
Computer Software Consultant and Contractor
Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Computer Software Consultant and Contractor
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
I am a freelance developer and designer based in the UK and specialising in Java and Flash development. I offer high-quality and cost-effective solutions tailored specifically to your needs, with reliable project management skills and ongoing support availability.
I am skilled in object oriented programming so that my work is always robust, reliable, maintainable, and elegantly coded.
I am always happy to work closely with a responsible employer and look forward to hearing from you.
OO Design (with Design Patterns), Java, JNLP, JNI, JDBC, Java Servlets, Eclipse & SWT, Flex 2, Flash CS3, Actionscript 3.0, Flash 8, Flash MX Professional 2004, Actionscript 2.0, ARP Framework, Flash Remoting, AMFPHP, Flash Media Server 2, PHP, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, HTML, MySQL, Oracle, Corba, XML, XSL, XML Databases, XPath, XML-RPC, MathML, Linux, Visual Basic, .NET, GIS, Mapserver
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NKE; Sporting Goods industry)
May 2008 — July 2008 (3 months)
This is a very large AS3 project application developed for Nike in conjunction with RGA London. It allows the user to visually design and build matchday and training football kit for their entire team. The project makes use of a very wide range of technologies including Papervision 3D.
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; TEL; Telecommunications industry)
June 2008 — July 2008 (2 months)
A PureMVC based AS3 project for a Norwegian telecoms company. The application is configured and internationalised through XML files, and displays markets and offices on a three level zoomable world map. This project also makes use of SWFAddress for deep-linking.
(Real Estate industry)
June 2008 — July 2008 (2 months)
The development of a Ruby on Rails site for a real estate development company. This project also involved the development of two Flash components that linked into the Ruby on Rails database via dynamically generated XML pages.
(Leisure, Travel & Tourism industry)
February 2008 — March 2008 (2 months)
This project was developed for a branch of the UK tourist board and involved a CMS driven carousel containing video, images and overlays with dynamically configurable options for preloading and transition types.
(Telecommunications industry)
February 2008 — February 2008 (1 month)
This project was a Flash contract generator which created and printed customized mobile phone contracts directly from the web.
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SAP; Computer Software industry)
October 2007 — December 2007 (3 months)
I have developed an online business quiz for SAP and FT.com using Actionscript 2, PHP, MySQL and XML. The application can be seen at http://www.ft.com/sapbusinesschallenge
(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; Food & Beverages industry)
October 2007 — December 2007 (3 months)
For the first part of this project I updated Anchor's AS2 website to include progressive downloading video, and in the second part made various updates for their Christmas products.
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Consumer Goods industry)
November 2007 — November 2007 (1 month)
This project involved upgrading and extending part of Guinness' 'Infinity Bar' application to support the addition of dynamic video and graphic content supplied through XML configuration files.
(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Entertainment industry)
October 2007 — November 2007 (2 months)
This project involved the development of a standalone Flash application using MDM Zinc to be distributed on the bonus disk of the upcoming Golden Compass game. This project also involved some Ruby scripting to allow users to download videos onto their desktops.
(Marketing and Advertising industry)
July 2007 — October 2007 (4 months)
This is a Flex/Actionscript 3.0 pinball simulation using real-time physics. The game makes use of all of the great new features that AS3.0 offers and can be seen at www.nurofen.co.uk (click on the 'pinball' link).
(Public Company; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
December 2005 — October 2007 (1 year 11 months)
The development of a high end scalable live audio and video conferencing system using Flash 8 and Flash Media Server 2. This multi-tiered application included full security features and administrative control. The media server was linked to an Java application through XML-RPC to allow low level administrative control of conference features. The project is constantly ongoing as we continue to extend this application for use in various markets.
(Computer Software industry)
July 2007 — August 2007 (2 months)
I developed an Actionscript 2 anagram game for a Muller promotional mini-site. Anagrams are read from a server-side XML file and player information can be submitted to PHP scripts at the end of the game. This project motivated the development of a Ruby on Rails style form and validation library. This project can be seen at http://www.muller.co.uk/oneADay/ by clicking on 'COMPETITION'.
(Public Company; 1-10 employees; E-Learning industry)
September 2006 — December 2006 (4 months)
I am lead developer on an innovative project called 'Shape' which is interactive whiteboard software designed to help teach secondary school mathematics in schools. The software makes extensive use of XML and has included the development of a Flash MathML parser, renderer and evaluator. The project has also motivated the development of an Actionscript 2.0 MVC framework.
(Non-Profit; 11-50 employees; Public Safety industry)
April 2005 — April 2006 (1 year 1 month)
I developed a powerful online citywide alert system in conjunction with local government and police. The Flash application is a multi-layered tiled map viewer which displays various classes of events at specified geo-locations. The events are read from the server using Flash Remoting and are fully stylable from the server – the events are built around an extensible OO architecture allowing new classes of events to be added at any time. The application also allows the user to input events using a CAD style interface.
The application retrieves map data from the open-source map server ‘MapServer’ which I compiled, installed and configured on RedHat Linux AS3; however, the application is designed using abstracted layers allowing any map server to be used.
A demo of the application (including all event adding features) can be seen at http://www.communitysafe.org/justmap
(Public Company; 11-50 employees; Printing industry)
November 2005 — January 2006 (3 months)
This project was similar to the work I did for Mutoid, but more sophisticated. The user has complete freedom to add, style and place text on one of hundreds of premade business cards. The business card is then converted to a high resolution PDF for printing. This project makes use of AMFPHP, PDFLib + PDI and SWFTools. Part of the project also involved the installation and compilation of a dedicated Linux server. The application can be seen at http://www.businesscardplace.com
(Non-Profit; 11-50 employees; Public Safety industry)
August 2005 — September 2005 (2 months)
The need to convert a dynamic flash application to a static jpeg image motivated the creation of a slightly unorthodox server-side Java application which uses JDIC and Swing to open browsers on the server and then synchronises on Flash content in order to take screenshots. The application uses multi-threading to maximise efficiency.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)
April 2005 — May 2005 (2 months)
I was asked to develop an application to generate seating plans for an event company such that on a multi-night event, people (and families) never sit at the same table with anyone they have sat with on a previous night. This was a fairly intense mathematic application using multi-threaded Genetic Algorithms. Part of the design was modelled in MatLab.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Printing industry)
February 2005 — April 2005 (3 months)
I developed an online Flash desktop publishing package allowing vendors to create motorcycle adverts which are then converted to PDF and printed in the next issue of MotorMarkt (a Dutch motorcycle magazine). The project uses Flash, PHP, XML, AMFPHP and the ARP development framework. The project also makes heavy use of Flash v2 components. On the server, PHPLib is used to create PDF documents from XML specification files.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
November 2004 — February 2005 (4 months)
I developed two complex Flash applications making use of AMFPHP and Flash Remoting to communicate with a PHP backend. The applications are fully object-oriented and use all the newest features of Flash MX 2004 Professional and ActionScript 2.0.
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry)
November 2002 — October 2004 (2 years)
My role was officially as a software tester, writing automated test scripts using WinRunner and later QuickTest Pro (using VBScript). However, my role was extended after the first 6 months to include the development of Java software in order to streamline the testing process. During my time at Telelogic I developed a total of three major Java applications which were delivered to the team via Java Web Start.
BA (Hons), Computer Science, September 1998 — July 2002
Graduated with a 2:1 Honours degree. Was (and am) very active in the musical scene in Edinburgh playing with a number of bands including my current band which played at Glastonbury festival (UK) in 2004.
Computing, Maths, Physics and all GCSEs September 1995 — July 1999