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Hello, world!
Hi, my name is Paul Esch-Laurent. 👋 I’m a graduate of Michigan Tech with a degree in Computer Engineering.
Professionally, I’m a full-stack software engineer—a “Jack Paul of all trades” of sorts. Personally, I’m a millennial cusper. Had to look that one up? Me too, friend, me too.
In my spare time I like to take photographs, create software, and write about things. My non-hyperlinkable hobbies include fueling my love for mechanical keyboards, chasing the perfect cup of coffee, and searching for my N=1 bike. 🤘
Feel free to take a peek at my portfolio or shoot me a message if you'd like to get in touch.
What I’m all about
I enjoy doing full-stack web development. And I mean that truly and literally—I’ve been a polyglot generalist my entire career. As the saying goes:
Jack of all trades, master of none […]
but oftentimes better than a master of one
I used to have lots of words here enumerating various languages, frameworks, libraries, and jargon. I decided to remove all that as I personally value breadth over depth.
Here’s a static copy of my résumé, exported as a PDF. If you’re into that sort of thing.
I’ve selected a few projects. No guarantees they’re up to date, relevant, or interesting to you. For a more realistic snapshot of what I’m up to, check my blog or GitHub. You can always say hi, too.
static site generator
bic is a minimal static site/blog generator written in bash. I created it as an exercise to understand what goes into a barebones opinionated static site tool.
custom Blot theme
I forked a Blot theme to customize my personal blog. My favorite bit of custom work involved a handful of light & dark themes, persisted to browser storage.
junkyard inventory scraper
u-pull-rss scrapes the API of a local junkyard, U Pull R Parts, to get the daily inventory and diffs. It’s implemented entirely in a GitHub CI/CD pipeline as mostly bash logic.
random number generator API
rnjeesus is a random number generator (RNG) service built around a simple API. It’s one of my oldest personal projects that continues to simply “just work.”
mpls/st. paul restaurant week scraper
Minneapolis / St. Paul hosts a “restaurant week” 2–3 times a year. I found the canonical website to be lacking in UI/UX so I created a basic SPA for the same data. Technical detail: moved to Netlify to use their proxy feature to bypass CORS.
Say hi
Go ahead and shoot me a message—I don’t bite. 😉 You can also send me an email directly—view the page source or head to /contact on my blog. 👇
I’ll be in touch shortly. Thanks!