Myles Skinner's Development Portfolio
I've been programming for 29 years now; I got my start writing BASIC programs on a Commodore PET 2001 and quickly graduated to 6502 machine language. Hand-assembling machine code from a very early age has given me a level of comfort with low-level work—what is sometimes referred to as "heavy lifting" programming. I enjoy working behind the scenes and under the hood to help talented designers bring their visions to life. The languages and technologies with which I am most familiar include: PHP, C, C++, Java, JSP, Perl, Strict HTML, CSS, MySQL, and SDL, however, I have fun learning new languages and technologies and will happily tackle the unknown.
Amazon Consulting
I've been contracting with Amazon Consulting since January 2008. The techonology team at Amazon Consulting develops and maintains two major web applications, PartnerPath and RegPoint. *500 tickets. *development projects.
"The best praise I can give Myles is that I can give him a task with minimal direction and know it will be done correctly the first time with a solution that is both effective and creative. Myles never hesitates to roll up his sleeves and get to work. No task is too small or too large for him to take on. I never have to worry about his productivity—he is self-motivated and takes pride in his finished work."
—Christopher P. Smith, Manager of Technology & Automation, Amazon Consulting
Informatica's Partner Directory
I was asked to develop an enhanced partner directory to replace the original "A-Z Partner Directory" that used to appear on Informatica's website. Each entry in the directory includes information on Informatica's network of partners worldwide; the data displayed in a partner's profile on the directory is dynamically updated from the information each partner puts into their profile on beINFORMed, Informatica's Partner Portal. This improved directory offers customers, prospects, and field personnel the benefit of being able to search Informatica's worldwide partner network by country, vertical focus, product and solution specialization and locate a contact at any partner.
The beINFORMed portal is only available to registered Informatica partners, but Informatica's partner directory is publicly accessible. You can also see an example of an enhanced partner directory listing.
Widget PDF Export
The PartnerPath and RegPoint Dashboard project was one of the most challenging things I've ever worked on, but also one of the most rewarding. The dashboards are composed of several reporting 'widgets' that provide real time, graphical reports based on live application data inside the PartnerPath and RegPoint portals. The PartnerPath Main Dashboard is configurable; users can choose which reporting widgets will appear on their dashboard. My most significant project was making the dashboard reports exportable as PDFs; the PDF files are built on-the-fly from up-to-date data (including graphs), with the various layout elements—pagination, headers, footers, and column breaks— derived from each specific dashboard configuration.
This sample PDF demonstrates the output; I am very happy with the way it turned out. There's something very satisfying about writing code that will generate a full-colour, printable document that you can hold in your hands.
RPGme online store
RPGme was a start-up company founded by Christopher P. Smith. Chris designed the site, wrote the site copy, populated the catalogue, filled orders, and set up and maintained the site forums. I was brought on board to develop an online store application capable of secure transactions. This was a challenging project because in the beginning, I was completely unfamiliar with the necessary tools and anguages. In two weeks, I learned enough Java, JSP, and MySQL to begin development; within two months, I had written a fully-functional online store application from scratch that was modular, configurable, and scalable.
Features:
- User registration and secure login
- Shopping cart capable of persisting across separate sessions for registered users
- Search engine that allowed users to restrict searches of the store catalogue by combining multiple search criteria (keywords, product category, price)
- Product recommendations derived from shoppers' browsing history
- Administrative tools to maintain the MySQL database for users, the catalogue, and shopping cart transactions
- Credit Card handling over secure connection to VeriSign
- Secure model for the purchase and delivery of eTexts and PDFs
The RPGme online store application was sold in 2003 and subsequently dismantled by the new owner. I have created mockups of the original RPGme home page and a typical catalogue page that show how the store looked when it first opened in June 2002.
Cornerstone
My first exposure to WordPress. Design by Jewel. IE/FF CSS work. Custom contact form. Browsable on Blackberry.