Loucyl Liao
00 SANDBOX
Memoir — digital writing web app for letters that are meant to be found later.
01 BACKGROUND
This project began as a learning ground. It started with something as simple as building a login and sign-up system and connecting it to a database. I taught myself PHP and MySQL from scratch, figuring out authentication, sessions, database structures, and the rest of the backend as I built.
Somewhere along the way, the project became a creative playground. I explored JavaScript animations and interactive effects, learned 3D modeling, and experimented with different ways of bringing the interface to life. What began as an exercise in backend development gradually grew into a place where I could bring all those things together.
02 CONCEPT
Memoir began with a question I never quite knew how to answer — do I say this now, or do I wait? And if I wait, what am I waiting for? A better moment? A little more courage? The moment when someone is finally ready to hear what I have to say? Some words felt too early for the current; perhaps words could simply be left somewhere, drifting quietly until the time was right.
Some words wait years to be understood. Not because they're complicated — because we have to live past them before they make sense. A promise grows stronger when it's remembered years later. A flower is lovelier when it's grown from a seed someone planted without knowing if it would bloom.
I kept thinking: how romantic would it be, to receive something from years ago? From someone who thought of you then, before they knew who you'd become. Or from yourself — a letter from a day you've long forgotten, arriving when you finally need it.
Algebrawl — an arcade-style, turn-based educational math battle game.
01 BACKGROUND
Algebrawl began as a college course project in Java. The goal was simple: make math practice feel like a game. Instead of worksheets, you duel legendary mathematicians — every attack is a problem you have to solve first, and every mistake costs you a life.
It was later rebuilt for the browser with React 19 and TypeScript. The full arcade experience came with it — crisp math formulas, retro 8-bit sound effects, a responsive 4:3 canvas, and a save system so you can pick up where you left off.
02 CONCEPT
Three bosses, each built around the topics they pioneered. Every duel escalates — the later the legend, the harder the math.
Carl Gauss
Prince ofMathematicians
Linear equations, sum & product algebraic systems, 2×2 linear systems.
Isaac Newton
Father of ModernPhysics
Difference of squares, polynomial roots, matrix determinants, Newtonian mechanics, kinematics.
Fibonacci
Father of Western MathematicsFibonacci sequence deduction, position indexing, quadratic equations, series summations.
tender from the violence of becoming.
00 PROLOGUE
I was exposed to technology pretty much the day I was born. My dad is a computer mechanic, so computers have always just been there. Wires, keyboards, random capacitors, fixing things, breaking things, and the occasional "don't touch that." So I didn't. And anyway, I was way too busy being that kid. I grew up with a stupid amount of self-pressure to study, and just being genuinely curious about everything. If there was a club, competition, or activity happening somewhere, there was a decent chance I'd try to get involved.
I did journalism and was selected to compete in sportswriting, joined math quiz bees and placed an award for my school, danced, cheerdance, contemporary, and won competitions, played badminton, joined student government, every side quest possible.
I also picked up the ukulele, then I thought, you know what would be even cooler? become a violinist. I liked classical music, but the classical music instrument did not like me. I tried, though. Very bravely. Very unsuccessfully.
I liked being good at things — specially a nerd about math; oh I loved Trigonometry. I wanted the knowledge, skills, medals, the certificates, the good grades, then so was I a consistent honor student and had around four scholarships backing up my high school education.
Not the best at everything, but good enough for what I could.
And computer was just there, hiding in plain sight, yet. For the longest time, my dream was to be an engineer, without a concept.
01 SAPARE AUDE
The very moment before I am about to choose a career, I discovered website builders—specifically the mandatory Carrd on K-pop Twitter.
I got obsessed with making them look as premium as possible without actually having a premium account. I kept running into the free-plan limits and, in my infinite wisdom, decided the solution was to make more Gmail accounts. I think I made like ten. Okay, maybe not ten. But a lot. Eventually I got tired of fighting web builder's limitations and thought, fuck it. I'll just learn web development.
So in my senior high school, I picked ICT because I thought, finally, I get to really code. But was it really code? Apparently, we set up networks, reformatted PCs, and made approximately twelve thousand LAN cables.
So that wasn't so much fun.
And here I told myself that if there was something I wouldn't do the way I did before, it would be doing ten things at once. But then I became the homeroom president. So coming with it, I ended up being the leader of group works, class activities, and school events. That was probably my first real experience with leadership — it was quite... an experience. I learned that leadership is not power or a title, it is a skill of bringing diversity to function around each other and make something beautiful together.
02 EFFLORECENCE
Before I graduated from senior high, I got a CHED scholarship, which let me enroll at FEU Tech. I took BS Computer Science with a specialization in Software Engineering — a real commitment now, except it was towards existential crisis. And crisis I did.
My first year humbled me.
Coding was a freaking headache. Calculus was not fun. Java had approximately seventeen million things happening at once. Variables, nested loops, files connecting to other files, more files, and then another .java file because apparently one file was not enough.
And I was like, oh, I like computer science. No, seriously, I liked the logic of Discrete Structures. I liked how straightforward assembly is and the simplicity of SQL's syntax. I loved the group experiments in physics too. Too, I did not love the two-hour online classes that came with the course. C++ and Data Structures from earlier year didn't exactly save me from Object Oriented Programming's obscurity either, but eventually things started clicking. By the time I thought I really like Computer Science, I had to drop out of college.
03 PARANOIA
I got a job at Cognizant. Which sounds pretty cool when you say Cognizant, an AI and technology company and all that. Except I was a customer service representative.
Everyday, I just wished I was that person installing software on my company laptop remotely, typing on notepad to tell me what to do on my end; so I didn't particularly like the work. Eventually I was jobless again. Then got a 9-to-5 sideline that had basically nothing to do with my career path. I hated that one too. Then I was jobless again.
While I was lost, I wandered outside the realm of physical consciousness. Why am I a different font of another Sagittarius I know? Why is dating a Gemini Venus like asking for emotional whiplash? And what does the numbers in my destiny matrix say about my karmic lessons? I meditated to enter soul state and feel the universe in my skin, I prayed, and spoke to my spirit.
I binged-watch things about quantum theory and levels of consciousness, reread The Stranger by Albert Camus to somehow gain a new perspective over and over, and sympathize to Osamu Dazai despite his prejudice; or maybe I'm just an INFJ, or mostly always sitting in between.
And somewhere in all that being lost and searching, I built a foundation in knowing who I am, the power I hold in knowing what I want, and the safety in being connected to my body, soul, and spirit.
04 ALCHEMY
I found my way back to my table. Although, remembering my passion again did not immediately make me productive. Sometimes being in front of my PC was about games, sometimes I'm leetcoding in Python. After the unspeakable amount of time I spent on games and nothing, I figured I was making myself braindead. I had a lot of potential. So the potential I learned.
I started a project as a learning ground for backend development and database. There comes the birth of Memoir from the cells of PHP, MySQL, a lot of JavaScript, and... Blender—the butterfly origami was originally made for the letter writing web app. But eventually I had to ask myself, "why the hell is there an origami butterfly in a letter-writing app?" A postcard just made a lot more sense. People write letters. People send postcards. Postcards belong in mail. Case closed.
Memoir was also partly an excuse to put something on my portfolio. And partly an excuse to update my portfolio. And partly because apparently I enjoy making websites about the fact that I make websites.
05 SOULSTICE — PRONOIA
How sweet that I once would only put DNI in my carrd but now I'm writing my biography on my own website and pinning my creative works, in my own apartment in a brandnew city.
I used to think the detours meant I was falling behind. The unfinished degree. The jobs I didn't want. The things I started and abandoned. The months where I played games and wondered what the hell I was doing. The strange spiritual rabbit holes. The hours spent trying to understand myself through astrology, consciousness, mathematics, and everything else I could find.
Maybe that was also the origin story of Memoir — that a story only makes sense after being written. A flower is lovelier when it's grown from a seed someone planted without knowing if it would bloom.
I've been bruised by a lot storms. I've lost some petals. I've grown in weird directions. I've had seasons where I thought absolutely nothing was happening, and then somehow something grew anyway—a dream, a project, a concept, a new obsession, a question, and the imagination of the infinite of things to discover.
For now, I'm here —still in the making, eternally.