Ranea.org

Hi. I’m Watts Martin. I’m a writer, both technical and creative, and a web developer. I also do design and UX work occasionally.

I usually work with PHP on the server side and jQuery on the front end. I’m not a huge fan of PHP, honestly, but it usually gets the job done. My favorite language is Python, and I’ve used SQLAlchemy and Flask (professionally) and Django (personally). I also have personal experience with Ruby on Rails and Node.js.

Experience

I started when the dotcom era did, at a long-gone telecom company where I became the webmaster for the company’s first intranet site. Back then, “webmaster” meant designer, developer and sysadmin. Since then I’ve worked for Netwolves Technologies, Linvatec, Illumant, and the Department of the Navy (by way of contracting for Illumant subcontracting to Secorix subcontracting to SAIC). More recently I’ve done work for a Fiji-based travel web site, for Nokia with their (now defunct) Point & Find group, and with Jupiter, a web-based gradebook and student information system for K–12 schools. Along the way I’ve done technical writing with Global Locate (now part of Broadcom) and Cisco.

Unfortunately, much of the work I’ve done has been for intranets or commercial products. This often leaves me in the position of having to tell prospective clients and employers, look, I’m pretty good. Trust me.

So: look, I’m pretty good. Trust me. (Also, read my résumé.)

Some Bullet Points

• I like web standards: valid HTML/XHTML, CSS, and Javascript that doesn’t make JSLint scream (much). These days I try to stick with HTML5.
• I also like MVC: CakePHP at Illumant and for Fiji Island Escapes, symfony at Nokia.
• I’ve become a big fan of Python fairly recently, with particular love for Flask and Django. (This web site is mostly written in Markdown, with a Python script that builds the HTML files by crunching them into Jinja2 templates.)
• I know SQL and basic relational database design and normalization. I’ve mostly worked with MySQL but have some experience with PostgreSQL and a little experience with Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. (And, yes, SQLite.)
• If you’re into this sort of thing, I speak agile. We used a Jira plugin called “Greenhopper” for agile work at Nokia, and I’m familiar with the daily scrum and sprint process.
• I’ve worked on some moderately large sites, most notably Nokia’s, which had multiple load-balanced servers and used PHP’s APC caching.
• I’m a pretty fast learner and always interested in learning new technologies.

Some Anti-Bullet Points

• I have not worked on huge “millions of users a day” kinds of sites. You’ll have to trust me to pick up the high-scalability stuff on the job.
• I have not used “NoSQL” professionally. Yes, I know what a key-value store is. (I’m doing a little work with Redis, too.)
• I’m a Mac user and prefer to use Mac development tools, but I won’t be a zealot about it.
• I am not interested in relocating at this time.
• If you send me a job listing that ten seconds of scanning my résumé would have told you I’m a poor match for—say, a job for a four-month contract position in Wisconsin that requires J2EE experience—you are a bad recruiter and you should feel bad.