Hi, my name is Chris
I have recently trained to become a Junior Software EngineerI have 20 years experience in the customer service sector which, until recently, took me as far as living in Italy. It was a gorgeous place to work!! Unfortunately, the combination of Brexit and Covid meant I had to return to the UK. So I decided to take a immersive full-stack software engineering course inspired by my interest in technology and the internet. I am looking for somewhere that I can take my recent education and build on it, learning from others but also bringing my experience of working in a team and with clients.
Please explore my site. There's a bit more about me, the projects I have completed on my course and some of my interests
Technologies and Skills
Bootstrap
CSS3
Django
Express
Github
Heroku
HTML5
Insomnia
JavaScript
MongoDB
Mongoose
Netlify
NodeJS
NPM
PostgreSQL
Python
React
SASS
VSCode
Yarn
My Projects
For this project I built my own full-stack app using a Python Django API to serve my data from a Postgres database. The frontend was built using React. It has CRUD functionality with OnetoMany and ManytoMany relationships. Cloudinary was used to store all of the images. I created a football app exploring some of the greatest players and clubs in european football.
For this project, in a team using GitHub, we built our own API and front end website as a Travel Database app. This included user and authentication features using JSL tokens. We also used AWS and Cloudinary to store images for the database. I was responsible for the look and styling off the app along with building many of the frontend components.
We built a React application that consumes and uses a public API. I used Insomnia to test out GET and POST API requests and this also taught me how to useState and useEffect within an application. Using API requests we created a slick CSS/SASS designed app that would bring up cocktails recipes by selecting various alcoholic ingredients.
About Me
A lot has happened since 2020 for everyone and it's the same for me too. From 2017 to 2020 I was working for TUI in the summer and Crystal Ski in the winter. I had been working numerous customer service jobs in the UK and I really needed a change. I started working as a holiday rep out in Agadir, Morocco and for my winter seasons I decided to work as a ski rep.
After one summer and one winter season I was promoted to Resort Manager. This was a real step up in responsibility as I was now in charge of teams of reps in various different locations. I spent the following two summers and winter working in Italy. In summer I was on Lake Garda and in winter I was working in the beautiful Aosta Valley.
Unfortunately Brexit then happened and I didn't have the benefit of a grandparent from Ireland to gain me an EU passport!! So I had to come back to good old blighty. To get a job straight away I went back into the hospitality trade working in a pub, but it was too comfy, and I needed something to push me in my career now that the life of a seasonaire was over. Then lockdown happened. I've always had a big interest in computers and technology and looking online I saw that there were some great opportunities in software engineering. I always thought that I would have to go back to Uni to study but then I came across coding bootcamps.
After some research I decided to take the plunge and enroll in a 12-week Software Immersive Bootcamp with General Assembly. This course covered the fundamentals of web development from the frontend through to the backend. I met some great people and managed to produced some really cool and interesting projects which you can find on this site.
I've always wanted to know how the internet works and how data is prouduced and maintained so that everyday we can look at really cool websites that have shaped British culture over the last 20 years. Now is the next part of my journey and I think I'm in the right place!!
My Interests
My Dog Percy
We adopted Percy from a dog home in Cyprus way back at the start of the first covid lockdown in May 2020. He was picked up by the local pound wandering around on the beach after being abandoned. He was a big ball of matted fur but luckily my girlfriend saw through this online and we adopted him. It took him 6 months to be perfectly comfortable with us but now he is my best mate!! He loves walks in the countryside
Blackburn Rovers
I've always been a big fan of football. I can remember the glory days around the start of the Premier League era and I was also a massive Serie A fan in the late 90s. As a teenager my Grandad used to take me to see his local club Blackburn Rovers. As they had just starting signing top players I was very excited to start supporting them aswell. Back then, Blackburn had such good support and the atmosphere at Ewood Park was great when we were in the Premier League. I was a season ticket holder until I moved abroad with TUI and miss going to games regularly. Unfortunately Blackburn are far from the team they used to be and it's very rare to see Ewood at full capacity anymore.
Computer Games
I love playing computer games. When I moved abroad I made sure I got a decent gaming laptop!! I've always worked part-time as a teenager so I always made sure I had a decent PC that could play the latest games. I don't really play console anymore, even though I did manage to get a PS5 in lockdown!! I used to play a lot of sports games and a lot of Call of Duty but nowadays I really like slower paced games that involve more of a story. Currently my favourite game to play is Grounded. I've been playing it on early access for the last couple of years but it was fully released this summer and is a brilliant game. You play one of 4 kids that have been shrunk in their back garden. (If your old enough think "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" as a exploration crafting game) You have to survive in an environment which is full of 80s and 90s retro memorabilia but you are the size of an ant!! Think of giant wheelbarrows, scary spider holes and giant killer bugs and you start to get the gist. Check it out!
