Michael Mora

About

I'm a graduate from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor of Science in Software Systems. Throughout my degree, I gained experience with and nurtured my interests in software development and testing, both through university coursework and microinternships through Riipen's Level UP program. These microinternships saw me completing projects within a 80-hour time limit in a remote-only working environment with other softare developers, where I learned to proactively ask questions and remain curious in the face of tackling aspects of software development I otherwise never did before these experiences.

I have also completed the CASTL BC Bioscience Reskilling program, where I gained hands-on experience working in a GMP-simulated facility at the British Columbia Institute of Technology Richmond Campus. With experience with GMP/GDP, I am open to laboratory/manufacturing technician roles furthering my understanding of relevant technology and guiding my path to software development for manufacturing-related businesses.

To me there is great fulfillment in being able to sit down with people across all sorts of backgrounds and learn about their interests, goals and passions. Through my experiences working in teams academically, professionally and through my hobbies, I have learnt that when people feel that their efforts are heard, they will make even more of an effort. I aim to be an echo chamber of passion, listening to and discussing the ideas of others - when I inspire passion in others, they in turn inspire passion in me. I aim to bring my zeal for collaboration to whichever team I work with, quickly picking up on effective, team-backed working habits.

Portrait of Michael Mora CASTL BC Bioscience Reskilling Program Badge

Interests

I find the challenge of looking at an existing codebase and picking it apart to understand how things fit together to be interesting, and no programming endeavour has presented me with such in spades more than working with the SRPG Studio game engine.

On my GitHub Pages site, I showcase demonstrations of game mechanics I've developed that are usable in SRPG Studio projects. These work through "plugins", which are JavaScript files that override functions in the base game engine's code. In order for plugins to function seamlessly with SRPG Studio, I had to study portions of the game engine's code and pinpoint whichever functions were responsible for the aspects of the game engine I wanted to modify, then manually test them in specifically curated game scenarios/test cases. I am active in an SRPG Studio Discord community, and ask for help with developing plugins; my work has been included in a public wiki page alongside other programmers in the aforemnetioned community. You may also jump straight to my GitHub repo for SRPG Studio plugins where you can see the JavaScript code that goes into my plugins.

Yes, I dabble in a bit of spritework as well - the sprites used for my different interests topics were created by me using Piskel!!!

One of my biggest hobbies is getting involved with online productions on a voice acting and managerial level!

Delving into the intent behind the lines I have to perform and emotions my characters are going through involves two-way communication between myself my vocal directors - they tell me where my character is at emotionally, and I proactively ask questions and deliver my lines through interpretations that respect the original intent of my vocal directors. I am extremely grateful to have been part of a Quality Assurance team helping document final cut reccomendations during the process of finalizing production episodes to be uploaded to social media platforms. This entails going through multiple rewatches, recording aspects of an episode to modify or improve upon on from an art, audio or editing perspective. While I tend to favour suggesting improvements for audio given my audio editing experience for my own voice acting endeavours, my eye for detail means I have occasionally spotted visual inconsistencies at a layman's level that have been acknowledged by the creative heads in the relevant production areas. My curiousity and go-getter personality has moved me to also sit down with these aforementioned creative heads and watch them work - understanding more about the things they look for when they wish to quality check work on the show.

Voice acting has given me some of my closest friends, and taught me the importance of taking time to sit down and simply be with people. I will continue pursuing this hobby with pride and excitement for the future, and I am confident that I can apply the teamwork experiences I've learned from these productions in my professional career in the software development field.

I've had a vested interest in getting to know and use mobile electronic devices for a long while. Ever since I got my hands on a Nintendo DS Lite as a child, I've been fascinated by how many awesome things we can accomplish with such pocketable devices. Taking up courses in university regarding using Android Studio has awakened my professional pursuits in mobile app development. I have View-based programming experience using Java in Android Studio, which helped me connect with a company for an online internship for a project with similar View-based programming using Kotlin. Beyond graduation, I have also looked into modern Android Native development practices in Jetpack Compose through The Google Developers website; you can track my progress on my Google Developers account.