About

My name is Mike DiDomizio.

I was born in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. Cobourg is a city of 21,000 people located an hour East of Toronto.

I graduated from CDCI East highschool (now CCI) and went to college to become a Police Officer, graduating from Sir Sandford Fleming.

While many software developers opt for placements in tech companies, mine took me to the Ontario Provincial Police.

I believed then, as I do now, that being a Police Officer is about being a representative and an approachable community member. It's about building trust, bringing positive change, being there for the people, making the community safer, and more inclusive. I felt this back then, and I still do now.

Embracing Technology

However, life has a way of guiding us down unexpected paths. Circumstances, challenges, and a confluence of factors shifted my trajectory away from law enforcement.

In my spare time I was messing around with computers, the internet was still very niche. I've been tinkering with computers since around the age of 5 (1990), I really started getting into software development around the age of 21 in my spare time, but I was building websites in high school when I was 15 (2000).

After college I bought some books and started learning ASP.NET C#, then PHP. I started as a backend developer with frontend developer skills.

In 2011, a community-driven website drew attention, sparking radio interviews, including a feature on CBC Radio One that resonated across Canada.

In 2013, I worked with a designer and some devs to create an innovative social media platform, echoing elements of Vine and TikTok. Although promising, its success was short-lived.

It was at this time I didn't have much going on, there was not too much demand for software developers in a small city.

Relocating to Ottawa for New Beginnings

My work on MideoMe and building the iOS app garnered attention from an Ottawa company about a mobile developer position opening.

I took the job and moved to Ottawa. A city I had only visited once before for a day.

It was at this time I stopped writing.

I don't remember exactly why. I think I was overwhelmed by a new city and a new job. I was struggling hard before this point, things were not good. This was a new beginning for me. I was determined to succeed, find happiness, and make those who believed in me proud.

I'm going to leave a lot of the in-between out at this point, let's move forward. Maybe someday I'll come back to fill it all out.

Building the Rapid Antigen Test Appointment Finder: Answering COVID's Testing Struggle

Fast-forward to 2021, amidst the COVID pandemic's chaos, frustrated in the difficulty to find a Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) appointment to get myself tested, I spent 5 days during the Winter holidays building a website to check for the earliest RAT appointment. For those that don't remember, people were lining up at 5AM in the cold to possibly get a test. I worked on it and then after it was pretty stable and tested, posted it to Reddit, which people were appreciative of it, and the Ottawa Citizen reached out to me and I was interviewed.

I again made the newspaper, radio interviews. It was a first time being interviewed for TV, making it onto CTV Toronto.

and a day later, I was interviewed by CTV Ottawa.

At that point in my life, I've been interviewed by radio/newspaper/TV on at least 4-5 separate occasions in relation to software.

Not captured, but I was also interviewed for the Yahoo! hack that occurred in 2013. I found the leaked database, set up a way to search if your email existed in the database, think the haveibeenpwned website before haveibeenpwned. For this work I also did radio interviews with Cobourg/Peterborough radio stations.

Where am I today?

Today I am still in Ottawa.

I moved to Ottawa in February 2014, a city I knew very little about, and I've been here for 10 years.

I've met a lot of great people and made lots of friends. I never imagined being in Ottawa, but here I am, I'm happy and grateful to call this city my home.

I get to work with great people, and work on great things every day.

While I didn't ultimately pursue a career in Policing, the values instilled during that period continue to shape my approach to life and my endeavors today.

The Future Ahead

At the time of writing this I'm 38 years old. I've come a long way and accomplished more than I ever thought I would.

I'm hoping to continue coding new things, continue learning, making an impact, meeting new people, and moving onto bigger things.

Thank you for reading this.