things go by

January 1, 2023 0 Comments software development

Trans Legislation Tracker in the news

A year of data collection, learning, and interviews In 2022, I continued maintaining and expanding the Trans Legislation Tracker. That work has put me into conversations with leading researchers, reporters, and organizations who are striving to tell the story of anti-transgender legislation …

Tracking America’s historic wave of anti-trans legislation

Xtra Magazine wrote about the Trans Legislation Tracker, highlighting the work I’ve been doing over the past two years to document anti-trans legislation in the U.S. Read the full article here. In the midst of this ongoing battle, software developer and creative …

The Stranger covers Inflection Point

The Stranger’s @MattBaume covered Inflection Point, a website I built to explain how the US found itself in the midst of a historic wave of anti-trans legislation in 2021. Read the full article at The Stranger. “What is this movement?” Bales wondered. …

Social Impact Heroes profile

I talked with Authority Magazine about my experience leading digital projects for their Social Impact Heroes series. My most recent, Inflection Point, is a website detailing the wave of anti-transgender legislation in 2021. Our discussion touched on learning habits, growing from mistakes, …

Seattle Design Festival pop-up

Our Substantial team created a pop-up for the Seattle Design Festival. In a year of stress, separation, and video calls, we wanted to bring people together with simple gratitudes. We came up with the idea of making a series of postcards that …

Capitol Hill art installation

I created an installation art piece for Substantial in Capitol Hill, Seattle. Overlooking Cal Anderson park, the office gets plenty of foot traffic. The front door on the ground level is flanked by tall windows. I wanted a piece that would engage …

Quarantine Music Club

A music club I’ve been a part of– hosted by my friend Joshusa Finnell— tried our first-ever digital gathering. Like usual, we had a theme and each of us picked out a few songs to share. But this time the theme was …

Premium Words

@Premium_Words is a dutiful Twitter bot that publishes a unique word from the PoetryFoundation.org archive every hour. Early random picks have included choice words like “UGG-booted, “mini-lawnmowers,” “long-married,” and “unsayables.” At this pace, it has enough content to run for about 10 …

DynamoDB Converter

Making updates to DynamoDB tables can be time consuming. It’s necessary to update basic JS objects to new formats that mirror DynamoDB records. I created an NPM package to simplify the process of conversion to and from Dynamo records, as well as …

Mission control

I built this web app to give Submittable users a fun new way to explore their data. It reimagines the presentation of fiction, poetry, or other formal document submissions and through a “mission control” dashboard. Submissions become “missions,” acceptances become “landings,” and …

React props & state

Happy to publish another article with FreeCodeCamp this week! This tutorial touches on a subject that wasn’t immediately clear to me when I started developing with React– how do you see the current state & props in the browser? “How to see …

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February 24, 2019 0 Comments Images

Hello, Instagram

I’m sharing some of the images and videos I’m creating with BigGAN over on Instagram: @agbales Check out a few examples below, and follow along!

Litwolf

Litwolf.com is a website I launched that digs into literary data. This first project makes the history of the Pushcart Prize more transparent. Ranking top literary magazines is a tricky business. So many factors weigh into the decision-making process: style, editorial leadership, …

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December 6, 2018 0 Comments publication

Pushcart Prize & Best Microfiction Nominations

Two of my stories published in 2018 received nominations for inclusion in literary anthologies. I’m grateful to the editors at both the Mississippi Review and Passages North for supporting my work. Mississippi Review nominated “Pinkie” for the Pushcart Prize. Passages North nominated “Year of the Cow” …

Quarterly West, Issue 94

Four of my latest collages appear in Quarterly West. I’ve been a big fan of the magazine for years, so this is a real thrill. I’ve attached three images below, and you can find the full set over on their website.

Scraping with Ruby & Nokogiri and mapping the data

Free Code Camp published my article “How to scrape with Ruby and Nokogiri and map the data.” This piece comes out of a project I recently built to map bridge data from across Wichita, Kansas. To get the bridge info, …

Building a terminal game with CSV & Ruby

Free Code Camp published my article “How you can build a terminal game with CSV and Ruby.” It’s based on a lecture I gave earlier this year at Ada Developers Academy, and features a talk about Ruby’s CSV library and a walkthrough …

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May 22, 2018 0 Comments music

New littlefoot album!

My project littlefoot released its second album of 2018, titled Burn. It follows up on the debut self-titled release in February. Listen, share, & enjoy!

Feature in Miracle Monocle

Three of my collages appear in the newly released Miracle Monocle, Issue 10 from the University of Louisville. It’s exciting to have my visual work appear alongside such great poetry, prose, and hybrid writing. My three pieces appear in the visual arts …

2018 Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction

Thrilled to hear that my story “Pinkie” was selected by Anne Sanow as the winner of the 2018 Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. My deep thanks to Adam Clay, Jon Riccio, Nickalus Rupert for their support. Looking forward to reading the issue, …

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