This is a submission for the New Year, New You Portfolio Challenge Presented by Google AI

About Me

I’m a full-stack developer and digital designer with over a decade of experience building robust, scalable solutions that solve real-world problems. I thrive on both thoughtful architecture and polished design — from concept through deployment — and I’m passionate about creating work that is both technically sound and visually engaging.

For this challenge, I took a personal and creative direction with my portfolio: a Windows 98-style experience with a MySpace-inspired profile. This project isn’t just a collection of links — it’s a window into who I am as a developer and a creator.

Growing up in the 90s, Windows 98 was my first computer and one of my earliest influences in computing. The look, sound, and playfulness of those early graphical interfaces sparked my curiosity about how software can be expressive and fun. Likewise, MySpace was the first social platform where I crafted my digital identity, experimented with layout and style, and shared music and stories that mattered to me as a teenager.

That nostalgia fuels this portfolio: blending retro aesthetics with modern cloud-native tech. I built and deployed this project to Google Cloud Run, leveraging scalable infrastructure and embedding the live site directly in my submission.

This portfolio reflects my technical skills, creative thinking, and willingness to break conventions — using nostalgia not as a gimmick, but as a thoughtful design lens. I hope it shows not only where I’ve been, but also where I’m going as a developer.

Portfolio

Take me for a spin!
View UribeJr98

The deployment is hosted on Google Cloud Run and features a custom dev-tutorial label per the submission guidelines.

How I Built It

This portfolio was built as a fully interactive, OS-style web application, inspired by Windows 98 and early MySpace layouts, but implemented with modern frontend architecture and cloud-native deployment.

The app is structured around a centralized window manager that controls open state, focus, minimization, and z-index — allowing draggable, overlapping windows similar to a real desktop environment. Each “application” (About Me, Media Player, Projects, Notepad Messenger, Pong, Explorer) is implemented as a self-contained React component, keeping the system modular and extensible.

The frontend is built with React and Vite for fast development and optimized builds. I used 98.css as a stylistic base and layered custom CSS for responsive behavior, window chrome, and interaction polish. Project case studies open in a dedicated viewer that supports structured data and GitHub-style Markdown rendering, making content easy to maintain while staying on-theme.

For interactivity, I integrated:

• A SoundCloud-powered media player
• A Pong mini-game
• A persistent Notepad Messenger
• Desktop icons and a taskbar that mirror classic OS behavior

In production, the app is served by a lightweight Node.js + Express server, which handles SPA routing and static assets. The project is deployed to Google Cloud Run, demonstrating a modern, scalable deployment model with minimal operational overhead and a live, embeddable URL for the DEV submission.

The goal was to combine nostalgic design with modern engineering, showing that expressive interfaces and production-ready architecture can coexist.

What I’m Most Proud Of

I’m proud of who I am and where I come from.

This portfolio acts as a time capsule of my life, capturing the technology, music, and digital spaces that shaped my earliest experiences with computers. Windows 98 was my first operating system, and MySpace was the first place I learned how to express myself online. Those moments sparked my curiosity and influenced how I approach design and interaction today.

What makes this project meaningful to me is how it connects past and present. I took those formative experiences and rebuilt them using modern tools, thoughtful architecture, and cloud deployment — turning nostalgia into something functional and forward-looking.

This portfolio isn’t just a collection of projects. It’s a reflection of my journey, preserving where I started while showing who I’ve become as a developer.