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Hello, my name is Stephen Gray and this is my online space.
Feel free to navigate around and let me know what you think. If you want to get in touch, my details are on the contact page.
Feel free to navigate around and let me know what you think. If you want to get in touch, my details are on the contact page.
Before this site there resided here a very basic event aggregation page which listed updates from my Twitter account and Blog.
I knew it wasn't enough to keep me satisfied. I've had this domain for years and the only reason I put that page up was to get rid of the nothingness that was here, the white page of a domain with no content. Also, I didn't exactly post regular updates to either of those sources...
So I finally decided to do something about it. I didn't want anything too 'flashy' or 'in your face'. I didn't want a heavy dependency on javascript or lots of hacky CSS tricks. I just wanted something subtle and simple that had information that was easy to read and nice to look at.
Also I want the site to act as my development playground. Somewhere I can post new projects or experiments to and play around with new JS functionality without caring what a client thinks. I only have myself to dissapoint :)
The event aggregation is still here but it looks a shed load better than it did. I'm also not going to post any previous projects here, just new ones. A clean slate if you will. I like it that way.
I'm 22 years old and currently living in Coulsdon, Surrey with my beautiful wife Kara, our adorable son Ethan and our many pets (cats, dog, fish).
I've always been into web development. I love creating things. I've tried my hand at all aspects of web development, from front end including graphic design to system setup and of course to back end development. Everything I know at the moment has been self taught either through tutorials, from working around other developers or from good old trial and error. A LOT of trial and error.
I used to say that PHP is my main language, but I love working with Javascript so much that it's becoming a strong competitor. Yes I work with PHP every day and all of my server side code is in the language, but there is something about working with Javascript - especially since the introduction of the popular libraries - that just can't be beat.
I've been working in e-commerce development for a while now, covering all scenarios to do with the field, from the odd web site to developing fully loaded commercial level e-commerce platforms and I'm pretty confident that I can deal with any aspect of an e-commerce system.
My focus lately has been on integrating third party services or products with e-commerce platforms to provide seamless experiences for the end user. There are a number of services or products that have reputations of being hard or impossible to integrate with and it is these services or products that I am determined to find a way to work with.
I am always looking for ways to challenge myself so if you have a project you believe I would be well suited for, please let me know.
My current skill set;
PHP
- OOP
- MVC architecture
- Design patterns
- Agile Software Development
- Symfony. Symfony is an MVC based framework for PHP. More information can be found here. I've done a number of projects in this framework and feel very confident about my capabilities with it.
- Silverstripe. Silverstripe is a very nice CMS platform with a nice sized community. It is written on top of the Sapphire PHP framework, developed by the same people. More information can be found here.
- Magento. Magento is a very strong platform offering almost everything you could want to do with e-commerce. More information can be found here.
- Ability to consume any type of web service (SOAP, RESTful, cURL etc).
- Stored procedures
- Triggers
- Strong SQL
- AJAX
- Literal object notation
- Client side pseudo MVC pattern
- jQuery. I've been using jQuery for a number of years now and pretty much everything I do in javascript is now done in jQuery. From my point of view it's the best javascript library currently available. More information can be found here.
Flex
XML
CSS
Linux
Apache
Subversion
RESTful web services
SOAP
- Modular applications
- Communication with back end systems using RESTful web services written in PHP.
XML
CSS
Linux
Apache
Subversion
RESTful web services
SOAP
Tweet from 5th February 10 at 15:22:23
"Finally got round to updating my site with something a bit less of an eye sore; http://s-gray.com"
Tweet from 2nd February 10 at 12:14:31
"@georgeioannou hey, sorry only just got your tweet :P I'll update my linkedin"
Tweet from 18th January 10 at 07:52:12
"Released s3Cinch a short while ago. Automated Amazon S3 backups. Now at version 1.3, check it out: http://code.google.com/p/s3cinch"
Blog post from 14th January 10 at 02:22:05
"I’ve just released the first version of s3Cinch, a script I wrote in PHP for archiving and backing up any file, folder or MySQL database t [...]"
Tweet from 30th December 09 at 03:36:06
"Didn't write a spec this time so coding 'a la carte'. Working out well, so far..."
Tweet from 29th December 09 at 15:14:03
"Also got the goal of having a framework which is easy for developers AND non developers to use..."
Tweet from 29th December 09 at 15:13:38
"Started writing an MVC style framework for fun. Trying to keep the importance of dependency injection in mind."
Tweet from 8th December 09 at 06:15:14
"Got tired of my domain being a white page so stuck a quick events page up ;) Pretty basic... http://s-gray.com"
Tweet from 11th November 09 at 01:49:32
"New blog post: creating a custom payment gateway for Magento. http://bit.ly/2KdzOz"
Blog post from 11th November 09 at 01:42:18
"I've been doing some work with the Magento e-commerce platform lately and my task was to create a new payment method to use during the standard [...]"
Tweet from 10th November 09 at 12:59:33
"Ok. New job, new motivation. Going to use this as a reason to make this thing active. Oh yeah, and that blog…"
Blog post from 27th July 09 at 02:06:16
"You make an AJAX call within a jQuery function and you want the call to be synchronous so that you can use the data from the call in the functio [...]"
Tweet from 12th July 09 at 16:11:06
"looking into Facebook application development for the first time. initial impressions; very well thought out"
Tweet from 12th July 09 at 14:54:01
"writing an mvc.. again. but much better.. i hope. i promise myself i will one day write one i'm happy with and keep with it"
Tweet from 12th July 09 at 14:42:52
"at that stage of fatigue where i'm becoming more motivated to code :) can anyone relate or is this overwork madness?"
Blog post from 29th June 09 at 02:59:24
"A small snippet for performing custom SQL queries using symfony 1.2.3. The method to do this has varied slightly with the different symfony releases."
Tweet from 27th May 09 at 00:34:59
"Wow haven't updated this in a while, must try harder!"
Blog post from 24th April 09 at 02:16:58
"On my first post on this blog I posted a small snippet to use a small regex pattern in jQuery selectors. This doesn't work anymore, go here for [...]"
Blog post from 2nd March 09 at 03:20:34
"Fix for symfony's annoying "Database "" does not exist." error."
Tweet from 21st December 08 at 08:41:58
"Wife and I were bored so opened a present each early! Shock horror, don't tell the parents"
Mouse over an update
Tweet from 5th February 10 at 15:22:23
"Finally got round to updating my site with something a bit less of an eye sore; http://s-gray.com"
Tweet from 2nd February 10 at 12:14:31
"@georgeioannou hey, sorry only just got your tweet :P I'll update my linkedin"
Tweet from 18th January 10 at 07:52:12
"Released s3Cinch a short while ago. Automated Amazon S3 backups. Now at version 1.3, check it out: http://code.google.com/p/s3cinch"
Tweet from 30th December 09 at 03:36:06
"Didn't write a spec this time so coding 'a la carte'. Working out well, so far..."
Tweet from 29th December 09 at 15:14:03
"Also got the goal of having a framework which is easy for developers AND non developers to use..."
Tweet from 29th December 09 at 15:13:38
"Started writing an MVC style framework for fun. Trying to keep the importance of dependency injection in mind."
Tweet from 8th December 09 at 06:15:14
"Got tired of my domain being a white page so stuck a quick events page up ;) Pretty basic... http://s-gray.com"
Tweet from 11th November 09 at 01:49:32
"New blog post: creating a custom payment gateway for Magento. http://bit.ly/2KdzOz"
Tweet from 10th November 09 at 12:59:33
"Ok. New job, new motivation. Going to use this as a reason to make this thing active. Oh yeah, and that blog…"
Tweet from 12th July 09 at 16:11:06
"looking into Facebook application development for the first time. initial impressions; very well thought out"
Tweet from 12th July 09 at 14:54:01
"writing an mvc.. again. but much better.. i hope. i promise myself i will one day write one i'm happy with and keep with it"
Tweet from 12th July 09 at 14:42:52
"at that stage of fatigue where i'm becoming more motivated to code :) can anyone relate or is this overwork madness?"
Tweet from 27th May 09 at 00:34:59
"Wow haven't updated this in a while, must try harder!"
Tweet from 21st December 08 at 08:41:58
"Wife and I were bored so opened a present each early! Shock horror, don't tell the parents"
Tweet from 21st December 08 at 08:26:09
"Tired from too much sleep, going to a family Christmas dooooo"
Tweet from 20th December 08 at 05:33:30
"Looked through cupboards and found some chicken teriyaki marinate to have for lunch, mmm..."
Tweet from 20th December 08 at 02:15:34
"Lazily watching crap Saturday morning tv and becoming depressed about the current financial situation"
Mouse over an update
Blog post from 14th January 10 at 02:22:05
"I’ve just released the first version of s3Cinch, a script I wrote in PHP for archiving and backing up any file, folder or MySQL database t [...]"
Blog post from 11th November 09 at 01:42:18
"I've been doing some work with the Magento e-commerce platform lately and my task was to create a new payment method to use during the standard [...]"
Blog post from 27th July 09 at 02:06:16
"You make an AJAX call within a jQuery function and you want the call to be synchronous so that you can use the data from the call in the functio [...]"
Blog post from 29th June 09 at 02:59:24
"A small snippet for performing custom SQL queries using symfony 1.2.3. The method to do this has varied slightly with the different symfony releases."
Blog post from 24th April 09 at 02:16:58
"On my first post on this blog I posted a small snippet to use a small regex pattern in jQuery selectors. This doesn't work anymore, go here for [...]"
Blog post from 2nd March 09 at 03:20:34
"Fix for symfony's annoying "Database "" does not exist." error."
Blog post from 26th September 08 at 06:53:19
"Fix for symfony error "Unable to parse default value as date/time value: '0000-00-00 00:00:00'""
Blog post from 22nd September 08 at 01:57:22
"I found out that jQuery has a nice little method for loading external scripts into the page at run time called getScript(). It basically gets th [...]"
Blog post from 17th September 08 at 10:03:49
"I wrote a while ago about creating a client side MVC system in javascript.
Yesterday at one of the talks SproutCore was mentioned. I had a look [...]"
Blog post from 17th September 08 at 09:54:49
"I had the fortune yesterday to attend the Google Developer Day 2008 in Wembley Stadium with a colleague from work.
We were told there were aroun [...]"
Blog post from 15th September 08 at 03:38:22
"Quick tutorial on how to retrieve the value of an edited cell from an AdvancedDataGrid."
Blog post from 28th August 08 at 09:59:15
"Some concepts for creating a client side MVC (or VC in this case) framework."
Blog post from 26th August 08 at 02:33:02
"If you’re a developer, I’m sure you would have seen XML namespaces somewhere before whilst looking at an XML document. But what are [...]"
Blog post from 11th August 08 at 04:33:32
"This is just a quick tutorial (more of a code snippet) for creating a very simple plugin for jQuery.
Of course, there are lots of tutorials arou [...]"
Blog post from 11th August 08 at 04:21:33
"This is a pretty simple one but there are surprisingly few tutorials showing the user simply how to get a selected RadioButtonGroup’s valu [...]"
Blog post from 8th August 08 at 03:20:34
"There are a number of tutorials on doing this around the web but I thought I’d write my own tailored tutorial on this topic.
I’m goi [...]"
Blog post from 6th August 08 at 06:14:14
"A couple of colleagues have suggested putting a basic reference to some SQL commands together. Instead of having to reference different tutorial [...]"
Blog post from 6th August 08 at 04:52:26
"I’ve just had a thought that it was hard to come accross resources for handling double click events on DataGrids in Flex 3.
There are lots [...]"
Blog post from 5th August 08 at 09:02:13
"UPDATE: The below method no longer works! Go here to see a tested, working method: http://ropox.net/archives/1081
This is the first tutorial on [...]"
Blog post from 24th July 08 at 13:49:38
"Welcome to my new blog. I will hopefully be updating it regularly with any thoughts or tutorials I think are useful to know as a web developer.
[...]"
Mouse over an update
s3Cinch
Status: Live
Current version: 1.4
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/s3cinch
Status: Live
Current version: 1.4
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/s3cinch
Simple to use command line script to backup to and manage your Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) account.
simpleORM
Status: Work in Progress
Current version: 0.0
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/simpleorm
Status: Work in Progress
Current version: 0.0
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/simpleorm
Straight forward, efficient, easily extendable database ORM. Initially just for MySQL.
restCinch
Status: Work in Progress
Current version: 0.0
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/restcinch
Status: Work in Progress
Current version: 0.0
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/restcinch
Command line script written in PHP to generate fully functioning RESTful web services from an existing MySQL database.
You can email me at: stephen at s-gray dot com