shedplant.net

Computing

Fidessa

As a graduate ETP Delivery Engineer at Fidessa, I've sought opportunities to improve internal processes and aid my colleagues by developing scripts and tools in TCL and to a lesser extent, AutoHotKey. I really enjoy the work and would love to show it off, but that would be indiscreet.

MSc IT Consultancy

The key part of my MSc in IT Consultancy was experience with the Kent IT Clinic. I achieved a Distinction for this Masters course and furthermore have been awarded a prize for the best post-graduate Computing project in the year.

As a project leader within the KITC, I have led several teams of consultants to provide a variety of technology solutions for small and medium enterprise clients in and around Canterbury.

I assumed leadership of two projects. The first involved software maintenance and bug-fixing for a large project written in Java and Java ME. I had to accelerate my learning of the language to understand a project far more complex than I was encountering in classes. I and my team managed to resolve all the outstanding issues, to the client's great satisfaction.

For the second project I led to completion, I gathered information on the client's infrastructural deficiency and helped design a solution to improve the business' system's security and reliability. I assembled a team, designed the project plan and drew up an estimate on the project's time and price.

The project solution involves the set-up and securing of a LAMP (Debian Linux, Apache2, MySQL, PHP) server. This server displays the latest version of in-development website projects, taken automatically from a Subversion server every time a change is made.

Some technical research on my own part was required. It was also necessary for me to train the other team members on the technology involved. I was proud to receive an academic Commendation for my management of this project.

I also had to apply a professional client-facing attitude and flexible problem-solving skills to a miscellany of hardware and software problems in my weekly contribution to the KITC's Laptop Repair service.

No less important, however, was the experience gained of IT consulting practices: meeting and communicating with real clients and keeping them up-to-date with project progress; training consultants and other students on electrical safety; training my team on technology required for a project; managing projects teams to successful completion.

IE Modding

Baldur's Gate II was released in 2000 by Black Isle and Interplay. It's a computer role playing game for the PC. When I first played it, in the summer of 2004, I was blown away. It was one of the best games I had ever played, and I spent seventeen hours over one weekend playing most of it. A school friend of mine introduced me to the modding scene.

I registered at TeamBG and tried to make myself known, as well as learning how to mod. At that time, TeamBG had just introduced weekly contests. I entered them almost without fail, and won three. These can still be found in Shed's Mods. To this day, that record is unbeaten, because sometime in the winter of 2004, TeamBG went offline for some years. So I went to Forgotten Wars. A year later, the site had become Spellhold Studios and I was one of its administrators.

From May 2005 until February 2007, I was a member of a small team of administrators managing Spellhold Studios, which has thousands of members. My responsibilities ranged from technical (updating information on the website) to social management (resolving disputes and upholding the forum rules). I also enjoyed teaching new community members how to get to grips with the coding language.

My Infinity Engine mods are:

Interactive Fiction

Here are my Interactive Fiction games.

I entered the 2004 10th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition with a text adventure called "Zero One", written in the language ALAN IF. It didn't score very well, but at least one person liked it!

In 2009 as part of my MSC in Information Technology Consulting I led a group project to make a text adventure game written in Java using BlueJ. It is based on Zero One, more complex in some areas but simpler in others: I call it Zero Two.

My works of Interactive Fiction are:

PC Building

I assembled my own PC Nayru in 2007.

At the moment, Nayru is equipped with:

Toys

My other toys include an Asus EEE 1000H with an Intel X25-V SSD, Apple iPhone 3GS and Nintendo DS.

Miscellaneous TCL

I wrote a little TCL script to solve a puzzle from a DS game. Here's the code.

My girlfriend asked me, as a kind of joke, to make a 50-line piece of code that listed prime numbers. Here it is.