global optima

toby skinner (UK Mobile: +44 (0)7971 076226)

skills overview

Currently working with Kineo in autumnal Brighton

My IP for your firewalls: eightyone.onefournine.fournine.twenty (81.149.49.20)

Available for hire - Specifically looking for work in St Petersburg or Helsinki

  • Kineo Open Source
    2011 - Summer

    Working on new Totara based projects
    PHP, Postgres, Totara & SCORM

  • Kineo Open Source
    2010 Winter - 2011 Spring

    Development of a heavily modified Moodle with 100k+ users integrated with SAP
    PHP, MySQL, Moodle & SCORM

  • Kineo Open Source
    2010 - Autumn

    Development on a number of Moodle sites, concentrating on custom reporting
    PHP, MySQL, Moodle & SCORM

  • Bite Studio
    2010 - Autumn

    Development of a Facebook app in Flash using Amazon web services (S3, Cloudfront etc)
    FBML, FBJS, Flash, AS3, AWS

  • SCIP
    2010 - Summer

    Porting v5 modules to v6 (integration with ESiT database)

    Drupal 5 & 6, ESiT

  • Bite Studio
    2010 - Spring/Summer

    Enhancing & testing 2 Symphony CMS projects for Random House Publishing
    PHP, XSLT, MySQL + CSV/XML processing

  • Kineo Open Source
    2009

    Co-development of a number of Moodle sites
    PHP, MySQL

  • Made by me Studios
    2008-2009

    Technical lead and sole developer on www.raggs.tv
    PHP, Flash 9, Actionscript 3 + Custom lip-syncing engine + CDN

  • Reprieve
    2007-2009

    Prototyped database for storage of case data
    PHP, MySQL, ExtJS, Google Maps, Tagging

    Note: Due to illness I was unable to see this project through to completion

  • Future Media
    2008

    Development of internal training portal for Bupa (custom e-learning)
    PHP, jQuery + third party proprietary portal ramework

  • Investor Relations Society
    2008-ongoing

    Development of IRS exam engine + admin site
    PHP, jQuery, MySQL + ongoing support

  • Poisson Rouge
    2004-2009

    Research & development
    Built boutique for selling personally compiled digital products

  • James Massey Design
    2006-2009

    Co-developed www.suzuki4.co.uk
    Flash 8 framework + site editor for all depos

    Extended & bug fixed www.samaritans-purse.org.uk
    PHP, MySQL, Drupal

    Flash game for Andrex
    Highscore board, 2 levels, psuedo-isometric environment with 2 ai opponents

  • PBS - via Poisson Rouge
    2007

    Development of 'Kratts Creatures'
    Flash 8, Actionscript 2 + Bespoke video sequencer & sharing

  • Western Business Publishing (Part of the Tri-Media group)
    2004-2008

    3 core sites (IPE, HSS, HSM)
    3 journal sites (AIR-USER, HSD, SHE)
    1 exhibition site (HSE)

    built with GO:Independence
    PHP, MySQL (w/ replication), PEAR + integration with BusiPro

  • Progressive Media (Part of the Tri-Media group)
    2004-2008

    2 core sites (WEE, CM)
    3 journal sites (EES, WES, PCS)
    1 exhibition site (EE)

    built with GO:Independence
    PHP, MySQL (w/ replication), PEAR + integration with BusiPro

  • Wyko
    2006

    Conversion of Delphi application to classic ASP
    ASP, HTML, CSS

  • Ragdoll - via Poisson Rouge
    2004

    Non-flash alternative games for Teletubbies
    Javascript

  • Youview
    1999-2001

    Java client-server application for creating online slideshows

  • Interocktica Limited (folded)
    2008-2010

    Co-founded with Poisson Rouge SARL & SnEm Limited
    Technical director

  • Global Fish Collective (folded)
    2006-2009

    Co-founded with Poisson Rouge SARL
    Umbrella collective for Global Optima & Poisson Rouge projects

  • HC2 Limited (folded)
    2002-2005

    Co-founded with Paul Winterhalder (now of PR23 Limited)
    Creative director
    Closed up in 2005, remaining assets & clients migrated to Global Optima

  • Feature tagging
    Autumn 2011

    A personal project that utilises jQuery, PHP, MySQL, Python, OpenCV and some custom jiggery pokery.

    Basic premise is a simple image 'work shop' based in the brower where I can render different segmentations of images. Segmentations are generated on the fly or through a background process,

    Features are detected via Python with both FAST and Prewitt corner detection, face dection also supported through OpenCV haar cascades (but not yet added).

    Feature rendering with connected nodes is all done with HTML 5.0 canvas element.

    Also allows for tagging with automated Exif extraction. Tags are key:value pairs split into groups, keys support hierarchy schemes like Location:City, Location:GPS or Location:GPS:Longitude etc.

    Tags can be spread from a single image to a whole gallery, also supports duplicate tags (e.g. a Name tag can be applied multiple times for different people in an image).

    Next few jobs:

    • fleshing out tagging ui
    • speed up image processing (multi-core or cuda)
    • add other interesting segmentation algorithms
    • add face recognition segmentation
    • allow manual association of features with tags (i.e. faces, groups of nodes etc.)
    • extend network rendering tool for more creative skeletal structures

  • Ants

    R&D for a potential project.
    This was my main contribution for the proposal, an ant game
    Process involved creating additional tools to define 'pheremone' paths for letters and shapes

    Currently in the process of reworking and modifying this code for other purposes

  • Strobes

    Simple strobing lights

  • Particles

    Simple circling spots

  • FLV Progress

    Simple flv buffer visualiser
    Note: Video is of Hendrix impersonator who was hovering around Brighton, England

  • simple yet aesthetically pleasing

  • Polygons

    watch the polys contract as they touch each other

  • Snow flakes

    responding to simple touch sensors

  • Simple Math Experiment #1

    use of sin, cos and tan to generate points in a 3D space, then connected using a slightly offset line

  • Using the 3D rendering engine in Processing

    a simple demonstration of how Processing can be used to create interesting user interfaces.

  • Ant Path Navigation

    an unpublished paper I wrote whilst at HC2 on path finding

  • Tag manipulation over large image sets
    December 2011 - January 2012

    writing up now

all content copyright Toby Skinner T/A Global Optima 1999-2012. all rights reserved.