Rajnish Bhan Bhaskar

PERSONAL

Nationality

 British (ethnic origin: Indian)

Date of Birth

 Removed from online version

Address

 Removed from online version

Telephone

 Removed from online version

Driving Licence

 Full licence (clean)

E-Mail

EXPERIENCE

August 2007 – Present

 Analyst/Programmer at Management Information Services at the University of Glasgow
My work at MIS involves the development and maintenance of both bespoke and off-the-shelf systems and products as described below.
  • Car Parking: I have rewritten the legacy car parking administration system from the ground up to be a modern, robust web application. Working in a small team I was involved in all aspects of development, from requirements gathering and developing use cases to system development, unit testing and user training. This also introduced me to the major technologies and methodologies used in the department.
  • HR/Payroll: I am currently part of the HR support team, helping to maintain the Delphi HR/Payroll system, as well as writing and maintaining Unix and Ingres SQL scripts to maintain the system and provide data extracts to external systems. I also help to maintain and provide support for the team's data models for the BI/Query data reporting tool to allow users to query the database.

July 2000 – Present

 Technical officer at the IT Education Unit of the University of Glasgow.
My work at ITEU primarily involved the development and maintenance of bespoke software systems but also included several other tasks as detailed below. I developed these applications and saw them through the full software lifecycle from requirements capture and design to deployment and evolution.
  • Walrii: A virtual learning environment to deliver IT courses over the web to students as well as allowing tutors to monitor and communicate with their students
  • ObSys: The largest and most involved project at the ITEU, this is a web-based course management and administration system for the department, allowing courses to be administered, for students and tutors to sign up for courses and for courses to be marked, all online. This system became central to the smooth operation of the department and is still a business-critical tool for the team that replaced the department
  • WhatsUp?: A web-based questionnaire management and analysis system, used by departments other than the ITEU
  • Iliad: An administration and registration system for the eLit series of academic conferences managed by the department
  • SDS: An e-PDP system for helping students to reflect on their learning and think about future directions
  • A searchable resource database for the CITSCAPES research project
  • I was involved in a conceptual redevelopment of the departmental website and I was also involved with web maintenance for the Scotia Consortium, of which the ITEU was a member
  • I took an active role in advising the Unit on current and future directions for IT
  • I was the departmental network administrator and provided general technical support

November 1997 – Ongoing

 I have written and maintain my own web site at:
http://lordofthemoon.com
Having spent several years working on this website, I consider it to be very important to me, not only as a personal platform but also to showcase several of my web-related skills, including CSS, Javascript and server-side programming.
I also use the site to host personal web applications that I have written and to act as a testbed for learning new technologies, most recently client-side Javascript and client-server AJAX applications

EDUCATION and QUALIFICATIONS

1997 – 2001 BSc Computing Science (Hons), University of Glasgow: Upper Second Class
My degree course has given me experience in both the theoretical and practical aspect of all sides of computing science. My third year team project involved the development of a medium-scale software system for a real client. This enabled me to develop my teamwork skills considerably, as well as the skill of working to a deadline for a client. These skills were honed during my final year project which involved building a multimedia, database-driven website for the Scottish Allotment and Garden Society using PHP and MySQL.
Over the course of my degree, I feel that some of the most important courses that I have been taught have related to software and requirements engineering, HCI and interface design, database design and computer network theory.
1990 – 1997 Strabane Grammar School, Strabane
3 'A' Levels – Mathematics (A), Computing (B), Physics (B)
11 GCSEs – 1 A*, 5As, 3Bs, 2Cs

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Programming Skills

  • I have develope`d several large software systems and managed them throughout the software lifecycle
  • I have primarily developed software in Java (including user interface building with Java Swing)
  • I am particularly skilled in web application development, using Java servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP) in conjunction with a server-side database. In this field, I have also used PHP for this purpose
  • I have experience in the theory of web application frameworks, applied practically through the Spring Framework for Java including its Model-View-Controller capabilities. I have also used client-side application frameworks including Prototype and Scriptaculous to build rich web applications.
  • I am familiar with the use of design patterns to find similarities in problems and the standard solutions that can be applied to aid rapid development.
  • I have an interest in HTML and web design and am familiar with (X)HTML, CSS 2 and Javascript 1.7
  • I also have experience in Perl, Ada 95 and C
  • I have some experience in the use of XML and XSLT transformations

Database Skills

  • I am experienced in the theory and practice of relational databases and am confident in the use of SQL
  • I have had experience in using Ingres, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL and Access as RDBMS systems
  • I am familiar with JDBC as a means to access any compliant database from a Java program
  • I am familiar with the use of object-relational mapping tools such as SQLMaps.

Operating Systems and Systems administration

  • I have had experience in using most major operating systems, including Windows (3.1-XP), MacOS, Solaris and Linux, the latter of which I have installed on my home computer in my spare time
  • I have installed and administered Windows NT 4 and Windows Server 2003 servers as well as a Linux Mandrake server
    • I configured and maintained the ITEU’s network container on the campus network (Novell Netware)
  • I have installed and configured the Apache web server, Jakarta Tomcat and Microsoft SQL Server

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS AND SKILLS

  • I am a member of the British Computer Society
  • I have gained the ITIL Foundation Certificate for IT Service Management
  • After three years of membership of Io (the University of Glasgow Science Fiction and Fantasy society), I was elected its treasurer. As well as looking after money, this involves taking a hand in running the society, giving me a chance to show my organisational skills and people management skills.
  • I am fluent in Punjabi

INTERESTS

  • I was a staff representative on the University of Glasgow’s Race Relations Coordinating Group from 2002 until it was disbanded in 2007,
  • I enjoy reading considerably, particularly within the science fiction genre and between 2001 and 2008 was production editor of a small Glasgow-based science fiction magazine called TBD, coordinating a small team of volunteers to produce the magazine on a bimonthly basis
  • Over the past several years, I have acquired an interest and appreciation of the theatre and other arts such as ballet and opera.
  • I am currently webmaster of the open-source MultiZilla project, an extension for the SeaMonkey (Mozilla) open-source web suite.