Skills & Bio

Bio

Thanks for visiting Geek for Brains. My name is Gavin Vickery and I’m a 23 year old programmer living on Vancouver Island. I’m currently employed at a local drafting company as the IT and software development manager. Although I started out as a web designer, I quickly moved up the development ladder thanks to friends, family and a passion for my career.

Programming Skills

PHP
Experience: 5 Years
When it comes to code, PHP will always be my first love. For the last 5 years I’ve worked on a variety of personal and client based projects ranging from full featured e-commerce to classified search engines.

MySQL
Experience: 3 Years
With every good PHP application comes a database. MySQL is always my first choice. Its fast, light-weight and comes pre-installed on almost all hosting servers today. I find MySQL to be more then adequate for the majority of my projects.

XHTML
Experience: 6 Years
XHTML was probably the first thing I ever typed as far as code. I remember sitting in my uncles basement, both my cousins next to me, all programming on little monitors with black screens and green text. Blinking text and scrolling marquee’s where all the rage back then. It was sad to see them go.

CSS
Experience: 4 Years
Although I never started web development with CSS, I quickly picked it up after discovering its benefits and possibilities. Today I have a history of programming an assortment of CSS designs including liquid layouts and graphic-heavy absolute positioning.

Javascript / Ajax
Experience: 1 Year
Javascript has never been one of my favorites. It has its place, but I find its overused in many applications. Although I can code in it, I wouldn’t say its one of my strong points. I prefer to use frameworks such as Prototype when developing Ajax driven applications.

C# (C-Sharp)
Experience: Less then 1 Year
C# is my first attempt to get into desktop application development. Developing with the .NET framework has been a pleasure so far, and I’m excited to see how far I can stretch its capabilities. I hope to be coding in C# fluently within the next year.

Other Skills

Windows Networking
Experience: 2 Years
I’ve worked with several different types of Windows networks including basic work groups to full featured Windows domain infrastructures. I’m comfortable working with Server 2003, Active Directory and VPN. I’m currently working on my Microsoft Networking Certificate.

Linux
Experience: 1 Year
I love Linux. Although I’m not as strong with it as I am Windows, I do still enjoy dabbling with its different capabilities. I find Linux is great for servers, but kind of a pain when it comes to workstations. Luckily I have several close Linux Guru’s to help me out when I get lost. I personally like to use Ubuntu, but I’ve worked with OpenSUSE, Debian and Fedore Core as well.