Personal Details

Name Nicholas Shanks
Address 45 Oaklands Wood
Hatfield
Hertfordshire
AL10 8LU
United Kingdom
Contact
45 Oaklands Wood, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, AL10 8LU
jobs@nickshanks.com

Personal Statement

A highly competent Carbon and Cocoa programmer with experience of POSIX development, Macintosh, Solaris and Linux system administration. Also an advanced HTML and CSS coder very familiar with XML, XSLT and the most recent advances in web development. Strongly advocative of the need to adhere to published W3C standards, and of making sites accessible to the blind, physically disabled or those using alternative access devices (e.g. mobile phones). Has no difficulty learning new skills, adapting to any operating system or using a new programming language, though is most familiar with the Macintosh and C‐derived languages. Has experience writing and debugging OpenGL and PowerPC assembly.

Non-smoker, in full health and with clean driving license.

Web Skills Checklist

Previous Experience

Cognition Games

I have been running my own company named Cognition Games where I ported products from the PC to Mac OS X and Carbonised older Mac software. I have worked on entertainment titles from Creature Labs, Ambrosia Software, and Running With Scissors, both under contract and licensed for self‐publication. Additionally, I write shareware under the Cognition Games moniker, my first such product being a character editor for the popular Blizzard Entertainment title ‘Diablo II’. Experience gained in contract negotiation, record‐keeping, accounting and tax matters has been a valuable side benefit of the business.

Feral Interactive

I worked for Feral Interactive as Webmaster and Lead QA Engineer for two years, where I developed a strong understanding of procedures and expectations of a company and its employees, as well as gaining professional experience. Further, my job entailed writing internal tools, liaising with developers, publishers, resellers, press, and giving public product demonstrations at international trade shows in Europe and North America.

Freshly Squeezed Software

Concurrent with part of my tenure at Feral, I spent some time working at Freshly Squeezed Software, a de‐centralised Mac OS X shareware company writing tools for small businesses and organisations. Here I worked on a mailing list management program with personalised email capabilities, which was written in Cocoa.

Experience in Education

As part of my Astrophysics degree at the University of Hertfordshire, I studied both Fortran and object‐orientated design principals (using Java), in addition to the regular Maths, Physics and Astronomy modules. I was recruited by one Computer Science lecturer as a classroom assistant for his Java tutorials, where I assisted fellow second‐year students who were having difficulties or needed additional guidance.

Personal Projects

Active contributor to many open source projects, including:

Education & Training

Employment Summary

Date Location Job Description
December 2002 to
Present Day		 Cognition Games Managing Director
Secretary
Lead Programmer
Webmaster
September 2001 to
June 2002		 University of Hertfordshire Teaching Assistant in
Computer Science Dept.
March 2001 to
December 2002		 Feral Interactive Webmaster
Quality Assurance Lead
Technical Support
March 1998 to
August 2000		 Various retail outlets Store Supervision
Shop Opening & Closing
Sales & Cash Handling
Staff Management
Stock Management
Food Preperation
Health & Hygene

Referees

Available on request.