Personal details

Nicholas O. - Remote

Nicholas O.

Timezone: Auckland (UTC+12)

Summary

Technology fundamentalist, prefer to understand how things works than to simply copy/paste and hope for the best... I am not able to code on a whiteboard, if you can great, seems pretty impractical to me, things change all the time, like every week. I produce concrete results in a practical world, on a screen connected to the internet. Currently working on React Native mobile apps with Ruby backends deployed to containers.

Technical skills

Personal Projects

Custom PDF generator
2011
Ruby
princexml
Client needed a PDF generator, they had designs from a desinger in PSD format and needed them connected to computer generated text. There were multiple PDFs and multiple templates to fill. From Quotes to Monthly Reports to form letters. Created a Ruby HTTP API interface that took in JSON data + a defined template in HTML/CSS and returned PDFs. The PDF engine used was PrinceXML which is by far the BEST HTML/CSS engine I've used. Using PrinceXML was able to create pixel perfect renderings of the PSDs and they were super crisp as well as lightweight filesize wise.
Quoting Engine
2011
Ruby
Ext JS
Client needed a Quote Engine for generating Vehicle Finance Quotes for various products. Needed to be able to update rates easily and produce quotes instantly. Was able to take their Financer Rate Cards and replicate them as is so that whomever was updating the rates could quickly update the information. In the backend all of those rate cards were standardised. The engine was also used as the backend for their online quote forms. The engine had two parts to it, the API for quotes and the frontend display piece depending on which site it needed to show up on. Each frontend rendering could have custom params that influenced the results as needed. Then internally there was a third interface that the companies agents used to generate their quotes across all their products.