Welcome to Daniel Díaz Salas's Personal Webpage!

Here you will find some info about me.

Who am I?

Yes, this is me!

Might be outdated, but this is basically just me.

I'm a Computer Engineer specialized in Software Engineer. I finished my Degree in Computer Engineering in 2014, and in 2016 I finished my Master's Degree in Computer Engineering, both of them in the E.T.S.I.I.T of Granada. I specialized in Software Engineering since I always enjoyed programming.
I always enjoyed playing videogames since I was 4 years old and I got my first computer. When I grew I had the need to make the world a better place, and I also discovered the joy of creating software that, by my surprise, it actually works and do stuff! That's why I worked in gamification and serious games in my TFM and TFG. I'd like to work developing software that makes the lives of others better, either by making videogames (who doesn't enjoy playing them?), or something to help people with disadvantages (like my TFM), or even without them, just to make people's lives easier and more enjoyable!
As I got more and more experience at work I became more aware of the difference between software engineering and software development. While both solve peoples problems, software engineering takes one step ahead and models whatever problem is there to be solved. So if you have to solve the lack of learning apps for kids, a software engineer needs to learn pedagogy. If you need to research whether or not a project is viable, a software engineer needs to research the field of that project. That is why I consider software engineering to be something else most people think it is.
I enjoy working in a group of people willing to learn from me and to teach me, so the entire team can grow as a group. I don't like coworkers who keep all their knowledge for themselves, it's just counterproductive.
I'm currently looking for new challenges in a new job that uses agile methodologies, new technologies and has a healthy environment that lets me grow as a software engineer.

Planned projects

These projects are planned projects I want to develop using current (September 2017) technologies, so I can learn and practice them. I'm also a much better developer than I was before 2017, so this is where the fun starts!

Star Realms helper

I really love Star Realms, and I play it a lot. I like to play a game mode I invented: you start with X live points instead of 50, so the game becomes much larger if you wanted.

But keeping track of live points can be a hassle, so I want to develop a small app that keeps track of both player's live points, and probably a few more features.

Lost Cities helper

I also love to play Lost Cities, and counting the points at the end of a game is also a hassle, so I also plan to develop a small app that can count the points of a ended game and also sum all the points of all games so a winner is set!

Gardening helper

This is not a table top game helper. The spring of 2017 was the time I discovered gardening, and the satisfaction it comes with it. Being able to grow stuff and then eat it is one of the most rewarding and relaxing feelings I have ever felt.

But keeping track of which plant needs more water, sun, fertilizer... than the others gets exhausting when you have more than 10 types of plant (basil, mint, tomatoes, dill...) so I plan to develop a not-so-small app that keeps track of all this information for me.

The idea is to build a guide for every plant I have, including best soil, diseases and how to get rid of them... I don't plan to build a social network about gardening, just a tool to help myself and maybe others.

Disclaimer:

The following projects were started years ago (before 2017), so they don't represent what I'm capable of doing. They are here just to keep track of my progress as a developer.

Personal relevant projects

El Planeta más Bonito (The Most Beautiful Planet)

This is my TFG (Trabajo de Fin de Grado: Final Degree Project). It's an interactive story for kids 6 to 8 years old about a mother and her two children, who travel to another world and need to confront some problems about family and what's really important in our lives. It has some tests questions and minigames that needs the story to be read by the kid in order to be completed correctly. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the reading comprenhension of the kid without him/her realising it and while he/she enjoys reading a (IMHO) good story and playing some (IMHO) entertaining minigames.

It uses Corona SDK code generated by a plugin for Adobe Photoshop called Kwik. All the media used are either free to use or created by me. It can be installed in any Android device via Google Play.

Hand Control Platform

This is my TFM (Trabajo de Fin de Máster: Final Master Project). It's a known fact that there are people (most of them old) living in little towns or villages who need to travel for hours to get to a medical center with the equipment to do tests. Focusing on people with psichomotor diseases (Parkinson's Disease, Essential Tremor...), we tried to solve one simple question: Would be possible to give this people a little and cheap contraption (Spain is not a rich country so money is an issue) that they could plug in their computer, do some tests in their home, send the data to a platform, and show it to the doctor in an useful way?

We did some research and we concluded it could be possible, so we built a prototype using Legos that incorporates a Leap Motion, we created some games (without the help of any doctor, sadly) using Unity 3D that track the hands of the patient and send the data to a web service built using Django. The results of the project were (spoiler alert) good, but not perfect: it's possible to develop such a project, but Leap Motion doesn't work flawlessly. With enough budget and the help (and most important, validation) of specialists it could be possible to design, develop and distribute this technology, replacing the Leap Motion for other device.

Personal not-so-relevant projects

Pacts

I started this project in summer 2015 as a challenge for myself: would it be possible to develop an app and a service using only Android Studio? The answer was yes, and it ended up well, since Google App Engine works well with Java services (not like with Django... c'mon Google) and you can import Java model classes into an Android class, which makes it easier than dealing with JSON stuff.

Why "Pacts"? Have you ever promised (or been promised) with something that is forgotten? Did somebody break a promise (or a blood (or other stuff) pact)? With this app you can track every single detail so you can remember your friends, family or significant other whatever they told you. "It's in the app, so don't try to avoid it".

Since this is my first (and only) Android app I developed by myself I feel pretty satisfied with the way it works: the Main Activity receives messages from the fragments and manages all the stuff, so IMHO it's a pretty scalable app.

It's currently discontinued since I started working in my TFM and I had no time to finish the project.

CoC Clan Manager

I play Clash of Clans, and I was in a small clan with all sorts of disorganization problems. As I told before, I like to make stuff easier by developing software, so I started this project. A few days before Supercell launched the Clash of Clans API, so I reworked the entire project to use it. Sadly a static IP address is currently needed and the project is hosted in a free Heroku account (yes, I like to use Heroku for deploying Django apps), so I can't use the API ATM.

It's currently discontinued until Supercell changes the static IP condition. I know this project is viable using PHP, but I just prefer using Python and Django.

More projects?

Yes, there are more projects in my Github profile, but either I don't consider them important (maybe they are just a practise I uploaded, or a very small project like CoC Dump Elixir) or I wasn't as experienced as I consider myself right now, like Tarvos' Escape, a project I know I could do a lot better today. That is why I haven't listed any project more. But there is a lot of stuff about me you can check, just scroll to the top to see other sections of my webpage!