add music to a public screen. This was really a success and I decided to rewrite it using Node.js instead of PHP, and make it publicly available.
It is now used by about 800 people in the weekends.
You can use it yourself at http://protu.be
E-mail
emilenijssen@gmail.com
Twitter
http://twitter.com/WeeJeWel92
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/WeeJeWel
LinkedIn
http://nl.linkedin.com/in/emilenijssen
Telephone
+31 (0)6 409 23 136
Or send me a postcard to:
Emile Nijssen
Breugelmansgaarde 142
7511PT Enschede