Shane Rounce: Hello, world! 👋 Hope you’re all doing well. I’ve been busy making…
Hello, world! 👋
Hope you’re all doing well. I’ve been busy making things and thought it was about time I shared a bit more of what I’ve been up to.
There’s a fairly ridiculous mix of websites, community projects, photography, a browser game and a whole lot of tinkering. Some familiar passions, some new adventures, and plenty keeping me happily occupied. 😄
I’m Shane, an independent developer, designer and founder based in Sheffield. I started messing around with computers when I was six and took on my first paying client at ten.
That curiosity has stayed with me ever since. I love figuring out how things work, making them look and feel right, and turning an idea into something people can actually use.
Here’s where a lot of that energy is going at the moment.
🌍 Together
https://to.gether.earth/
“See the person before the border.”
Together is an interactive globe for discovering what people and places share. You can explore geography, compare places, look at local time, daylight and seasons, and find ways to connect with people elsewhere in the world.
I want it to encourage the sort of curiosity that makes you wonder what somebody else’s ordinary Tuesday looks like. What’s familiar? What’s different? What might you have in common with someone thousands of miles away?
There’s a lot underneath it, from geographic datasets and interactive graphics to offline study and careful location handling. Privacy and consent shape the experience, and public locations stay broad.
It’s early, and this is one I’d particularly love more people to discover. Have a look around, share it with someone curious, and tell me what you think.
📰 TalkFuse
https://talkfuse.com/
TalkFuse brings together news, discussion, communities and a geographic view of what’s happening.
I’m interested in what happens after a headline: how a story develops, which sources support a claim, what gets corrected, and which questions remain unanswered.
One thing I care about is distinguishing independent reporting from several websites repeating the same original story. Ten copies of one report shouldn’t magically become ten independent confirmations.
I’m building tools around linked evidence, source relationships and changes over time, alongside experiments for following unanswered questions, revisiting promises and noticing when important stories go quiet.
It’s a substantial ongoing project, with different features at different stages. There’s plenty to explore already, and plenty more taking shape.
🎮 Fuse Quest
https://talkfuse.com/quest/
Somewhere along the way, I also decided to build a game.
Fuse Quest is a browser game built from the ground up with a custom WebGL engine. Its world draws on Sheffield, Discworld and the PS1 and PS2 games I grew up loving.
Those slightly strange, atmospheric worlds where you wanted to wander down every side street have stayed with me. I’m having a lot of fun bringing that feeling into something you can open from a link.
It’s also a space to experiment with socialising online. Somewhere friends could explore together, discover things and have conversations through a shared experience.
The wider direction connects it with TalkFuse, bringing stories, investigation and community into the world itself. That integration is still evolving, but there’s a demo you can try now.
Building the graphics, world and interactions has become a fairly substantial adventure of its own.
🏙️ Sheffield Events
https://sheff.events/
Sheffield Events is my local community startup.
Events, venues, independent businesses, maps, neighbourhood information, charities, volunteering and useful local support, brought together around the city I call home.
I want it to help someone find a brilliant little gig, discover somewhere they’ve never been, try something new or find support they didn’t know was available.
A huge amount of the effort goes into the information underneath: collecting public data, matching inconsistent records, dealing with duplicates, checking freshness and keeping sources visible.
I’ve also been turning parts of that work into reusable open-data tooling, so the foundations could help other towns and communities too.
🤸 Sheffield Parkour
https://sheffieldparkour.org/
I’ve been involved with the parkour community since 2005.
That’s more than twenty years of friendships, training, photography, creative work and helping people find their way into something that can change how they see themselves and their surroundings.
The website brings together training spots, sessions, beginner guidance and community history.
The best part is what happens beyond the website: someone turns up, meets people, tries something they thought they couldn’t do and comes back the following week.
That’s a pretty good reason to keep building things.
💻 Useful software, charities and difficult data
Alongside my own projects, I build software that helps people get practical work done.
That includes systems supporting charities refurbishing donated computers, tablets and phones for people who need them.
A lot of my background is in making difficult data usable: inconsistent live feeds, missing fields, names that don’t match, older records that need migrating and reports that need to make sense to the people using them.
I’ve built editorial tools, dashboards, search systems and scheduled processing, and spent plenty of time improving database performance and keeping changing information fresh inside busy websites.
I enjoy following the whole problem through, from where the information comes from to whether somebody can actually do something useful with it.
The assessment matters too. Comparing equivalent periods, checking whether the measurement has changed, finding the reason behind a surprising result and making sure the person using a report can understand where the numbers came from.
☁️ Hosting and developer tools
https://acemedia.host/
I’m also building and operating the infrastructure behind these projects.
AceMedia Host is the managed AWS hosting platform I’m developing around that experience, covering deployments, caching, media storage, monitoring, backups and recovery. It’s opening through an invite-only beta.
Running my own projects on the infrastructure means I’m closely involved in everything that happens after launch.
Alongside that, I maintain free WordPress plugins and developer tools for SEO, caching, image optimisation, editor controls and reusable components.
A useful solution to one awkward problem often becomes something worth sharing.
📷 Photography, design and Twitch
The creative side is just as important to me.
Photography, branding, illustration, 3D, motion graphics, animated alerts, emotes and stream visuals. I like making things that have some personality, whether that’s a whole website or a tiny animation that makes somebody smile.
I also share a lot of my photography freely through @unsplash:
https://unsplash.com/@shanerounce
One of my favourite photographs came from a parkour trip to Padley Gorge in 2014, with friends putting their hands on a tree. It’s lovely seeing an ordinary moment from a day out travel so much further than you ever expected.
Making things other people can use has always appealed to me, whether that’s photographs, code or somewhere for a community to gather.
You can also find me here:
Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/shanerounce
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/shanerounce/
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@shanerounce
Behance:
https://www.behance.net/shanerounce
Dribbble:
https://dribbble.com/shanerounce
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/shanerounce
And I publish practical articles about development, hosting, design and photography here:
https://acemedia.ninja/blog/
https://acemedia.host/blog/
Some of this is established work. Some is early software. Some is me following an idea far enough to see what it might become.
There’s plenty still to do, but I’m proud of what’s taking shape, and grateful to everyone who’s been part of it along the way.
Feel free to have a wander through the links, try something out or pop by and say hello. It’s always lovely meeting people and seeing what you’re all getting up to as well.
Hope life’s treating you kindly, wherever you are in the world. Wishing you good company, happy little discoveries and plenty of time for the things you love.
Much love from Sheffield. Take care of yourselves and each other. 🤘❤️