Personal Statement
I have been a computer programmer for as long as I can remember. Over the years my tastes and skills were tuned and I focused on C‐based programming on the Macintosh platform. I have also become skilled in UNIX and Linux system adminstration, from both University use and home use.
I consider myself to be a fairly competent Cocoa, Carbon and POSIX programmer and feel respected amongst my peers in both aptitude and attitude. I am quite familiar with OpenGL and have a modicum of experience debugging PowerPC assembly. I am also an advanced HTML and CSS coder. When creating websites I am strongly advocative of the need to adhere to published W3C standards, and of making my sites accessible to the blind, physically disabled or those using alternative access devices (e.g. mobile phones). I have no difficulty adapting to any operating system or programming language, though am most familiar with the Macintosh and C‐derived languages.
Previous Experience
Cognition Games
Since December 2002 I have been running my own company named Cognition Games where I work on porting products from the PC to Mac OS X and Carbonising 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. I also write shareware under the Cognition Games moniker, my first being an editor for a popular Blizzard Entertainment title. Of the products I have worked on, two made it to market, one got cancelled and one is currenrtly under development. Experience gained in contract negotiation, accounting and tax matters has been a valuable side benefit.
Feral Interactive
Prior to this 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 liaising with developers, publishers, resellers, press, and giving public product demonstrations at international trade shows in Europe and North America. I also worked on internal tools for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and UNIX/Linux.
Freshly Squeezed Software
Concurrent with part of my tenure at Feral, I spent my spare 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, I studied both Fortran and object‐orientated design principals (using Java), in addition to the regular Maths, Physics and Astronomy modules. I was conscripted by one Computer Science lecturer as a classroom assistant for his Java tutorials, where I assisted fellow students who were having difficulties or needed additional guidance.
For a complete description of my education and qualifications, and full employment history, please see my curriculum vitæ.
Personal Projects
I have been involved in open source and collaborative projects on the Mac platform since 1998, though most of these are no longer in active development, including:
ResKnife: An open‐source replacement for ResEdit, written using Cocoa, Carbon and Toolbox. Author.
HexEdit: The de‐facto hexadecimal editor for the Mac OS. Carbonised and am co‐maintainer.
XFN Graph: Visualisation tool for XFN social network profile. Patch contributor.
WebKit: KHTML‐based web browser rendering engine used on Macs and Nokia mobile phones. Patch contributor.
Many smaller projects of my own released publically, and patch contributions to open‐source software I use frequently.
Contact Information
| Name | Nicholas Shanks |
|---|---|
| Address | 45 Oaklands Wood Hatfield Hertfordshire United Kingdom AL10 8LU |
| Telephone | +44 (1707) 258219 |
