Revision control systems: CVS, SVN, RCS, PVCS, Perforce, other custom written systems.
Various compilers/IDEs/Debuggers for C++, Java, assembler, Pascal. Custom written compilers
Build and test tools: Make, Ant, jUnit, cppUnit, httpUnit, bugzilla
Databases - MySQL, Oracle, DB2, Access, various proprietary systems.
Content Management Systems - WordPress, Drupal, and other proprietary systems.
Technical Skills:
Sun Certified Java Programmer
Certified e-GIF Practitioner
Technical Architect and designer
Experienced developer
Technical lead and Team lead
Configuration Management
E-Commerce applications
Content Management Systems
Development and testing processes
Career summary:
I am a flexible and committed architect and senior developer. I am eager to
learn new skills and competencies. I am passionate about what I do, the
applications I develop, and the solutions I architect. I am an enthusiastic team
player and strive to contribute best practice, standards compliant approaches
wherever possible.
Published author
Worked as technical architect on a J2EE based e-commerce application serving up to 25 web sites and generating millions of pounds in revenue
Wealth of technical experience in various areas, and a variety of organisational and managerial roles
Over 26 years programming experience in many languages
Full time developer since 1990
15 years experience in configuration control and team development practices
Highly skilled in fault analysis and debugging
Configuration control of massively parallel development streams
Produced specifications, design documents and end-user documentation
Considerable experience of embedded systems
A founding developer of WordPress (http://wordpress.org), the open source personal publishing platform
Skills in Search Engine Optimisation: I am currently the number 1 'mike' on google.com out of over 300 million.
Publications:
Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress
Apress, December 2005
My first book, Building
Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress is a guide to creating
your own virtual meeting place for friends, business partners, and others with common
interests. Published by Apress in December 2005, I
co-authored this with Robert T. Douglass and Jared W. Smith. My contribution to the book
is the WordPress section.
Work experience:
Northgate Information Solutions (formally SX3), Alderley Edge — 2004–present
IT services and Business Process Outsourcing
Role: Technical Architect.
Scope: I started as a research & development analyst
programmer working with the Technical Architect in the Public Services division
to research and architect the future direction of the division's Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) approach using Java/J2EE development. I also supported and trained
Java developers.
I have since moved into the Technical Architect role specialising in Java
and web-based technologies.
Projects:
Designed and developed a leading edge custom user assistance creation and delivery
system using DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture), and an open source application
stack and tools. The system provides single sourcing of all user assistance documentation
and an innovative user annotation system for the context sensitive online help.
Designed and led a project to produce a Portal/Dashboard application. This is to be
used by both local government housing departments and housing associations. Interfaces
with Northgate's housing applications, MS Exchange, external RSS feeds, and an SMS
gateway. Built to web standards, WCAG AA, using J2EE and Ajax.
Designed and developed a proof of concept SMS gateway to allow automated and ad-hoc
sending and receipt of SMS messages into and out of the Northgate Applications.
Researched, designed, and developed a middleware system to generate
simple web applications from simple XML definitions, utilising new and existing
Web Service APIs to back-end database systems. This has enabled non web-savvy
developers to create standards compliant web applications simply and
quickly.
Wordpress — 2003–present
Personal Publishing Platform.
Role: Founding developer
I was a founding developer and at one time a lead developer on WordPress (http://wordpress.org), the open source personal publishing platform. This
is a highly successful blogging tool written in PHP with MySQL and with over
1,000,000 downloads. I still contribute to the project when I can.
Web Developer / Architect — 2001–present
Website Development
Role:Developer / Architect
I have designed, developed, and installed a number of websites from simple
static 'brochure' sites often based on WordPress, to fully fledged, custom
CMS-driven, corporate sites. Usually working from a brief and a graphic design,
I architect, design and develop a site to client requirements. I strive to
ensure standards compliance, produce sites to usability best practices, and meet
accessibility requirements through separation of content, from presentation, and
from behaviour.
Eunite/Zendor, Manchester — 2000–2004
E-commerce, fulfilment, and interactive services.
Role: Technical Architect.
Scope: Lead developer and architect on J2EE/DB2 based
e-commerce application in use by sister company JD Williams (JDW), Toys R Us and
River Island. Technical lead, guide and mentor to
a development team of up to 10.
Results: Introduced revision control and configuration
management across all Zendor projects to streamline the development process and
resolve concurrent development issues. Maintenance of up to 8 parallel streams
of development that led to 18 major releases and hundreds of minor releases.
Introduced bug tracking and reporting using Bugzilla, collaborative developer
documentation system and improved development processes using Apache, Tomcat and
automated tools such as Ant and JUnit. These quality and process improvements
have made the development process more transparent, easier to manage and
introduced a greater level of control. I was chosen to head the 'Tools and
Process' Technical Advisory Group within Zendor and have prepared and presented
various proposals and recommendations for the development, testing and graphic
design departments. Lead developer on a Java/JSP/Oracle based project running on
Sun Solaris for a Business-to-Business (B2B) services client. As a member of the
development team, I have also been involved in most other projects either in a
technical lead or developer role: The Restaurant Game (PL/SQL, Java); SourceUK,
a government CMS portal (Perl), First Financial (technical advice, configuration
control), Stanley Casinos (security investigation), and others.
ServicePower Business Solutions Ltd, Stockport — 1999–2000
Enterprise Scheduling Software.
Role: Oracle DBA and Development Support
Maintained dozens of databases on multiple servers on 4 operating systems. Maintained the CVS source code repositories, and developed and maintained internal development tools.
I developed add-on Perl scripts to the CVS software, automating such things as data collection, user authentication, etc. I also developed a web-based task tracking system using Apache web server, PHP scripting, and MySQL RDBMS.
Development Process Working Party: researched new development tools. Responsible for improving development processes resulting in a considerably more stable development environment, in turn leading to increased stability of the core company product.
Part of the Intranet Development Group, responsible for development of the Company Intranet as a resource for development and support.
Designed and developed an application in Perl to generate 1 gigabyte of coherent test data for performance testing.
Additionally spent time acting as development group 'guru', helping developers with use of CVS, Perl, SQL, HTML, PHP, Unix shell scripts, and general help with C and C++.
Geoworks Ltd, Macclesfield — 1996–1999
Smart-phone/Communicator and PDA OS Development.
Role: Principal Engineer
Programmed in C with some PowerPC assembler. I developed the Dynamic Linker Loader for the Eden Operating System (OS). Gained knowledge of Embedded Linking Format (ELF), low-level multi-tasking, and virtual memory management. I designed a suite of build tools in C, to complement the Dynamic Linker Loader.
I participated in design reviews for portions of the OS. I designed dynamically loadable resources for the OS and a task selection tool for the Eden OS SDK, acting as a mentor for a graduate engineer. Developed a PC disk driver for the SDK.
Assigned to the Roadmap group for the merger with Geoworks. Developed an email application for an Hitachi SH3-based PDA running the Eden OS.
Ported the Dynamic Linker Loader to the SH3 chip for this project using a non-ELF solution in C and SH3 assembler. Developed the post-ROM patching solution for this device.
Build and release manager: coordinating submissions from 15 or so developers. Spent time in California, working with the client as first contact for fault reports.
Consultant for the development of the Dynamic Linker Loader and patching solution for SH3-based PDA project for Epson. Developed functional and system test suites in C for the QA team.
Developer on a proprietary information delivery server written in Java for a major UK telecoms company. Installed, configured, and administered several Linux and Windows NT workstations connected to a Windows NT network.
Build Manager coordinating submissions from up to 10 developers working on 7 'branches' in two continents.
Pantek Ltd, Stockport — 1990–1996
Industrial Software House.
Role: Development Manager
Manager of a team of six. Responsible for the day-to-day running of the department; scheduling, progress tracking, problem solving. Liaised with customers from initial requirement specification, through full functional specification, pre- and post-delivery testing, and post-release support. Acted as technical support for sales attending pre-sale customer briefings.
Responsible for department budgeting and forecasting, reporting directly to the technical services manager.
Started as trainee programmer progressed through software engineer to managing the Software Development Department.
Programmed projects both large and small, singly, and as part of a team. I gained experience in DOS, Windows SDK, C, assembler, Novell, TCP/IP, Microsoft networks.
Worked in serial and TCP/IP communications. Developed Visual Basic applications. I completed a C++ training course. MFC/Visual C++ based applications, hardware interfacing and embedded software, configuration control.
Designed and specified algorithms and user interfaces. Wrote end-user documentation: manuals and on-line help. Wrote code from proprietary protocol specifications.
Introduced coding standards; I was actively involved in the company's application for BS5750 (ISO 9001) standard.
I also designed and gave one- and two-day training courses.
Prior non-IT positions
Video Box Office, Stockport (1986–1990)
Video rental library. — Proprietor/partner.
Meehan Bros. Ltd, Manchester (1985–1986)
Wholesale clothing. — Warehouse manager.
Action Video Productions, Stockport (1984–1985)
Promotional video production. — Video technician and editor.
Out of Town Promotions/Zebra International, Stockport (1983–1985)
Pop music promotion and management. — Programmer and Sound technician.
Wynd-up records Ltd, Prestwich (1980–1982)
Wholesale/Retail records & tapes. — Shop manager.
TVA (Installations) Ltd, Stockport (1979–1980)
Communal TV, Door entry/security and Warden-call alarm systems. — Engineer/trainer.
Interests and activities:
I am particularly interested in Web facing applications, Usability, Accessibility,
Information Architecture, Configuration Management, XP/Agile development.
I have taught myself C, C++, Java, Perl, PHP, SQL, Pascal, BASIC, and 6502 and 80x86
Assembler and many other languages for fun and education. I run Linux on most of my PC's
at home along with Windows 2000.
Music, of all genres, is one of my passions: I try to listen to as much and as
varied music as I can.
I have up to six networked machines using Windows SMB networking and
sharing a broadband cable modem connection all tucked away behind a firewall. I have
Apache Servers and MySQL Database servers running on the Linux boxes serving
amongst other things a Photo Album application I developed in Perl and PHP,
giving access to the family's digital/scanned Photo collection. I have developed
another MySQL/PHP application to help my partner with her family history
research. I generally run a number of web servers for development and
experimentation.
I have been 'on the Internet' since 1994 and regularly participate in forums
and mailing lists. In my pre-internet days I contributed to a number of local
BBSs and, through FidoNet, have helped solve user's problems all over the world.
I am an avid reader of both science fact and Science Fiction. I enjoy cycling,
walking, and swimming.
Note: I have an on-line journal at http://zed1.com/journalized which
occasionally has more up to date information on it.