My name is James and I live in Islington. I've been into web development since way back in the mid-90's when my parents put me on a plane and sent me to Philadelphia for a few months. Barnes & Noble were having a firesale on their collection of ActiveX (yes, that) and VBScript books and for $5 each I grabbed as many as I could. At the time I thought it was almost magical that you could create a 'full application' (read HTML form + database) within just a browser. I hadn't had too much exposure to 'the internet' at home in Ireland and so I really got into it on my 3 month holiday. Of course the massive savings I'd made on these hard-cover 3,000 page tomes was to catch up with me when I tried to board my flight home having stuffed them into my luggage but the exposure to HTML/Javascript/ASP was to linger...
When I hit 18 and it was off to university, unlike 90% of my friends I moved to London rather than Belfast or Dublin. My degree subject, Information Systems Engineering gives me a good grounding in the principals of decent software development, why you can only run microchips at a certain frequency and how to derive Heisinburgs uncertantiy principle from basic theory but what I really loved doing I found was web & design work. Any project that needed a web page, that was my thing. If a friend needed something whipped up I'd offer to do it. Got a party to organise? Let me create an elaborate and unneccasary flyer...
It wasn't until I started working full time at Net Root though that I thought that I could actually finally settle into this as a career. It was after I'd done my first web site for the company for a paying client that I suddenly realised 'wow, I'm actually doing this as a job.
Its been quite a while now that I've playing with sites & code. I think the thing I really love about web development is the fast pace and the huge open source community. As an avid Linux and general FOSS user I don't think theres a better field to be in than web development. And if the code wasn't enough I love working on servers. I get DNS, I smile when I SSH to a clean LAMP setup. There's not a lot of 'software' jobs I could do which would have me setting up a server one day and then desiging an interface the next or working with over 5 different languages at a time, on top of frameworks. 'Real Coders' might use binary as the saying goes but happy coders build web apps.
This site serves as essentially my online CV so you will probably want to check out the few links at the top of the page. My personal site can be found at Jaymz.eu, if you fancy clicking random links.
jaymz
PHP
I have been using PHP since version 3, moving my focus to release 5 now with its improved object programming support. PHP is one of my preferred 2 web development languages (the other being Python).
MySQL
I am most familiar with MySQL as a database platform compared to others. Within the technical support work I've done I've also worked with MsSQL.
GIMP
Having used Linux for many years I have had a long exposure to GIMP for doing complex image editing. Most things in Photoshop I can do within GIMP and I find some if its tools invaluable.
Vim
For development environments I've used many advanced editors such as Komodo & Eclipse. I'm very comfortable within the shell and editors like Vim.
Adobe Photoshop
Along with the GIMP I have used Photoshop very heavily. I'm used to workign with complicated files and doing advanced processing on images as well as compositing.
Adobe Flash
I have worked with Flash for around a year and would consider myself familar with the basics. I have created a number of fairly involved animations for Net Root.
Python
I absolutely love python. from future import *? Only in python. The fact I can mix up my programing paradigm is pretty cool and the language itself is so flexible and easy to follow.
Linux (Kubuntu/Debian)
I started to use Linux around Red Hat 5 and have been using it solely at home for over 3 years. I'm most familiar with Debian based distrobutions but have used Red Hat, Slackware & cut down forms.
Blueprint/960
I Love CSS frameworks, they make my life going from mockup to code a lot easier. For most layouts I'm designing myself I prefer the simple, clean 960.gs whilst for more complex or if I'm trying to convert an existing mockup, I like Blueprint.
Django
Since working at U-Dox I've been using the Django framework extensivly. I've enjoyed working in Python and using it for backend/frontend development is amazing. The speed of the framework is impressive.
Regular Expressions
I try and script anything I can and regex's play a big role in making my life at the command line more productive. I use regex's in development code, helper scripts, even 'find' in Firefox.
XML & XLST
I've made use of XML for the reason it exists - to share information. Whether its data for a flash app or exporting google checkout data for use in Sage I'm familiar with semantic, well-formed XML.
Microsoft Office (Macros)
Aside from standard formatting I have created macros & interfaces for data entry applications in Excel. These were created with VBA. I have some experiance with OpenOffice.
SVN
Keeping source organised between more than one developer wasn't much of a concern til I started within an agency. SVN is the repo of choice, I have plenty of experiance from the command line as well as integrated into tools like Eclipse.
Inkscape
I started using Inkscape as a replacement for Illustrator to do smaller work such as button and icon design. I find using it in combination with GIMP/Photoshop eases workflow for a lot of tasks.
Drupal
For complicated sites that require a CMS or user abilites, Drupal is what I have most experiance with. The wealth of existing plugins and open nature of it makes it my favourite platform for heavy sites.
Bash
I am not sure how much I could put up with computers without a powerful shell. Its like programming only for your filesystem. Bash keeps me sane when faced with multiple problems. Give me a shell over VNC any day.
RHEL/CentOS
My workstation & firewalls might run on Debian but servers I deploy are likely to be running RHEL. It has the required buzz to it that it's easier to pass RHEnterpriseL by management than plain old Debian.
Firebug et al
Web development may be a dark art to some but tools like firebug, httpfox and web-dev mean I can bug fix and target problems much faster than normal.
NMAP, Fuzzers and more
As a side "hobby" I like to keep up to date with network security news. Web apps themselves are often one of the first point of attacks for crackers so ignore this side of "development" at your peril.
Blender
I'm a developer "by trade" but that doesn't stop me learning new tools and things to do. I can't draw to save my life so found solice in the 2D paint programs like PS/Gimp. Now I'm finally spending time building my 3D skills.
Usenet
I would most definitly go crazy without usenet. alt.binaries.* in particular .
Wordpress
There is no way I'm going to roll my own blog. Not with something like Wordpress available these days. Instead I'd prefer to spend my energy setting up (or building) plugins for it and creating a custom theme. It also means my friend/client/boss gets a feature rich platform. Everybody wins.
SSH/SCP/SSHFS
These tools are absolutely indespensible to me. Especially X tunnelling over SSH (forget VNC/RDP) and transparant mounting of remote filesystems locally via sshfs. If you aren't using these you should be.