Education
- 09/2002 - 07/2006
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1st Class BEng (Hons) Internet Engineering with Professional Development
Brunel University, Uxbridge
Key topics: Networking, distributed systems, object
oriented software design / engineering, database usage and design, web
applications. (Full module/grade list)
Major project: Specification, design and development
of web application to manage anonymous assignment submission and marking
using Java (JSP / Servlets) with Apache Struts. System to be used in
production from Autumn 2006. (More Information)
Awards: Awarded Graham Hawkes Prize and Sir William Siemens
Medal for my academic record and successful placement year.
- 09/1996 - 07/1998
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King Edward VI Sixth Form College, Stourbridge
A Levels: Computing (A), Electronics (A), Physics (A), Mathematics (B)
- 09/1991 - 07/1996
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Leasowes High School & Community College, Halesowen
GCSEs: Nine including A or above in Maths, English, Science, Information
Systems and Electronics. (Full GCSE list)
From leaving sixth form until September 1999 I studied the first year of an Electronic Engineering degree at York University.
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Employment History
- 08/2004 - Present
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Web master - School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University
- Work placement year to September 2005; part time thereafter.
- Designed and developed Document Archive (an n-Tier, ASP.NET (C#) / MySQL web
application) to manage online repository of important course documents. (More information on Document Archive)
- Administered Windows 2003 web server - setting up the (somewhat awkward) combination of IIS 6, SQL Server 2000, MySQL 5, .NET 1.1 & 2.0, PHP 5 and Tomcat 5.5.
- Coded significant portions of HTML and CSS for new University public website, including the site template and front page.
- Created and kept up to date School web pages and many other sites.
- 09/2000 - 07/2004
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Assembly Technician/Computing Support - Epsilon Electronics Ltd, Halesowen
- Set up computers and simple network and authored company web site.
- Ran & troubleshot computer-controlled surface mount electronics assembly machine.
- Assembled, checked and soldered circuit boards.
- 01/2001 - 07/2002
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Web application developer, system administrator - Digital Spy Ltd, London
- Wrote content management system used for digitalspy.co.uk Big Brother 3 micro site using object-oriented PHP with a MySQL back end.
- Set up and administered web servers running the FreeBSD UNIX-based operating system with Apache, MySQL and PHP.
- Interacted with site users via the online forum and email to better understand their requirements from the site.
- 09/1999 - 09/2000
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Purchasing Clerk - IT Department, CGU Life, York
- Temporary position, duties included entering orders, chasing orders made with suppliers, and clearing invoices for payment.
- Greatly enhanced my communication skills through dealing with internal customers, external suppliers and other staff both on the phone and in person.
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Other Achievements
- Graham Hawkes Prize
- Awarded to the graduating student with the best overall percentage in the School of Engineering and Design at Brunel University
- Siemens Medal
- Awarded by Brunel University to a good "all-round" student at the start of their final year, as evidenced by an excellent academic record and a very successful work placement year.
- Compact Award
- Awarded for best all-round student for my time at Leasowes High School.
- 2002 London Marathon
- Raised nearly £1,000 for Breast Cancer Campaign by completing the London Marathon.
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Skills Profile
Computing
- Programming
- Excellent knowledge and experience with .NET (C#),
Java and PHP. Also understanding of Perl, Visual Basic, and a grounding in C / C++.
- Web/XML
- Excellent knowledge/experience of (X)HTML, CSS, XML and Javascript, including some AJAX, XSLT and XSLT-FO.
- Databases
- Extensive experience with SQL Server 2000 (18 months) and MySQL (versions 3 to 5, 7 years total).
- VoIP
- Familiar with SIP, general VoIP principles, and using the open-source Asterisk PBX on Linux to manage VoIP services and extensions.
- Operating Systems
- Two years experience administering Windows 2003 Server web server. Also competent with Windows (3.11 to XP), FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux servers and desktops.
- Office
- Confident with Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and their OpenOffice.org equivalents.
- Others
- Working knowledge of Photoshop, Premiere, Acrobat, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. Adept at learning new packages/languages rapidly, in a self-supporting manner.
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Communication
- Strong ability to discuss and develop solutions while talking with system proposers / users.
- Able to enthuse potential users about a new system or new way of working - such as for the Document Archive project while working for Brunel.
- Successfully trained users on systems developed by myself and others.
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Teamwork / Leadership
- Lead sound crew for recent drama production at the University - director complimented us on the "best sounding show in years".
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Project Management Experience
- Document Archive Project
- Managed project from original suggestion through to final deployment and support. The users thanked me personally (with a cardand gift voucher) for the finished project and for "treating [them] like human beings" throughout the process.
- Final Year Project
- Development process included frequent meetings with real-world users, time management, managing versions of the code and documentation, and documenting the software and processes. Project is now in final stages of development for production use from September.
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Problem Solving
- Able to suggest and develop solutions to complex problems, particularly for information management problems of all kinds.
- Adept at analysing and solving technical problems, crashes, bugs and the like in a methodical and structured manner.
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Interests and Activities
- Running
- Having trained for and completed the London Marathon in 2002, I now run occasionally for fitness and leisure.
- Travel
- Trips with my partner in the past few years have included Iceland, Paris, Boston and Salzburg, and we intend to travel to New Zealand and Australia soon.
- Computing
- I enjoy all aspects of computing, and have recently been investigating VoIP services, including setting up my own Asterisk PBX system on Linux for voice over IP usage, alongside creating multiple web sites and various other applications (such as a recording scheduler for a digital TV card, parsing listings and displaying them to the user).
- Technical Crew
- While at University I have been involved in a number of drama productions, including managing the sound crew for the last production.
- Motor Racing Simulation
- Alongside watching motor sport on TV, I also enjoy using realistic simulation games on the computer, and race occasionally in an online league - for which I am also developing a web site.