Curriculum Vitae

Contents: Contact, Skills, Work, Open source, Education, Other, Referees.

Contact details

Name: Marcus David Baker
Profession: Researcher and software developer
Date of birth: 11/11/63
Nationality: UK
Address: 46 Littleton Street, Earlsfield, London SW18 3SY.
Telephone: 020 8944 7253; Mobile/SMS: 07973 290 084.
E-mail: marcus@lastcraft.com

Skills summary

Strong development skills including OO, web application architecture, data modelling, statistics, data munging and usability testing. Specific items...

Domains: E-commerce, Telephony, Hardware.
Methodogies: Agile development (Scrum master), test driven development, data modelling.
Platforms: Mainly Linux and MacOS, but some Windows.
Languages: C, PHP, SQL, Ruby, Erlang, R, Perl, HTML/CSS, Assembler, Scheme.
Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sybase (T-SQL), good data modelling experience.

Work history

Wordtracker (11/2001 - present)

Developer and sometimes team leader, but now Head of Research of this leading search marketing tool. See www.wordtracker.com. Projects have included...

Introduction of development processes: When I first joined there were no development practices. Introduced version control, test driven development, a controlled release process, refactoring, and rapid iterative development. PHP, Perl cross-platform.
Architected a three tier solution: Wordtracker was originally a monolithic application. I broke it down into data processing, API and web front end. This has allowed the older tools to be converted from PHP to Ruby on Rails, and also allowed new types of data sources to be added. Also contributed several test and mock object tools in different languages, and a dependency injection container. PHP, Ruby on Linux.
Wrote the middle tier API: Includes the web content collection, the full text data mart (sub-second responses of full text data with wildcard searching) and lexical tools (misspellings, online dictionary). This API is also customer facing (through XML-RPC). PHP, Perl on Linux.
Created an audition based hiring process: We then used it to grow the very strong development of people much better than me. The process rapidly spread to management hires and other staff.
Delivered several front end tools: These include the "Keyword Researcher", the original power platform for Wordtracker, and the free keywords tool. PHP, HTML/CSS on Linux.
Contributed several back end tools: These include spam filtering of keyword data and adult content filtering. PHP, Ruby on Linux.
Built E-commerce platform: Core business components and data modelling for user and account management, customer tracking, payment processing. At one point head of a team of five. Traditional database driven application with a PHP micro-framework that powers the customer services interface. SQL (stored procs), PHP, HTML/CSS, JavaScript (JQuery/LowPro) on Linux.
Research: Currently understanding user search behaviour and researching full text search technologies and algorithms. C, SQL, R.

Writer (1/2003 - present, contract)

Co-author "PHP in Action": Contributed three TDD and acceptance testing chapters.
Technical editor for the "PHP Architect guide to Design Patterns": Ensuring technical correctness and flow.
Technical reviewer for Manning: I get paid to read books. How cool is that?
Columnist for PHP|Architect: Regular column for fifteen issues from 2003 through to 2004.

Mirrormill (8/2001 - 10/2001, contract)

Although no longer a partner, implemented occasional web projects.

Parable Telecoms (1/2001 - 6/2001, permanent)

Part of a team of four developers producing internet administered telephony services (including unified messaging). Beyond database and technical maintanence, projects included...

ISDN telephony server API: Designed and part implemented a telephony application framework. C (Pthreads) with Lint on Linux/Solaris.
Emergency messaging: System utility to dispatch messages by SMS or e-mail during component failure. Perl on Linux.
Telephony charging model: Replaced the static charging model. T-SQL.

Mirrormill (5/2000 - 12/2000, permanent)

Lead developer and founding partner of this small web application start up. See www.mirrormill.com. Implementations include...

Cruiserent: A pleasure boat booking e-commerce application. SQL, PHP on Linux.
Starlight Tables: A small CMS for a manufacturing company with a constantly changing product line. Perl on Windows.

Superquote (2/2000 - 4/2000, contract)

Lead programmer producing an online car insurance brokerage. One of the first ever online insurance companies. SQL, C on OS/2.

Shadow Robot Company (11/93 - 10/99, permanent)

Engineer and embedded programmer for a wide variety of projects. See http://www.shadow.org.uk. C, embedded C++, Forth, Assembler on various PIC and small computer platforms.

Open source projects

Known as "lastcraft" on forums and Sourceforge.

Cgreen

Lightweight C unit testing framework with per test process isolation and support for xUnit style fixtures and function mocking.
See Cgreen on lastcraft.com or simpletest.org.

SimpleTest

PHP xUnit style unit tester and mock objects tool. Also includes a native PHP web browser giving the feature set of JWebUnit and/or Webrat.
See SimpleTest on lastcraft.com.

Phemto

Highly automated dependency injector for PHP. Supports both constructor and setter injection, extendable lifecycles and automated interface discovery and instantiation.
See Phemto on Sourceforge.

Fakemail

A fake SMTP server for the acceptance testing of applications that send e-mail.
See Fakemail on lastcraft.com.

Education

Institution	Dates	Qualifications
Kings College, Nuffield Foundation	9/89 - 7/90	P.G.C.E. in Physics and General Science.
Imperial College, London University	10/82 - 7/85	B.Sc. in Physics.
John Newnham Sixth form College	9/80 - 7/82	3 A-Levels, 3 further O-Levels.
Riddlesdown High School	9/75 - 7/80	8 O-Levels.

Other qualifications and skills

User groups

Co-founder of PHP London and organiser or co-organiser of three PHP conferences. Member of LRUG and Erlang exchange. Able to give technical presentations confidently and with due preparation, having done so at several user groups and conferences.

Other work experience

Previously a secondary school teacher of Science (Physics) and Technology (electronics) at DeStafford high school in Surrey. Over ten years experience of one to one teaching in mathematics and just under two years of classroom teaching in science. Author of B-tech robotics teaching materials for Middlesex university.

Personal

Main qualities are honesty and flexibility. Hobbies include all aspects of computing and psychology. Married.

Other

Full driving license, Workshop skills and half a Psychology diploma.

Referees

Available on request.

The latest version of this document is at www.lastcraft.com/marcus/cv.html