christopher townson dot com

This is the curriculum vitae site of Christopher Townson. Here you will find information about my technical skills, expertise, experience, and current availability.

If you are in need of an intelligent, professional developer to craft quality solutions and code to meet your requirements in an efficient and maintainable manner, please feel free to contact me with details of your project.

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About

I am a web developer and systems architect, based in Colchester, Essex, UK. I program mainly in Java, but also in PHP and other scripting languages. Additionally, I have extensive expertise in accessible and standards-compliant client-side development using (X)HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

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Skills & Expertise

Below is a list of technologies with which I am familiar and which I enjoy using. It is by no means a comprehensive list. I have omitted some either because they are “legacy” and I no longer use them regularly (e.g. Struts), or because I have only very recently started to use them (e.g. Ruby and Rails). Some others I've not listed because I don’t like them very much!

• Java

  • Spring
  • Hibernate
  • Restlet
  • Grails
  • Groovy
  • Velocity
  • Ant
  • JUnit
  • HTTPUnit

• Scripting

  • PHP

• Servers & Databases

  • Apache HTTPD
  • Apache Tomcat
  • MySQL
  • eXist

• Markup & Client-Side Coding

  • XML
  • (X)HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript

• Notation & Modelling

  • UML
  • ERM
  • Wireframes

• Version control & Code Management

  • Subversion
  • Cruise Control

• Diagramming

  • Visio
  • OmniGraffle
  • Apollo

• Design

  • Illustrator
  • Photoshop
  • Fireworks

• Operating Systems

  • Linux (esp. SUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu)

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Experience & Personal History

I have worked in web development on and off for 11 years, which is easily long enough to have learned that individual technologies matter far less than the ability of a clear-thinking developer to utilize them appropriately to meet specific requirements in an efficient manner.

I started out as a “web master” way back in 1996. Since then, I have also found time to complete Masters and PhD degrees in Philosophy and Art History, whilst doing occasional freelance and short-term contracts, before returning to full-time development work at the beginning of 2005, joining Nature Publishing Group.

My very first sites (which are no longer online, thankfully!) were cumbersome efforts in HTML, JavaScript, and Perl CGI. Around the turn of the century, I thought I had seen the light and began programming in PHP, creating swathes of code that, whilst being far more versatile and fun, retained the overall appearance of spaghetti Bolognaise. As time went on, I became increasingly interested in such arcane programming lore as object orientation, design patterns, and frameworks; which lead ultimately to my learning Java a couple of years ago.

More recently, I have gained a renewed interest in scripting languages, such as Ruby, agile development methodologies, POJO’s, and lightweight application frameworks which cut the “fluff” and allow developers more space and time to focus on project goals.

In the last couple of years, I have been fortunate to work on a number of extremely interesting projects, including the development of Nature Jobs, the Nature Reviews journals, and the flagship nature.com homepage. Behind the scenes, I have also initiated and completed a project to develop a simple, component-based, view-tier framework built on top of Spring and Velocity and am currently working on the design, development, and deployment of a new publishing platform which seeks to build upon Nature's reputation as a cradle for technological innovation and excellence.

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Current Availability

I am currently employed on a full-time basis as part of the Emerging Technologies Department at Nature Publishing Group.

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