Previous Employment
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Student Tenant - CTO (2012-Current)
Student Tenant is a small start-up, allowing landlords to upload properties and students to find a place to live. Our team consisted of myself and a brilliant young student developer. I build us a new system from scratch using Symfony2 and together we developed that to a full scaleable web application.
Many of the properties on the site needed to be exported to Rightmove and other syndication partners, or imported from them, so I spent a fair amount of time dealing with various property import and export systems to automatically feed properties around our syndication network.
Our system ran with a mysql database on Bytemark's BigV.io servers, replicated for backup to another system. Images and other uploaded files stored on AWS S3 for easy access among many front end servers.
- PHP / Symfony2
- Javascript / Jquery
- HTML5
- Bash scripting
- MySQL
- XML, JSON etc.
- Debian / Ubuntu Sysadmin
- Apache
- AWS: ec2 , s3
- Ajax
- SOAP
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Gemin-i.org - Lead Developer (2005-2012)
At Gemn-i we ran a heavily moderated and facilitated social network for kids, helping children work with their compatriots overseas on projects based on global issues. I ran a team varying in size from just me to four or so developers. I built and maintained the architecture from system administration level through database design, controlling code, and client-side HTML and Javascript. I also recruited, supervised and managed team members and contract programmers and designers as needed, developing team leadership skills.
I architected the last big project at Gemin-i which was a rewrite of most of the old system in php using MVC web framework "Symfony". I built the database design, and from that the controllers and views to present to the users.
Hosted on AWS/Scalr and automatically scaling as load increases, I took the initial toy systems on scaling from a few classrooms to a global projects in hundreds of countries with thousands of schools and hundreds of thousands of members.
At gemin-i we never tried to reinvent the wheel, preferring build from open source tools and standard systems.
- PHP / Symfony
- Javascript / Jquery
- Actionscript
- Java
- HTML5
- Bash scripting
- Python
- Perl
- MySQL
- XML, JSON etc.
- Debian / Ubuntu Sysadmin
- Apache, Exim, Tomcat
- AWS: ec2 , s3, scalr
- Ajax
- SOAP
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iComic Press - Proprietor (2003-2005)
In 2003 I launched the iComic Press, a start-up developed to allow artists to design, make and sell their own mobile-phone comic-books paid for via SMS. The technology worked. The business less so. If I were to ever start a business again, I'd pick a businessman type partner rather than go it alone.
- PHP / Wordpress / Phpbb
- Javascript
- Java SE
- HTML
- Bash scripting
- Perl
- MySQL
- SMS technologies
- Debian Sysadmin
- Apache,
- Mobile Phone development
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Cat Games - Senior Developer / Sysadmin (2000-2003)
In 2000 an old boss head-hunted me to come work with him at a web development and web-games company. Among other things, we made a still-popular football management game "Sunday League". I ran the servers, and all the web front-end and interface programming, while the others wrote the game-engine code.
- PHP / Wordpress / Phpbb
- C / C++
- HTML
- Linux system administration
- Perl
- XML
- Photoshop
- Cron processing
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Lineone (now Tiscali) - Programmer (1997-2000)
After giving up video-games programming due to long hours and poor pay, I became excited about internet technologies and retrained for web development before starting work with News Corporation's fledgeling ISP and newspaper publishing business. I learned many web technologies, growing to prefer higher level languages.
- PHP / Wordpress / Phpbb
- C / C++
- HTML
- Linux system administration
- Perl
- XML
- Photoshop
- Cron processing
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Education - Swansea University (1991-1993)
I was educated at Swansea University, gaining a 2-1 Bsc degree in Computer Science.
- C / C++
- Pascal
- Networking Theory
- Graphics theory
- Design Patterns
- 3D matrixes
- Psychology
- Algorithms
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Personal (1973-Current) - Personal Projects
I have worked on many personal projects over the years ranging from writing books, directing films, writing and producing animations in 2d and 3d through singing and playing guitar in a rock band and countless experimental web toys and games.
Most of these are available online through my personal website, http://dalliance.net/, which features the 3D javascript virtual-me that you can chat with.
I'm currently finishing off a Tentacle Monster cartoon, which will be premiering in January: http://tentacles.org.uk
- PHP
- Python
- Ruby
- Perl
- C / C++
- Java
- Javascript / Jquery
- HTML / XHTML / HTML5
- XML, JSON
- Red Hat / Debian / Ubuntu
- Scripting Amazon AWS
- AJAX
- Assember: 68000, Z80
- Photoshop
- Gimp
- Flash
- Blender
- Cinelerra
- RSS