About

Details

Currently live in the flatlands of North Lincolnshire, UK. Hobbies include gaming, playing league darts and pool, thrashing my guitar and, er, web development. There, short and sweet!

History

Started programming at the age of six on a crapped-out Spectrum 48k, mostly writing programs of no practical use whatsoever - it seemed to keep me happy at the time. Progressed onto an Amiga 500 in my early teens (I still miss that Amiga) where I got into gaming and spent most of my time getting involved in Amiga vs. Atari arguments (those were the days)

By the time I hit college, I had a passion for programming and spent most of my time concocting ways of hacking the college network between the long, drawn-out lessons of computer theory and Pascal programming. At this time, I developed an interest in ye olde World Wide Web and started to learn how to design websites. However University was looming and I chose Engineering over Computer Programming as a subject (what a fool!).

I attended University at Coventry in the UK, gaining a batchelors degree in Aerospace Engineering and then progressing onto to get a Postgraduate Master of Business Administration degree. I'd managed to satisfy my curiosity in how airplanes flew, but more importantly, I'd had plenty of time to build on my programming skills - first with scripting languages such as Matlab and then taking on freelance web development to fund my University adventures.

Leaving University, I moved firstly into a grass-roots level engineering job where I developed a database-driven efficiency/downtime management system and then, wanting a career change, moved onto a local Council working as a Web Analyst/Developer. Things started to get a bit mundane after two years, anyone who's worked in Local Authorities will catch my drift, so I decided to move on. My last role has been as a (read: the only) Web Application Developer at Eastern Shires Housing Association here in the UK.

It's around the time of working at the Council that I had a festering urge to get into this whole content management thing that seemed to be appearing more and more on the web - and thus, after a fruitless series of attempts with systems such as Exponent and Joomla! - I finally found MODx.

I finally left the Housing Association to work full-time as a MODx core developer and working on MODx deployments. I've been with the MODx core development team over two years now and love every minute of it! I'm also a passionate gamer so there's always a good chance of catching me wiling away a few hours on XBOX Live (gamertag: webnerd)

Commercial Experience

Programming

Proficient in all of the following:

  • HTML, (X)HTML and CSS
  • PHP
  • Javascript
  • MySQL
  • .NET (VB and C#)
  • SQL Server 2000/2005
  • Progress/OpenEdge ABL and .NET Open Client for OpenEdge
  • Coldfusion
  • Matlab

Other Skills

Other skills include:

  • Experienced in MODx, DotNetNuke, and CommonSpot CMS systems and various others.
  • Experienced in web server administration (IIS/Apache).
  • Experienced in all aspects of Windows Server 2000/2003 administration.
  • Excellent network administration skills including configuring Cisco IOS switches/routers.
  • Excellent knowledge of Mac OS X, Windows 9x/2000/XP/Vista/7, MS Visual Studio, MS Office, and a whole host of other packages.
  • Good working skills in Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator.