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Vol. I · First Edition · MMXXVI
A Field Guide
to the Works of
ROWAN ELLIS
Being a faithful catalogue of digital specimens, gathered, classified,
and rendered in ink — with notes on their habitat, taxonomy,
and uncommon character.
· · · · ·
Table of Contents
Wherein the reader may locate, with little effort, the chapters herein assembled.
i
CHAPTER I
A Preface from the Naturalist
In which the author offers his terms of address — and the reader is asked, kindly, to attend.
Permit me, gentle reader, this small indulgence: to set down in one volume the specimens of seven years' labour, gathered from many gardens — some cultivated, some wild — and to render each, as faithfully as the engraver's plate allows, for your study.
I am a developer of full stack and a creative technologist, residing presently in the city of San Francisco. My profession bids me wear two coats at once: that of the engineer, fond of the cool logic of databases and the careful seam of a well-formed API; and that of the artist, who can spend a morning tuning the cadence of a single micro-interaction.
The works herein catalogued span platforms commercial and projects open-handed; mobile applications and instruments of generative art; tools for the enterprise and tools for the curious. Some you may use today. Others have passed into the quiet of completed engagements.
“I obsess over micro-interactions as much as database schemas —
and I see no contradiction in it.”
In what follows you will find: plates of the principal specimens, with their habits and habitats; a taxonomy of the skills brought to bear upon them; a brief log of the expeditions of my career; and, at the close, an invitation to correspond — which I hope you will accept.
I remain, as ever, yours in code & ink,
R. Ellis
San Francisco — Vernal Equinox, MMXXVI
2
CHAPTER II
Plates & Specimens
Four principal works, ordered as the author has chosen, with figures rendered in ink upon vellum.
Flowboard
Pteridium organizans — the Productive Fern
A platform for project management, conceived for teams who find themselves caught between two worlds: that of the document and that of the queue. Serving twelve thousand teams at present count.
KingdomDigital — the realm of bits
OrderSoftware-as-a-Service
FamilyWeb Application
HabitatThe modern workplace
Of particular note is its real-time collaboration engine, drawn from the literature on conflict-free replicated data types, which permits any number of fingers to compose the same page without quarrel.
Verdant
Folium carbonum — the Carbon Leaf
A mobile companion for the conscientious citizen, by which the daily purchases of bank and card are reckoned in their effect upon the air we breathe — and so reduced.
KingdomDigital — mobile branch
OrderNative cross-platform
FamilyPersonal finance
HabitatThe pocket; the bedside table
The species draws from banking APIs the record of each transaction, then sorts and scores them — an unobtrusive ally, never moralising, only counting.
Lumina
Anthos generativum — the Generative Bloom
An open-handed instrument of generative art, distributed without charge, by which any browser may produce flowering forms of eighteen distinct varieties. Esteemed among its kind: three thousand two hundred favourable marks upon GitHub.
KingdomDigital — ornamental class
OrderGenerative Art Tool
FamilyOpen Source
HabitatBrowsers and curiosity
It produces both raster impressions and vector engravings, the latter of arbitrary size, suitable for framing or further refinement at the user's leisure.
DocuMind
Arbor sapientiae — the Tree of Knowing
An assistant of artificial reasoning, set among the documents of the modern company — PDFs, pages of Notion, archives of Confluence — from which it draws answers, with citations duly preserved.
KingdomDigital — artificial class
OrderRetrieval-Augmented Generation
FamilyEnterprise Tooling
HabitatTwo hundred and odd companies
Of all the present catalogue, this specimen most clearly answers the question — how shall the machine attend us in the work of memory?
4 — 23
CHAPTER III
A Taxonomy of Faculties
Wherein the author's skills are gathered, after the manner of the natural orders, into four principal kingdoms.
❦ Frontmatter
Of the visible web — what greets the user.
- React & Next.js
- TypeScript
- CSS & Animation
- WebGL & Three.js
❦ Backmatter
Of servers and stores — the unseen labour.
- Node.js & Express
- PostgreSQL & Redis
- GraphQL & REST
- Python & FastAPI
❦ Infrastructure
Of cloud and machinery — the keeping of order.
- Amazon Web Services
- Docker & Kubernetes
- Continuous Integration
- Terraform & IaC
❦ Drafting
Of design — the temper of the work.
- Figma & Prototyping
- Design Systems
- User Research
- Accessibility (WCAG)
24 — 31
CHAPTER IV
An Expedition Log
The principal stations of the author's working life, recorded in the order they were undertaken.
2023 — present
Veritas Labs — San Francisco
Senior Full-Stack Engineer
- Conducts an expedition of five engineers upon a developer-first observability platform.
- Replaced the monolithic ingestion engine with smaller craft — latency reduced by three-fifths.
- Established the field guide of components used across three product lines.
2021 — 2023
Mosaic Finance — in Remote correspondence
Full-Stack Engineer
- Shaped the principal dashboard of a financial application of some four hundred thousand users.
- Drew up the real-time portfolio engine, woven of WebSockets and Redis correspondences.
- Prosecuted the migration from REST to GraphQL, securing a saving of forty-five parts in the hundred.
2019 — 2021
Pixel & Co. Agency — New York
Frontend Developer
- Delivered fourteen client commissions across the verticals of media, health, and commerce.
- Became the company's particular authority on intricate motion and data illustration.
2017 — 2019
University of California, Berkeley
B. S. in Computer Science — with Honours
- Studies in human-machine interaction, distributed systems, and computer graphics.
- Senior dissertation upon procedural terrain generated in WebGL.
32 — 39
CHAPTER V
Correspondence
The author keeps an open inbox, and replies, as a rule, by the next post.
A Letter to R. Ellis
Composed this day, in your hand
40 — 47