Dark Liquid

I’m a Ruby on Rails web developer and Linux server administrator working in Blackfield and living in Poole. I’ve been working with Rails and doing basic server administration professionally since 2005, though I have been using Linux in a server environment and on my home desktop since 2000.

While I work mostly with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, I am also developing my skills with C++ with a focus on Games Programming as this is an area I am interested in and would like to apply myself to as well as teaching myself Verilog for hardware synthesis and design as I am interested in embedded systems and FPGA-based digital electronics design.

Education

Foundation Degree in Computer and Electronics Interfacing (2003-2005)
BTEC National Diploma in Computer and Electronics Interfacing (2002)
Advanced City & Guilds in Computer and Electronics Interfacing (2001)

Professional Experiences

Multiplay (UK) Limited, Blackfield (2009 – Present)
Working in a purely development role, doing both frontend and backend work with more of a focus on backend development. Maintaining and developing new features for file and video hosting site Fileplay.net using Ruby on Rails, working with queuing long running processes such as uploading and video encoding in background processes. Similar work as my time at SonicIQ in terms of Rails usage.

Technologies used: Same as at SonicIQ, Ubuntu Server, FreeBSD, FFmpeg, Flex/AS3 (specifically JWPlayer customisation)

SonicIQ Limited, Bournemouth (2005 – 2009)
Administered several Linux servers, designed and deployed software environments for running Ruby on Rails applications. Scripted automation of software environment’s build and deployment using Bash and Ruby. Developed new Xen virtualisation-based deployment environment and tools to create area into which to deploy and run Ruby on Rails applications into said system. Built and maintained large website for a leading real estate agent over 4 years involving porting from legacy PHP code, to early versions of Rails (0.13) up to modern Rails 2 versions, integrating with external webservices such as google maps and providing batched FTP data feeds to external servers. I took part in the development of several ruby gems for handling things such as payment gateway integration, HTML form generation, user authentication, input validation, Git repository access control, ruby gem template generation, CRUD/REST metaprogramming rails extensions and more.

Technologies used: Subversion, Git, Ruby, Rails, Apache 2.2, nginx, lighttpd, Rake, vlad, capistrano, Linux, OSX, Javascript, jQuery, Google Maps, MySQL, SQL, XHTML, CSS, PHP, Bash, Xen, CentOS, TDD with test/unit and Cucumber, Pair-programming.