About

I am 29, Irish and I live near Christchurch in Dublin, Ireland. I work as a Systems Developer / Team lead. I have 12 years of development experience and hold a Linux+, MCSA, CPTS, MCDBA and a CCNA; and over the course of my career I have developed / co-developed over 45+ web based projects. Some big, most small.

I started my career working with web technologies like PHP, Perl, MySql, JavaScript and Flash. I worked indirectly with clients like Alexander McQueen, WRC, Daz (P&G) and have worked directly with AOL Advertising.com and Research and Markets.

I have always kept up with new skills and have now moved towards Microsoft .NET Framework technologies and I focused on Sql Server, C# and Networking as my core skills. I tend to focus my learning on exams and certifications as I find them the most rewarding, though am I an avid reader of technical books and believe they are more fruitful then exams.

This web site has been a constant work in progress and it’s starting point can be traced to my very first job where I originally built up a knowledge base of code, URLs and information for my own use. This later grew into my own personal code library, organised around all the coding I’ve done and systems I’ve built, with snippets, functions, hand-written libraries and systems grouped by programming language.

It then moved online, in the form of MediaWiki, using PHP and MySQL and it contained articles, code information, notes from books I’ve read and exams I’ve taken. The final step, was to convert it into .NET, and utilise the skills I used on a daily basis rather than an off-the-shelf PHP wiki. Overtime this became cumbersome to maintain, and I was in a constant fight over building features vs. writing content. I made the decision that they site should reflect my studying and goals as opposed to my technical skill, so converted it to a WordPress blog – a decision I’ve been very happy with.

With my exams, my experience and my interesting in writing, this site has now taken on a more professional feel and has become my ‘professional front’, a showcase for my work and a place to practice writing technical articles.

My Certifications

I am a fan of certificates and exams, though I realise their down fall. Solid experience will always beat certificates, specially in the age of TestKing. Certificates and exams open the door to additional knowledge that you wouldn’t normally be exposed to on day-to-day basis; most certificates have varying levels of exams, allowing the student to expose themselves to the level that is right for them, and the knowledge that is right for them.

Certificates are a catch 22 situtation, the whole point of a certificate is to show that you have a solid foundation of knowledge on that topic. But this relies on the people whom you are ‘showing’ to be aware of the certificate, it’s level and the knowledge tested. So the power of having a certificate can be nulled if the prospect isn’t aware of the details of the certificate.

I believe certificates compliment a career, they show the person is still actively learning, able to learn and has an active interest in the topic of the exam. This to me is what an certificate is about. Their experience then needs to show that they’ve applied that knowledge and learned information beyond the exam.

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