Curriculum Vitae

Personal Details

Name: Martin Milner, Address: 7 Cherry Court, Branston, Burton on Trent, Staffs. DE14 3NJ, Email: mmilner@focusdev.co.uk Tel: 01283 539512 (Home) or 07968 549845 (Mobile)

Previous: Salary: £25k p.a. Hourly rate: £15-20. Permanent position: Senior Web Developer. Notice period: N/A.

Profile: With over 20 years experience in various fields in the IT industry, I like gaining new skills and am a quick learner. I work well with people of all ages and levels within an organisation and am a good communicator. I particularly get satisfaction from helping people and providing solutions to problems.

Most recent Skills

Note that all of the web sites developed by me and not based on an existing application have been hand-coded. Screen-shots of and links to web sites and projects I've worked on over the past 3 years (and further information about them) can be found at http://www.focusdev.co.uk/pages/examples.htm.

Mainframe/Large Server Skills

Performance monitoring & tuning, capacity planning, load balancing, filestore optimisation, disaster recovery, documentation, systems integration, automated corporate backup, critical application monitoring. These are all on either ICL VME mainframes (Series 39, SX and Trimetra) or sizeable Unix servers.

Other Skills

SCO Unixware, Solaris, DRS/NX, BASIC (various, not visual), C, COBOL (Microfocus, Data General), Shell scripts, Assembler (Z80, 8086, 68000), Windows (most versions), Microsoft Office 97/2000, Reflections, Groupwise, Red Box, StarOffice/Openoffice.org, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, The Gimp, Audacity, ffmpeg, PearPC, Mac OS X.

Work Experience

May 2004 to current day

Freelance Web Development

Developed numerous web sites and web-based applications, (including many for e-learning applications), for a number of clients using WAP 1/2, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.0, PHP4, Perl, XML, Javascript, J2ME, MySQL/Access and ASP/VBScript. All sites developed using recommended techniques for accessibility as found at www.w3.org.

Set-up and customised e-commerce web sites using the open-source application osCommerce and Content Management System driven (CMS) web sites using the open-source application Mambo. (Now Joomla.) One of these sites (Radio E2BN) was an Internet Radio Station allowing users to play music, create top 10 lists of their favourite tracks, submit music, etc. Implemented two heavily customised image gallery web sites using the open-source application Gallery. (One for audio resources and one for video resources.) Developed a number of bespoke CMS sites using PHP4 and MySQL. Produced WAP 1 and 2 versions of my company web site. (wap.focusdev.co.uk)

Produced a number of multi-media (some multi-lingual) educational applications in Flash MX 2004 Professional. Several of these applications interfaced with server-side PHP/Perl scripts and MySQL databases or XML files.

In all more than 43 projects have been worked on since the beginning of 2004. Clients include Technology Research Consultants Ltd., Cambridgeshire Education ICT Service, PRACSIS sprl (Belgium), Becta, East of England Broadband Consortium (E2BN) and Actis Ltd.

November 2003 to April 2004

Webmaster and Flash Developer at Warwick University (Covering for someone on Maternity Leave.)

Apache web server administration on around six Sun Solaris servers. Work involved creating and amending virtual hosts, creating redirects and rewrite rules, performance monitoring and tuning, etc. Large amount of development using Flash MX 2004 Professional, especially using XML and Zoomify.

August 2003 to October 2003

Freelance Web Development

Took over the development and maintenance of the cctv-city web site for UK Surveillance Ltd. Corrected and enhanced the CSS and PHP4 that the web site was written in. Added new products to the e-commerce area (powered by osCommerce) and integrated these into the main web site. Developed the uks-mms web site in XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.0, MySQL and PHP4. Converted my company web site, www.focusdev.co.uk, to use XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0 and initially including features like variable user controlled font sizes using alternate style sheets. Validated the sites using the tools at www.W3.org and webxact.watchfire.com .

December 2000 to July 2003

Senior Web Developer at Actis Limited.

Worked on Content Management Systems, Javascript activities and back-end scripts for various sites including Japan UK Live (with pages displaying English and Japanese text alongside each other), and the Learning on the Move web site. Developed 4 sites for Mirandanet., incorporating all or part of the Managed Learning Environment (MLE) developed for Actis by myself. All above sites either Perl or ASP driven using SQL Server, MySQL or PostGreSQL databases. Rewrote the Actis on-line services subscription administration system (Perl) to use PostgreSQL authentication for user access to web sites. Developed the Prospects Result! site using Javascript/DHTML which had to run off CD as well as on-line. Developed several Java applets for web sites using Jbuilder Professional.

Developed the E2B Weather Station web site, (All ASP/VBScript) and redeveloped the Actis Intranet. (PHP / MySQL driven.) Developed another web site for Mirandanet, (the GTC e-journal site), using Perl/MySQL as the back-end technology.

Developed the Hyperworld and Flood Alert sites using ASP, Javascript/VBScript and SQL Server/Access databases. Two areas of the Flood Alert site needed some advanced Javascript programming to produce a number of dynamic message streams delivering text, html and graphical content. Converted them both to Sun One (Chilisoft) ASP using a MySQL database via the MyODBC driver and installed the sites/software on three Linux servers and two Windows 2000 servers.

As well as web page development also managed the production of 6 web sites providing National Curriculum educational content on-line. Work involved liaising with editorial staff, producing program and web page specifications, passing these onto production staff, testing the resulting content to ensure the quality of the work and publishing it to the live servers. Liaised with the DfES to get the company the status of an Approved Content Provider to Curriculum Online. (COL.)

Installed Red Hat 7.2 Linux onto a laptop and installed and configured Apache, Postgresql, Perl, etc. so that the laptop could function as a web and proxy server. Copied 9 web sites from another server onto it, (including the cgi scripts, databases and contents thereof), for demo purposes at the BETT 2003 show. Configured 5 PCs / laptops to use the above server (via an ethernet hub and network) to allow people to browse the demo sites.

January - November 2000

Freelance Web Development, Linux and VME Consultancy

Developed web sites and installed and configured a number of new Linux systems for several clients. Implemented customised Shopping Basket systems using Shop@ssistant. Gained credit card clearance experience via a Netbanx account. Wrote a couple of tutorial type articles for Linux Magazine. (Launched in September 2000.) Some IDMSX database reorganisation and several days VME technical support consultancy for Sandwell M.B.C.

Older Experience

September 1995 - March 2000: IT Consultant contracted to work at Sandwell M.B.C. (Originally, a 6 month contract. Renewed by the client every 6 months from then until early 2000.)

Unix Consultancy - ICL DRS6000 DRS/NX support, TCP/IP implementation and other general troubleshooting. Set up Sco Unixware Servers including one on a ICL Trimetra mainframe. Provided technical support on the same machines and performed a number of Unixware OS upgrades. Installed ICL Backup Manager software (based on Arcserve) to evaluate corporate backup. Ported Formfill from a non Y2K-compliant (Intel) DRS3000 to the Trimetra Unixware server, upgraded it to Formfill 2000 and proved that PC's with VT-320 emulation software could use it successfully. Set up a DNS Server on the Trimetra.

Set up a VME-X (Unix) and TCP/IP service to allow the mainframe to function as a corporate print server. Produced shell scripts to allow VME-X to monitor remote Unix servers. Implemented NFS to allow them direct access to mainframe filestore, Wrote SCL procedures to run jobs on remote servers from VME via the Helmsman job scheduling system. Documented all aspects of the mainframe for operations and support staff. Incorporated it into a new Intranet developed by myself on the Trimetra Unixware server. Apache was installed with Perl for form handling. The latest (html) version of OPTICL was also added giving easy access to technical manuals.

VME Technical Consultancy - General VME technical support and consultancy first on an ICL SX 550-20 (dual node) mainframe running Open VME with a large number of Unix, Netware & NT servers attached and later (from 1997), a Trimetra SY server. Beside the usual day to day support work and keeping software loadsets up to the latest repair envelopes, a large number of projects were planned and undertaken.

1990 - 1995 : Senior Systems Programmer at Solihull MBC. ICL Dual Series 39 Level 80 VME Mainframe. General technical support, performance monitoring & tuning, etc. Also involved the production of user documentation. SCL & COBOL program design, specification and production. For the final 12 months, did Unix technical support, system administration & performance monitoring/tuning mainly on ICL DRS 6000's. Wrote a number of C programs, (including my own screen editor and some performance analysis programs). Also shell scripts to aid in this and other functions. Performed several DRS/NX Version 6 to Version 7 upgrades, which included among other things swapping and rebuilding system disks.

Personal Details

Education: A levels: Physics, O Levels: Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Geography, English, CSE Grade 1's: Accounts, Mathematics

Interests: Walking, Cycling, Climbing/Scrambling, Caving, Music, Reading, Photography,

writing articles for magazines.