A sketched picture of James' head

James Smith

Building a better future out of code

Projects

This page lists a few of my projects that are worth sharing. There's more on my GitHub profile, if you're interested.

AMEE is web service that provides calculation of greenhouse gas emissions and other sustainability metrics. My employer from 2008-2012. Favourite projects are "AMEEdiscover" and "Ask AMEE".

The Carbon Diet

A site created way back in 2007 that combines accurate and timely emissions measurement with social aspects to create a new approach to carbon footprinting. Now open source.

Climatecraft

A Minecraft mod that adds carbon emissions and sequestration. Winning hack at the Stockholm Green Hackathon in 2011, covered by The Guardian, Kotaku, BoingBoing and TreeHugger.

Planet Hopper

A webapp for classroom-based exploration of exoplanets, this was one of 6 global winners of NASA's International Space Apps Challenge 2012, winning the "Most Inspiring" award.

Traeder

An SMS-based system for exchange of alternative currencies, without requiring special hardware or physical tokens of any kind. Winner of the Most Disruptive award at Hactivate 2011.

Social Meter

A system that combines live energy monitoring information with social networks, to give more context and drive continuous engagement with energy use. Built at Rewired State's Carbon & Energy Hackday in 2010.

Question Your Candidates

A site written to crowdsource hustings details during the 2010 UK General Election, using APIs from YourNextMP and TheyWorkForYou. Sadly written too late to be useful, but a good idea.

@CO2Updates

A twitter bot that announces the latest atmospheric CO2 measurements, grabbed from the NOAA on a monthly basis. Serves as a handy reminder of the ticking clock.

Currentcost

Various bits of hacking around with the output of a CurrentCost energy monitor, including a ruby gem and system daemon for publishing information to the web.

Green Thing

A charity I worked with in 2007-8 that tries to make a sustainable lifestyle more desirable by creating inspirational (and aspirational) content and allowing people to share their own inspiration with others.

Web3D Guide

In the early 2000s, I wrote a popular guide to VRML97, an early 3D language for the web. The language is long dead, and the site is retired, but the tutorials are still available via the Internet Archive.

PhD Research

My PhD thesis was all about efficient animation of dense meshes, using simplification and displacement mapping, in the days before raw computing power made it all irrelevant.