
Managing Director at PatchSpace Ltd
Sheffield, United Kingdom

Managing Director at PatchSpace Ltd
Sheffield, United Kingdom
I am a software developer and a keen follower of agile practices. I have my own company, currently just me, and I can provide my time on a contract or consultancy basis.
Ruby, RSpec, Cucumber, Merb, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, behaviour-driven development (BDD), test-driven development (TDD)
(Computer Software industry)
January 2009 — Present (11 months)
Providing training and development in: BDD with RSpec and Cucumber to build a Merb + Haml + DataMapper + PostgreSQL web application; use of user stories to determine and prioritize development needs.
(Privately Held; Myself Only; Computer Software industry)
January 2008 — Present (1 year 11 months)
PatchSpace is the company I have formed to offer software development and consultancy.
(Educational Institution; Research industry)
June 2008 — June 2009 (1 year 1 month)
Software development in the Clinical Trials Research Unit, working on electronic data capture.
Implemented a user-story based development pipeline. Trained in the use of Cucumber and RSpec to deliver stories in high-quality BDD code. Coached in personal time/task management and assisted with management decisions relating to IT projects.
(Internet industry)
August 2008 — February 2009 (7 months)
Built the initial version of NewsBods - http://www.newsbods.com/ - a prototype to see how BBC breaking news can be integrated with Twitter.
The application consists of a Ruby server daemon (daemons + EventMachine) that handles the RSS & HTML scraping/diffing and Twitter integration, and a Merb web app for the presentation layer. Code was developed BDD style using Cucumber, RSpec, Celerity and a little help from Ramaze.
(Computer Software industry)
August 2008 — August 2008 (1 month)
Coaching on how to turn user stories into a Rails app, using Cucumber and RSpec.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
March 2008 — April 2008 (2 months)
Working on admin functionality for a Rails app
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
August 2004 — December 2007 (3 years 5 months)
Database administration (PostgreSQL and SQL Server), system administration (FreeBSD), web development (Ruby on Rails), continuous integration, behaviour-driven development/BDD (RSpec), business reporting (JasperReports)
MPhys , Mathematical Physics , 2001 — 2002
kung fu, gym, weight training, yoga, films, music
Agile North