Stephen Wattam

Please see the about section for details on how to contact me.

Name

Stephen Michael Wattam

DOB

07/10/87

Additional Details

I have held a full UK Driver's license with no endorsements since 2005.

Personal Interests

I have a grade 4 certificate from the Royal School of Music for the trumpet and am currently learning to play the guitar. My personal interests run the gambit from psychology to fountain pens. Most of my projects centre around AI and statistical techniques and their use for solving intractable problems.

Postgraduate study

I am currently studying for an ESRC-funded Ph.D in Computational Linguistics at Lancaster University.

MRes.

I hold an MRes in Appllied Social Statistics, completed as a training year for the PhD I am currently studying.

Degree

I have a 1st class Bsc from Lancaster University in Computer Science Innovation, achieved from 2006 to 2009. Courses attended included:

• Concurrent Software and Operating Systems
• Software Engineering
• Database Systems
• Networking
• Embedded systems
• Languages and compilation
• Computational Fundamentals
• Java Programming
• Programs and Data
• Web Technologies
• Systems Architecture
• Special Topics in Computer Science

A and AS-levels

All of these qualifications were achieved during my 2 year attendance at South Hunsley 6th form

English Language (AS)

A grade, this was more of an aside for personal interest

Maths

D grade, though I have since worked on the course material in my spare time. I completed the Core 1, 2, 3 and 4, statistics 1 and mechanics 1 modules.

Computing

B grade

Physics

C grade, AQA B course.

GCSE

I hold 8 GCSEs, all A grade or above, in the following subjects: Science (double award), English Lang/Lit, RS, Systems and Control, Maths, Computing.

Other qualifications

I have a third of a GNVQ in ICT (awarded with merit), though the course was cancelled at that point and I was unable to continue. I also hold a CLAIT certificate.

Teamwork

I have had to collaborate on a number of occasions with other people in order to produce solutions to technical problems. This includes not only the rest of the development team in which I have worked, but also the clients themselves.

Problem-Solving

The majority of my projects have been based around solving technical challenges, often in entirely new and unproven ways.

Software architecture

In addition to the guidance I received whilst at university I have developed my software design and architecture skills by implementing the bulk of my personal projects alone, from research to implementation, often without any guidance from 'official' sources.

I have experience developing under both Windows (primarily XP) and UNIX (primarily Linux) environments — most of my work after 2006 has been on Linux.

Limited experience

I've used these technologies for projects, but only in a limited scope - I am unlikely to have more than a basic idea how to go about solving problems.

• x86 ASM (including some work with Win32 APIs)
• Python
• Bash script
• ASP (VBScript, not .net)
• Lua
• Perl
• Tcl

Experience, not in industry

These are languages in which I have produced many things, but not commercially. I am likely to understand most issues surrounding the production of robust solutions in the given languages

• Haskell
• C99/C++, primarily under Linux
• Java 1.4 and above
• PHP. both 4 and 5
• MSSQL, under the Jet 4 engine
• Web design and image editing using the GIMP and Inkscape (both raster and vector)
• Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and TeX
• SQLite3

Commercial Experience

I have worked both on personal and commercial projects using the following technologies

• Ruby (including use with Rails)
• XHTML, HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript/JScript (inc. experience with Prototype)
• MySQL
• Version control using SVN and CVS

personal projects

I have produced a number of pieces of work in order to explore subjects and technologies that have interested me over the years. This has included both a number of software concepts and those centred around physics and electronics. There's a full list of these over on the projects page.

Work History

2008 (May-Oct) — Junior consultant

Designed and constructed Ruby on Rails applications to support mobile platforms at Momote

2004 (June-Sep) — Temporary Office Clerk

Collated pension records at ARCO, Hull

Informal & Part-time work

2010 - present — Tutoring

Presented tutorials and seminars for undergraduate computer science courses at Lancaster University.

2009(May) — Freelance scripting

Produced a scriptable web scraping engine in Ruby/Watir for Tractair

2007-2010 — Web administration

Administered a colocated LAMP server running various personal projects

2007(January) — Freelance web work

Produced a small website and rudimentary CMS for nexgen gaming systems

2005(August) — Misc manual work at Anderson's

Assisted in cleaning/renovating a coffee shop in Beverly, Hull

~2002 — protonic.com tech support

Provided free tech support over the internet as part of protonic.com's staff