Tom Ryder

Important note for headhunters: I am presently not available for full-time exclusive work, but thank you for your recent interest.

Name:

Tom Ryder

Skills:

Programming, development, design, systems administration

Email address:

Location:

Palmerston North, New Zealand

Phone:

+64 27 767 1705

Web profiles:

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I’m a web development, system administration, and networking enthusiast. I have personal and professional experience with all three, using various operating systems and applications, both proprietary and open-source. I’m an all-round computer nut, but I have diverse skills in all areas related to web development including writing for the web.

I’m an affable chap with a pretty dark sense of humour. Outside of computing, I’m interested in music, philosophy, and languages.

Education

• 2009 — Accepted into Graduate Diploma of Science programme at Massey University, majoring in computer science. I will be graduating in 2010. I only study as my programming and design work allows.
• 2006 — Finished my Bachelor of Science degree from Massey University. Majored in psychology, with papers in mathematics, statistics, and computer science. I was granted provisional entrance at the age of 16.
• 2002 — Finished Year 10 study at Wellington College. I was the first student in my grade for all three years of my attendance.

Experience

• March 2007 – Present — Programmer, systems administrator, and web designer for Professional Development Ltd, a Palmerston North information technology company specialising in web design and content management systems. Duties include:
  • Writing, maintaining, optimising, and documenting PHP5 code for a complex modular content management system driving more than 20 commercial websites
  • Web programming and web design with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with Apache HTTPD, PHP5, and MySQL as a server backend
  • Web server setup, security, administration, and maintenance for both live and development servers
• June 2007 – July 2008 — Various contracts as website coordinator for UCOL’s public website, working with the marketing department and the webmaster. Duties included:
  • Prototype web design and assistance in implementation of new public website
  • Primary user of a custom content management system written in ASP/VBScript — managing content, reporting bugs and suggesting solutions and new features, implementing workarounds, testing capacity of system
  • Technical support for marketing staff
  • Data collection, collation and entry and document maintenance

Skills and Interests

• In general, I am a very fast learner. If the language or tools you need aren’t listed here, ask me about them anyway. I usually appreciate the challenge of a new language or system to pick apart.
• I make, maintain, and administrate websites in my spare time, and have been doing so for nearly ten years. I do this sort of thing for fun.
• GNU/Linux, BSD and Windows systems, with both source and packages.
• Scripting languages, particularly PHP, Perl, and to a lesser extent Python.
• Markup languages, including HTML, XHTML, and even XML when I have to.
• JavaScript, particularly when augmented by libraries like MooTools and JQuery.
• AJAX, which is really just JavaScript. I use JSON a lot.
• CSS. Come on, rounded corners without images …
• SQL and database design. I use MySQL a lot.
• Subversion version control.
• Web usability nut. I’m one of Jakob Nielsen’s fans.
• W3C standards nut.
• Some graphic design with the GIMP and Inkscape for vector art. If you want an honest-to-goodness graphic designer, though, go hire the brilliant Terry Mahy.