John Thomas Murray

A picture of me

I am going to be a graduate fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Computer Science PhD program.

In my off time, I enjoy ballroom dancing, video games, cooking, biking and archery.


Projects

StorySigns

Main Interface
Summer 2008-Present

IVSP Senior Thesis

Project Website

Designed to explore visual depictions of language and the use of active symbols, later called Gryphs, this project was my senior thesis as a Digital Narratives major, the second of which came out of the University of Maryland. The project web site has further detail on the versions, active development, and more. The active development site is password protected, but I will provide access if requested. My advisors for the project were Dr. Matthew Kirschenbaum and Dr. Ben Shneiderman.



TerpNav

Main Interface
Fall 2009

CMSC435: Software Engineering

Current live version

TerpNav is my final large project at the University of Maryland. It is the oficial pedestrian walking map, and was designed and comissioned originally by a gemstone team. The project was a part of CMSC435, Software Engineering, and consisted of a team of 12 programmers. I was elected to lead the project, and in addition to providing server-side coding, I helped coordinate the team’s efforts and deadlines, interpret and assign tasks from the requirements and port the code from the old version to a new svn repository. The class is currently being taught by Dr. Jim Purtilo, and has not completed yet. The map’s curent incarnation can be found at map.umd.edu; however the development version can also be found at vis.cs.umd.edu:8080. The main objective of the semester’s efforts were to productize the map, add layers features and increase performance.


War Story

Spring 2008

ARTT489I: Advanced Digital Art

Project Website

This was a student film I wrote, directed and produced as part of a ARTT451: Advanced Digital Art class. I involved 6 actors, over 2 hours of footage and a final running time of just over 15 minutes. The film’s site, including bios and pictures and details about a future release of the film can be found on the project’s web site at the left. The film was selected to be shown at the 2009 University of Maryland Student Film Festival and is currently slated to be released to YouTube in the coming months.



Artist Catalogue

Fall 2007

ARTT354; Digital Art

Web Version Download

This project involved the creation of a print catalogue which both showcased artwork, delivered an artist statement and carried a design theme. I decided on an unusual format, and created the front and back coves in Ilustrator. The idea of carrying design elements from one page to the next in a spread was also a focus.


Writer’s House Self-Published Chap Book

Spring 2009

As a culmination of a two-year certificate in the living-learning program, the Jimenez-Porter Writer’s House, I compiled and published a book containing four of my best prose and poetry works.