Jim Foley

A technical writer with 18 years of experience at companies including Meta, Google, Disney Interactive, Thomson Reuters, E-Trade, Dolby Labs, and multiple startups. Documented AR/VR, autonomous cars, fintech, big data pipelines on distributed systems, cloud computing, SaaS, APIs, servers, networks, security, latency, communication, hardware/HAL, and more. Have also worked as a software developer, IT/support technician, supervisor, and trainer. Background in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and history.

This portfolio page is a sampling of documentation, code, and creative projects.

• Resume
• LinkedIn
• Contact me at jim-at-tinriver-dot-com

Documentation

Most of my work has been on internal docs that can't be shared. Here are a few other samples or mockups.

• eXtensible Device Metadata (XDM) graphic file spec
• Diagrams
• Engineering whitepaper
• I wrote version 2.0 of this REST API site in 2013 (has since been updated by others)
• API guide (ASP)
• API guide (SOAP)
• User Documentation
• The TemperatureDataTrends Ebola-tracking app and docs were developed and delivered to the State of Texas in a week by a three-person team at Google ATAP, for widespread use by people who were potentially exposed when an Ebola case arrived in Texas.

Other Writing

• Medium articles:
  • The cognitive science of readability, translatability, and writing for ESL or dyslexic readers
  • The evolutionary psychology and game theory of apologies
  • A humorous look at the Infinite Monkey Theorem
• Visual study guide for The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James's classic 1902 psychology/philosophy book on transformative mystical experiences
• Award-winning sci-fi novelette "Sacred Cows" (published under the pen name A. S. Diev) made the Gizmodo / io9.com best stories list in 2015, won a WISB award, and took second place in ScreenCraft’s 2016 cinematic story contest.

Code

• FOVisor (Field of View Visualizer) A JavaScript app for visualizing overlapping fields of view, useful for designing camera or sensor arrays. Launch App | View Source Code on GitHub

Original Music

Some instrumental music I wrote, performed, and produced in Windows 98 on a Pentium computer, acoustic guitar, and MIDI keyboard.

• In the Sky guitar, flute, piano, percussion
• What Is Love? piano, bass, percussion
• Amelia guitar, drum track
• Lullaby two guitars
• Some Better Way guitar