Nick Welch

Software Developer

Skills

Work Experience

  1. Parthenon Software Group

    April 2009 - present

    Production Software Developer
    • Revamp and streamline code deployment and testing processes. Heavy use of Git and Subversion; lots of branching and merging.
    • Instrumental in nudging the team towards better technologies and processes: Git instead of Subversion, Linux instead of Windows, InnoDB instead of MyISAM (in MySQL), Amazon S3 instead of delicate shared filesystems, unit testing, Django/Python instead of PHP (for new projects), and others.
    • Implemented many new features and incrementally improved and replaced legacy “spaghetti” code.

  2. Rentrak Corporation

    August 2006 - May 2008

    Software Developer
    • Developed new features and bug fixes for Theatrical Box Office Essentials, a data warehousing and business intelligence service.
    • Worked with Perl, Oracle, and Linux to collect and summarize large volumes of box office transactions efficiently and in accordance with complex business rules.
    • Maintained and expanded delivery of information to film industry clients via both interactive website and automated feeds. (XML, CSV, SOAP, RSS, proprietary formats, etc.)

  3. Xerox Corporation

    November 2005 - August 2006

    Test Technician
    • Emulated customer use of multifunction printers and recorded defects.
    • Used in-house software to remotely control printers and analyze debug logging data from printers’ internal computers to troubleshoot problems.
    • Created occasional scripts and programs to help automate tasks when possible and advised colleagues and superiors on using Sun Unix machines and other technical matters.

  4. Stratassemble

    January 2005 - August 2005

    Lead Web Developer and Linux Admin
    • Designed and built a wiki-based project management web application using Python, MySQL, and Javascript.
    • Installed and maintained Debian Linux on server.
    • Learned Ruby programming language from scratch and built a dynamic database-driven website with Ruby on Rails for a small side project.

  5. River Cities’ Reader

    February 2003 - November 2003

    Lead Intranet Developer and IT Person
    • Designed and implemented internal web application in PHP and MySQL for tracking and managing advertising sales.
    • Administrated Debian Linux server and Redhat PCs.
    • Supported all network and general computing issues.
    • Made occasional improvements/fixes to public website which was also built in PHP.

Open Source and Hobby Projects

Elf
Mini-ITX computer case design that is laser-cut.
htpicker
Home theater frontend program. Uses WebKit, Python, and jQuery.
mpris-remote
Command-line tool for controlling MPRIS-capable music players.
py-libmpdclient
Python client library for the Music Player Daemon project, a networked music player.
TinyWM
Tiny X11 window manager written in around 50 lines of C.
Markovio
Randomized level generator for a popular classic video game, using a Markov chain algorithm.

mpris-remote, py-libmpdclient, and TinyWM have been officially packaged in Debian and Ubuntu.

Participation in Tech User Groups and Events