I'm Raphael, I've been building software for over 20 years, from Linux desktop applications, browser extensions, and Android launchers to web platforms, multimedia tools, color engines, developer utilities, and native system software.

I don't really have a favorite language. I have favorite problems.

Most of my projects start with me wanting something and almost finding it.

Over time, this GitHub became a collection of very oddly specific projects. Mostly clever. Occasionally questionable. Usually more involved than necessary.

• Qolor - Build harmonious Firefox themes using an OKLCH color engine.

  I wanted a Firefox theme. Almost everything I found was "almost" it. Then the problem escalated into a color engine.

• QColor - Smart Sublime Text color highlighter, converter and picker.

  I wanted a color highlighter extension for Sublime Text. I found one with its own website. It had clearly planned its life better than I had. That was more frightening than it needed to be.

• EyeSaver - Windows display color temperature utility.

  I just wanted to turn the brightness down on Windows. I ended up with software asking whether I wanted to sleep better, reduce eye strain, or move my work to a cave near the equator. No. Please. I just want to turn the damn brightness down.

• PureVision - GTK theme.

  I wanted to remove the blinding high-contrast nonsense from Arc Theme and maybe darken the interface a little. It was supposed to be a small fork. Then I removed the unnecessary variations, rewrote the SVGs an the image generation for buttons and switches, removed Meson entirely and replaced the build process for a makefile. Four years later, it's still unfinished, some UI is broken, and I've promised myself never to fork a desktop theme again.

• QRedshiftCinnamon / QRedshift - Linux display color temperature utility.

  I wanted a few sliders so I could stop typing redshift -O 4500 -p. I couldn't find an interface I liked, so I built an almost dependency-free, stateless Redshift alternative in ANSI C with its own gamma-ramp algorithms and state reconstruction. The sliders are smoother than ever.

• QCarLauncher - Android launcher built from scratch for automotive head units.

  I wanted to root and remove some stock garbage from a Chinese head unit for my old Audi A5 B8. The project got a little out of scope. I ended up building a custom launcher with full B8 integration: live engine data (RPM, fuel, temp), CAN bus, climate control tracking, real-time audio visualizations, automatic UI contrast calculation, and a external TPMS I bought and reverse-engineered because the car didn't have one. At least there is no stock garbage left.

• QAudioVisualizer - Lightweight GTK audio visualizer.

  I wanted to create one of those music livestreams that runs 24 hours a day. It turned out that streaming required a machine powerful enough to run OBS, which cost much more than I was willing to pay. The final setup ran on a $6 VPS. Twitch banned me for copyright two months later.

• QLogo - Minimalist Plymouth boot theme.

  I wanted a Plymouth theme exactly like that. I probably spent days finding things that were "almost" it.

• QRoute - Single-file PHP router.

  I wanted a router library for PHP. Just a router class, not a framework.

• qimagemagick - A modern, fully Promise-based Node.js ImageMagick wrapper without the dependency bloat.

  I wanted to use ImageMagick from Node.js. I found hundreds of packages with hundreds of dependencies. So I wrote one that only depends on ImageMagick. Well... ImageMagick and Axios.

• QJukebox - Modern Discord music bot with native playlist support.

  I just wanted to easily save and stream my own playlists into a voice channel. The mainstream bots at the time kept choking on massive queues or locking playlist management behind a paywall. I bypassed the drama.

• QFirefoxMod - Bring userChrome.js back to modern Firefox.
• QBoids - WebGL, Three.js implementation of Craig Reynolds' Boids.
• QPlayer - WebGL, Three.js video player experiment
• QToasty - JavaScript Mortal Kombat easter egg.

• SimpsonDetector - Mobile computer vision system to detect Simpsons characters using training images.
• QGLC - Single-pass recursive-descent LL(1) compiler written as an academic project.
• QSE - Academic search engine.

• I like understanding how things work before adding another layer.
• I prefer small, focused tools over large solutions that do everything.
• I care about details most people will never notice.
• I try to leave things simpler than I found them.

If you enjoy my work, feel free to buy me a beer 🍺