Changing How the World Works.
 
 
  • Feedback:   (5.00 of 5)
  • Percentile: 99%
    Based on 1 feedbacks
Total oDesk hours:
505
Location:
Bangkok, Thailand (GMT+07:00)
English Skills: (self-assessed)
5.0
Member Since:
July 24, 2008
Last Worked:
November 20, 2008
Current Assignments:
1
Total Assignments:
2
oDesk Ready:  
Yes
 
 
 
 
Affiliated with: Proven Corporation
Feedback:  (5.00 of 5)
Percentile: 99%
Based on 1 feedbacks
Total oDesk hours:
505
Location:
Bangkok, Thailand (GMT+07:00)
Member Since:
July 24, 2008
Last Worked:
November 20, 2008
Current Assignments:
1
Total Assignments:
2
 
 
 
 

Jason Smith - Free and open source software expert - Proven Corporation Programmer / Developer, Thailand

I am an infrastructure, software, and security expert with ten years of experience building software and solutions on Linux and Unix. My primary skill is understanding free software ("open source") components and using them to make a coherent whole. I excel  at making magic happen seemingly out of thin air with no budget and on  gruesome deadlines.
See All Work History & Feedback (2 items, 1 with Feedback)
Recent Work History & Feedback
Buyer ID From/To Job Title Hours Feedback
54100 09/2008 - Present architect, senior developer Ruby on Rails 427 hrs
54100 09/2008 - 09/2008 architect, senior developer Ruby on Rails 78 hrs
See All Tests Taken (15 items)
oDesk Tests Taken
Name of Test Score Percentile Date Taken Duration
English Test (Sentence Structure) 5.00 99% TOP 10% 1st Place! 07/24/2008 10 min
oDesk Readiness Test for Independent Contractors and Company Managers 5.00 99% TOP 10% 1st Place! 07/24/2008 23 min
Editing Skills Certification 4.75 99% TOP 10% 07/24/2008 14 min
CSS 2.0 Test 4.50 98% TOP 10% 08/06/2008 31 min
System Programming Test 4.40 97% TOP 10% 1st Place! 08/06/2008 35 min
Skills
Skill Experience Level Last Used Description
AJAX 1 yrs 2.0 2007
C#/.Net 2 yrs 4.0 2008
C/C++/Unix 10 yrs 5.0 2008
CSS 5 yrs 3.0 2008
Facebook 1 yrs 3.0 2008
GTK programming 1 yrs 1.0 2004
HTML/DHTML 10 yrs 3.0 2008
Java 1 yrs 2.0 2007
JavaScript 3 yrs 3.0 2008
LaTeX 2 yrs 1.0 2002
MySQL 5 yrs 2.0 2008
Perl 10 yrs 5.0 2008
PHP 2 yrs 2.0 2008
Plone 1 yrs 2.0 2004
PostgreSQL 1 yrs 3.0 2008
Python 5 yrs 5.0 2008
Rails 1 yrs 3.0 2008
Ruby 1 yrs 3.0 2008
SQLite 2 yrs 3.0 2008
Systems Programming 2 yrs 4.0 2005
TCP/IP 10 yrs 5.0 2008
Unix Shell 10 yrs 5.0 2008
WordPress 1 yrs 2.0 2008
Zope/Python 1 yrs 2.0 2004
Certifications
Date Earned Name Score Percentile Organization Description
No Certifications
Employment History
From To Company Title/Role Description
01/2007 Present Proven Corporation Principal / Executive Deliver software and solutions to customers
Education
From To School Degree Area of Study Description
09/2000 08/2003 University of Texas at Austin Bachelors Physics

[+] enlarge
  • Project Title: Siam eBook Printers
  • Attachment: none
  • Completed: 07/27/2008
  • Category: Web Development > Web Programming
  • URL: http://printbooks.in.th
  • Description: As a side project to my software and solution business, I developed this site to offer a dead-simple ebook printing service in Thailand. This site eliminates the communication difficulties that foreigners encounter when using the local workforce.  The idea is simple: attach a PDF, supply your address, and a nice hard copy arrives in the mail in a couple of days.

     I performed both the programming and the design.  This site is powered by Ruby on Rails, with an even mix of PDFtk and Perl code to do the heavy lifting with the PDF files themselves.  (It took a lot of work to support all the non-standard PDFs out there; and I practically learned the entire Adobe PDF spec in the process.)

     Please see the site and click on an example to see how it works.  The core interface of the site is that it will generate a real-time preview of every page of the book, so you can zoom in and see how it will look on the page, where the cropping will be, etc.

     And stay tuned—I intend to release this application as free software in the near future.

[+] enlarge
  • Project Title: Small Free and Open Source Projects
  • Attachment: none
  • Completed: 06/26/2008
  • Category: Software Development > Desktop Applications
  • URL: http://www.proven-corporation.com/software/
  • Description: I maintain several small free software ("open source") projects that satisfy some particular need of mine.  Please follow any of these links to read more about them or view their source code and repository history.

    Tomboy Wordcount
     This is a C# .NET plugin (or "addin") for the excellent Tomboy note taking application which runs on Mono.  As I often draft oDesk cover letters in Tomboy, this plugin gives me a rough feel of whether I need to trim it down to fit size requirements.

    Quick oDesk Profile
     This is a simple Greasemonkey script which provides you with a link to view your public profile from anywhere within the site.

    Fancy LWN Comments
     This is another Greasemonkey script to improve the comment system on the excellent LWN news site, allowing the user to mark comments read and unread, and also to have guests posts be hidden in the display.

    Bzr Notification
     In early 2008, I developed this plugin for the Bazaar-NG revision control system.  This very straightforward plugin simply pops up a window when a push or pull is complete. While small and simple, it remains the most downloaded software on my web site, which goes to show that sometimes the simple and direct glue code provides the most value to people.

[+] enlarge
  • Project Title: Global Load Balancer
  • Attachment: glb.pdf - 35.698KB
  • Completed: 01/30/2006
  • Category: Software Development > Client-Server Applications
  • URL: http://www.proven-corporation.com/static/glb/
  • Description: At my former company, in a follow-up contract with a large Thai university, I lead a project to develop a lightweight content distribution network (CDN).  The final product was a distributed Python (Twisted) server cluster supporting a site with six servers on four continents with about two hundred thousand students.

    I performed the design, implementation, documentation and whitepaper, deployment, and maintenance.  Heck, I even recorded the screencast—that's my voice you will hear if you follow the project URL link.

    Unfortunately, the company web site (oes.co.th) is very slow from outside of Thailand.  So I have mirrored the demo on my site; but feel free to follow the links given in the screencast, read the whitepaper, etc.

[+] enlarge
  • Project Title: Strangle
  • Attachment: none
  • Completed: 01/14/2006
  • Category: Software Development > Other - Software Development
  • URL: http://www.proven-corporation.com/software/strangle/
  • Description: I developed the open source Strangle tool (originally called Constrict) as a subcomponent of the larger GLB application.  Strangle is a Python interface to the BIND 9 packet parsing libraries.  Using Strangle, it is trivial for a Python programmer to examine the contents of all types of DNS messages, using the power of the BIND code beneath the hood.

    Please see the project web site for documentation and screenshots.

[+] enlarge
  • Project Title: Suriyan
  • Attachment: none
  • Completed: 10/15/2005
  • Category: Software Development > Client-Server Applications
  • URL: http://www.oes.co.th/projects/suriyan/wiki
  • Description: I was the initial primary developer of the Suriyan project, a Linux distribution for small and medium-sized companies. Suriyan is a dead-simple distribution that supports many common corporate activities:
    • Network infrastructure
    • Centralized file and document storage
    • Email and mailing lists
    • Instant messaging
    • Collaboration and documentation
    • Customer issue tracking
    Please see the full components list to get an idea of the degree of integration that Suriyan boasts.

    Unfortunately, the project was cancelled long after my contract expired, so there is no longer an official web site.  However I have made a Git archive of the full Subversion source, which you can clone from git://proven-corporation.com/suriyan (it is a 1GB download).

[+] enlarge
  • Project Title: DiskSafe
  • Attachment: none
  • Completed: 06/10/2004
  • Category: Software Development > Other - Software Development
  • URL: http://www.proven-corporation.com/static/ds-doc/
  • Description: This was a backup, restore, and network OS cloning tool.  It was a Linux live CD and was essentially an embedded environment.  The software could take point-in-time snapshots of the operating sytstem which could be restored later or "broadcasted" to other systems on the LAN.

    In addition to performing all design and programming, I wrote the documentation using DocBook.  You can download the demo CD and boot it.  (I recommend using virtualization as the product is no longer maintained.)

    This project involved plenty of interesting technology:
    • 100% custom Linux live CD optimized for small size (15MB)
    • Ran completely from RAM so the CD could be ejected after bootup
    • Tons of open source software components
    • Support for a huge variety of network and hard disk hardware
    • Hands-free, "just-works" network autoconfig with Sevice Location Protocol (SLP).  (Apple's Bonjour had just been invented and certainly wasn't available on Linux yet!)
    • Several novel Linux technologies such as boot splash, framebuffer console, NTFS Tools, GNU Parted, and Partimage
    • Very fast and reliable multicast data transfer system (UDPCast)
Hourly Assignment History
Buyer ID From/To Job Title Hours Feedback
54100 09/2008 - Present architect, senior developer Ruby on Rails 427 hrs
54100 09/2008 - 09/2008 architect, senior developer Ruby on Rails 78 hrs
Fixed-Price Assignment History
Buyer ID From/To Job Title Paid Feedback
Fixed-Price Assignment History is empty
oDesk Tests Taken
Name of Test Score Percentile Date Taken Duration
English Test (Sentence Structure) 5.00 99% TOP 10% 1st Place! 07/24/2008 10 min
oDesk Readiness Test for Independent Contractors and Company Managers 5.00 99% TOP 10% 1st Place! 07/24/2008 23 min
Editing Skills Certification 4.75 99% TOP 10% 07/24/2008 14 min
CSS 2.0 Test 4.50 98% TOP 10% 08/06/2008 31 min
System Programming Test 4.40 97% TOP 10% 1st Place! 08/06/2008 35 min
Unix Test 4.50 97% TOP 10% 07/25/2008 13 min
Perl 5 Test 4.25 97% TOP 10% 07/25/2008 28 min
Internet Security Test 3.90 97% TOP 10% 07/27/2008 20 min
HTML 4.01 Test 4.40 97% TOP 10% 07/31/2008 38 min
Python 2.x Test 4.40 96% TOP 10% 07/25/2008 35 min
Unix Shell Script 3.75 91% TOP 10% 07/26/2008 38 min
Redhat Linux 9.0 Admin Test 3.75 91% TOP 10% 08/01/2008 36 min
Networking Concepts Test 4.25 90% TOP 10% 07/24/2008 28 min
TCP/IP 3.90 87% TOP 20% 07/25/2008 35 min
Email Etiquette Certification 3.60 83% TOP 20% 07/24/2008 6 min