Douglas Clifton

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Objective

I enjoy solving problems. If you have an idea, then I'd like to discuss it and then transform it into a solution. I am a pragmatist at heart.

Profile

I am a Web Developer, having extensive experience with most flavors of Unix and other platforms, including many distributions of Linux, BSD and OS X. My tools of choice include SSH, vi/Vim, CVS/Subversion and bugzilla.

Work Experience

Reprographic Technologies

Job Tracker is an Intranet application built from the ground up for a local client. After installing and optimizing a classic LAMP stack, I designed a database schema from a business model conceived by the customer, and then built an interface which features tabbed views using PHP, XHTML, CSS, and leverages JavaScript, DOM and Ajax for behavior. The system is designed to be portable and thus far includes three installations. It features find as you type records, printed work orders that include barcodes, and a PDF subsystem. A second application, FM Tracker, is currently in testing phase. Reprographic Technologies is a publicly held company with regional offices in Virginia, Washington, DC and Maryland. RT is affiliated with ARC, the largest document management company in the US.

Digital Web Magazine

After Cal Henderson of Flickr was no longer able to fulfill his role running the backend for Digital Web, publisher Nick Finck asked me to step in. Having already written an article for the magazine, and understanding the depth and breadth of the many contributors, I quickly agreed. My responsibilities include keeping the database running smoothly, understanding our visitors, and adding new features and enhancements. Digital Web is hosted by Media Temple, the staff uses Basecamp for project management and the ship is fueled by Apache/mod_rewrite, PHP/Smarty, MySQL, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript.

loadaverageZero

Is my personal Web space and blog, it focuses on open-source solutions, open-standards and best practices. Concieved in 2004, with a current PR of 6, I have seen a steady growth in traffic and the site is well known among my peers. loadaverageZero is designed to be self-documenting and features a large collection of resources targeting Web programmers and designers of all skill levels.

International PHP Magazine

In November of 2005 I published my inaugural <root> Elements column for PHP Magazine, and in February of 2006 I switched roles as editor for Thomas Myer’s article on the SimpleXML parser.

DC Metroblogging

I am a contributing author to Jason DeFillippo’s global Metroblogging network. Jason has recently chosen to pursue the Metblogs endeavor after contributing much of his efforts building the Technorati codebase.

Innovative Ideas

From 1997 through 2002 I managed a team of programmers in the development of numerous user-interface and backend server Web-based applications. We built a network architecture and provided solutions to deal with large volumes of traffic. I maintained the low-level interface to host machines via mod_perl and installed and configured clusters of Web, database and content servers and worked extensively with Perl/CGI/C/C++/PHP/HTML and MySQL/DB2, which required detailed schema design and coding of SQL queries. I also served as liaison to vendors and hosting companies, software developers, e-commerce and other outside service providers. I trained and supervised staff and contributed to the phenomenal growth of this start-up business, reaching over $78 MM in annual sales.

C² Consultants

Created a successful computer consulting business providing information systems services to the health care industry. Developed long-term contractual relationships with area hospitals to design, develop, and install desktop and network operating systems. We built Intranet systems and application macros specializing in custom forms, reporting, patient records, billing, and databases. Trained staff in the use of systems. Provided follow-up customer services including system maintenance and troubleshooting.

CAD Lab Technician

Instructed and assisted students with hardware/software installations, configuration, operation and troubleshooting. Tutored students in AutoCAD, CADKEY and operating systems. Outside of the classroom, my interests fell into the realm of automated procedures written in Lisp and C.

Education

Western Michigan University

Initially, I was enrolled in the Engineering Graphics program, but quickly switched to Computer Science with a minor in math. Although at the time the curriculum was focused on such things as VAX/VMS and Pascal, my own interests were with Unix systems such as Sun and NeXT, and toolkits therein including C, Awk, Perl and shell scripting. This was when Linux and the Web were just coming into fruition.