Gary Blake - Resume

Fish in a bottle sub contracted me to Pixel Toys and then they employed me directly so I have an overlap on my dates.

I have been working on a web portal for a very large entertainment company to create their games web portal. Written in node.js stack using react, postgres, nextjs with help from prismsa/tRPC. 

Working on large clent sites such as the BBC and BOSE. using Laravel and fron end technologies we delivered content management systems and apps to support them.

3-month contract to upgrade their entire systems to work on PHP 7.4 and review API’s. A further 3 months to upgrade speed tests and other services while working with oracle developers.

I have been working on several websites and supporting existing clients. An example is a charity group website for plant enthusiast’s that needed to be upgraded. I used Laravel, vue and latest technologies to create a new better looking and responsive website with a plant database so that users can easily find the plant they are interested in.

Created a content management system called anteater CMS. It now uses Vue3 for the front end with bootstrap 5/elements-UI and PHP (Laravel) with MySQL.

I worked on a European Space Agency funded project called iFishSat that was a feasibility study to try to solve the problem of selling fish before they have been landed bypassing local auctions and selling direct to the end buyers. I was mainly working on the front-end e-commerce system that was written from scratch to address the issues. JAVA/angularJS front end.

I also worked on a system called CAPITALS. The front end was developed to show a vast amount of data on an OpenStreetMap API. Truck movements were shown in real time (within minutes) along with vessels and container information. 

Using AngularJS, I have created a full 360° review system allowing Organisers to setup participants. The participants can then setup their review and add responders who upon receiving an email click on a link to complete the questionnaire. Once the system detects they have enough responses a report button appears that then sends the organiser a report.

During this time, I have also been working with AdvantaPro on their CSS and HTML for word press templates ensuring they work responsively and with best practices.

I was employed to re-factor and develop the front end of their e-commerce system called b2x/one white box. I successfully did this by re doing all of their front-end smarty templates so they worked in a logical succinct and easy to develop manner. I managed to accomplish this as my PHP/backend knowledge allowed me to work with the back-end programmer effectively. The ecommerce system took a spare bedroom company to a multi-million-pound multinational.  http://www.welovefrugi.com.

Symantec E-Publishing solution, online graduate database for Penna Holdings plc, programmed for Selby & Mills a complete online psychometric questionnaire system that allows them to generate complex biographic forms and store their results with an online configuration/administration interface. Reports are then automatically generated and emailed with HTML psychometric content.

At Every Software my time was mainly used to further learn C++ and help with the class specifications, class testing and setting up the company infrastructure. This role enabled me to gain more knowledge of C++, on a GNU environment and to learn UNIX platforms and the development process on these systems. I also learnt PERL to produce some scripts that create HTML indexed documents and automatically generated C++ code.

At Selby MillSmith Limited I was mainly employed as a Programmer producing psychometric assessment software using Visual Basic. This comprised of programming and maintenance of databases, technical support for client’s software and sales people. I created their first web site with notepad for windows!