Starling

Starling

July 2024 - July 2024

Made a kind-of complete game in rust using Bevy for their 5th game jam.

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Nino Video

Nino Video

December 2023 - May 2024

With some friends, we tried to put the entire WebRTC stack on an FPGA. It kind of worked.

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Odd Friends

Odd Friends

October 2023 - October 2023

I wanted to learn more about convex.dev's take on the data layer, so I built a simple clone of Wits and Wagers to play in the browser.

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Cyclicism

Cyclicism

July 2023 - August 2023

As a kid, I loved reading the news. Nowadays, I find it rare to find an article that I don't feel like I've read some version of before. Cyclicism is a tool that uses transformer embeddings to compare trending NYT articles to stories published 20 years ago to highlight patterns in the news cycle.

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Out-of-Place Writes on the PGM Index

Out-of-Place Writes on the PGM Index

February 2023 - May 2023

Preliminary research into efficiently extending the functionality of the PGM index. Traditionally, the PGM uses ML techniques to achieve fast reads with little memory usage. This research implements a novel technique to allow for fast writes as well, with minimal additional memory overhead.

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NumCross

NumCross

February 2023 - May 2023

Along with a few friends at Harvard, spun up a NYT-mini inspired app for sharing a unique type of number puzzle. I was in charge of spinning up the database and coordinating deployment with terraform so that when this thing blows up, we'll be ready for a million users..

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Verifying the Byzantine Generals Problem

Verifying the Byzantine Generals Problem

February 2023 - April 2023

Using the Lean theorem prover, I composed a formal proof of the byzantine generals problem.

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Nerf Goliath

Nerf Goliath

March 2023 - May 2023

Nerf Goliath is a novel multiplayer networking protocol which seemlessly switches hosting to give ping benefit to players in losing positions.

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Pokegan

Pokegan

March 2023 - May 2023

As a fun dive into the world of GANs, I tried to generate novel pokemon using GANs. The results were... interesting.

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Climate Innovathon

Climate Innovathon

February 2023 - March 2023

Organized an event at the intersection of computer science and chemistry at Harvard encouraging students to explore research topics in carbon capture. Sponsored by Frontier Climate, over $500 in prizes.

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README #

README #

December 2022 - March 2023

The culmination of my time on the Lampoon, I edited an issue of the magazine focused on why computers make whirring sounds sometimes.

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play.JPEG

play.JPEG

December 2022 - January 2023

Inspired by my research into fractal compression, I took a deep dive into the JPEG encoding scheme and created a friendly tool for anyone to look under the hood of the world's most popular image compression scheme.

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Lampoon Digital Subscriptions

Lampoon Digital Subscriptions

August 2022 - January 2023

As president, I oversaw a team that made digital subscriptions a reality for the first time in the magazine's 150-year history.

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Towards Fast Fractal Image Compression

Towards Fast Fractal Image Compression

September 2022 - December 2022

As part of an advanced algorithms class at Harvard I spent part of a semester attempting to improve the feasibility of fractal image compression. Some successes, some failures.

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Implementing a Modern Column-Store from Scratch in C

Implementing a Modern Column-Store from Scratch in C

September 2022 - December 2022

Over the course of a semester, I took principles from modern database research and implemented a column-store from scratch in C.

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Vaccine Checker

Vaccine Checker

March 2021 - (a few hours later) March 2021

Vaccine rollout in California was, let's say, complicated. I wrote a script that would scrape the CVS website a few times a day and text me as soon as I could sign up.

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Expo RGB Color Picker

Expo RGB Color Picker

Febuary 2021 - (a few days later) Febuary 2021

Bored one weekend, I decided to make a natural color picker for React Native/Expo.

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Copyright Mark Pekala™ 2023, although I have no idea what that means.