Sanctum — Rock Solid Web Development

I am presently not available for contract work as my schedule is full for early 2012. If you are looking for development work, I recommend Professional Development, for design work Terry Mahy, and for networking and systems work my employer Inspire Net.

Tom Ryder

Photo of Tom Ryder
Name:
Tom Ryder
Skills:
Systems administration, network administration, web development
Email address:
tom@sanctum.geek.nz
Location:
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Phone:
+64 27 767 1705

I’m a systems, networking, and web development enthusiast. I have personal and professional experience with all three, using various operating systems and applications, both proprietary and open-source. I’m particularly fond of UNIX-like systems, with most of my background being on Debian GNU/Linux and more recently OpenBSD.

I maintain a blog called Arabesque about all sorts of things concerning system administration and programming, which gets several hundred unique visits a day.

When I’m not using the computer, I’m interested in languages, philosophy, and music. I’m an amateur actor with the Massey University Drama Society. I play acoustic guitar, ukulele, and sometimes keyboard when I’m feeling brave.

Education

  • 2009 — Accepted into Graduate Diploma of Science programme at Massey University, majoring in computer science, and studying extramurally as much as possible. I only study as my programming and design work allows, but my Web Technologies paper received an A+ grade.
  • 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 admission to the university at the age of 16, and the entire degree was completed via international extramural study.
  • 2002 — Finished Year 10 study at Wellington College. I was the first student in my grade for all three years of my attendance.

Experience

  • January 2011 – Present — Junior Network Engineer in the Network Operations Center of InSPire Net Ltd, a Palmerston North based internet service provider. Duties include:
    • Building, upgrading, securing, migrating, and administrating GNU/Linux servers for various purposes, chiefly both shared and dedicated web hosting
    • Network administration, troubleshooting, and installation, working with GNU/Linux, Mikrotik, Juniper, and sometimes Cisco network equipment
    • Development of in-house tools for use in reporting, provisioning, or troubleshooting, written in Bash, Awk, Perl, and PHP
    • High-level user support for InSPire Net customers
  • March 2007 – December 2010 — Web developer, web designer, and systems administrator for Professional Development Ltd, a Palmerston North information technology company specialising in websites and web applications. Duties included:
    • Specifying, designing, writing, maintaining, optimising, and documenting PHP5 code for a complex proprietary content management system, which was driving around 15 sites when I began work, and more than 100 by the time I left
    • Web development and web design with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript, using free software graphics tools, with Apache HTTPD, PHP5, and MySQL as a server backend
    • Web server administration, mail server administration, and network administration for both live and development servers, including implementing custom scripts in Perl and Bash
    I have continued to contract for Professional Development since leaving for InSPire Net in December 2010.
  • 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.
    • Web content management as the primary user of a custom system written in ASP/VBScript — managing content, reporting bugs and suggesting solutions and new features, implementing workarounds, and testing the system’s capacity
    • Technical support for marketing staff
    • Data collection, collation and entry and document maintenance

Skills

  • I make, maintain, and administrate servers, websites, and web applications in my spare time, and have been doing so for over ten years. I love what I do, and if you hire me for your project, you’ll see that pretty clearly!
  • WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal experience. I generally choose either WordPress or a home-spun templated system for my own projects.
  • GNU/Linux and BSD with both source and packages.
  • Microsoft Windows systems from Windows 95 through Windows 7, though I don’t use them for hosting.
  • Network administration, including managing servers, switches, routers, VLANs, VPNs, DNS, DHCP, RADIUS, PPP, and wireless devices.
  • Scripting languages, particularly PHP and Perl. I do have workable Python and Ruby knowledge where needed.
  • Markup languages, including HTML, XHTML, and even XML when I have to. I have used templating systems extensively, including Smarty.
  • JavaScript, particularly when augmented by libraries like jQuery or MooTools, including AJAX in both cases.
  • CSS. I’m very excited about many of the new techniques available in modern browsers.
  • SQL and database design. I use MySQL and PostgreSQL a lot.
  • Version control with RCS, Subversion, Mercurial, and my very favourite, Git.
  • Web usability enthusiast. I’m one of Jakob Nielsen’s fans.
  • W3C standards enthusiast.
  • Graphic design with the GIMP.
  • Geospatial data, using tools like Google Earth, file formats like KML and KMZ, and programming libraries like GDAL.
  • 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.