moberemk.com

The Life and Times of Mark P. Oberemk

You can find me pretty much everywhere

Watch for Falling Code

This site's something of a perpetual work-in-progress; this preliminary launch is more intended as a way to get something, anything, up that's better than the old page—hardly a very ambitious target I know, but content is king, so I'd say that basically qualifies this site as underdressed royalty.

Copyright Mark Oberemk 2014

Hi

I'm a web developer

I do web stuff. That's an intentionally open-ended description because I've worked at pretty much every level of web development. Right now I'm generally more focused on working with things that actual human users touch, but that doesn't mean I can't do the technical nitty-gritty just as well.

Some of my stronger skills:

  • Frontend Development
  • Backend Development
    • PHP (including CakePHP and CodeIgniter)
    • MySQL (or really general SQL)
    • Apache 2 (so basically the LAMP stack)
    • Ruby (on Rails)
    • and I've been playing around with Tornado a bit lately to experiment with web sockets
  • Some other languages
    • Exposure to the Android and Blackberry development platforms
    • Java
    • Ruby
    • Python
    • C/some C++
    • SPARC Assembly (it was for a class. please don't ask me to use it again)
  • And the other stuff
    • I have a degree in English literature too
    • And speak fluent French
    • Plus I've done some print work
    • And I can bake!

Here's some cool stuff I've been doing

  • Building Web Applications for Cities Near You

    I'm currently employed at CityWide Software as a web developer. I've worked on a few projects there, the biggest being a full-featured performance tracking and analysis tool, along with supporting clients in the use of the company's other software products.

  • Rebuilding a Corporate Website

    The corporate website was in need of a refresh to help better communicate the company's products and services, so I worked with teams across the company to build a new, updated website which would better communicate the company brand.

  • Mastering the Web for a Large Publication

    Another part of CityWide is the Public Sector Digest, a monthly publication targeted at public-sector officials and decision-makers, whose web presence I maintained and expanded.

  • Contributing to the Open-Source Community

    I love the open-source community, and since I use so many of their tools I try to give back when I see a potential issue or area for improvement in one of the tools I love. I also like to occasionally help others with their problems because it's just as much a learning experience for me as it is for them.

    (that's the reason why I try to open-source everything I'm allowed to, including this very site)

  • Scheherazade

    The world isn't ready for this side project of mine. Or maybe it's just that I'm not ready to show it off yet. Okay, so it's definitely the latter: I need to finish formalizing the documentation before releasing anything about it.

Here's some cool stuff I've done

  • Launching a Social Network (Alooksie)

    Once upon a time, these two guys came to me with a project idea for a web application. After months of prototypes and redesigns we eventually settled on building something we called Alooksie, a location and interest-based social network meant to connect you with the things in your community you never seem to hear about until after they happened. We even presented it at the Next 36 competition!

  • Freelancing

    During university, on top of, you know, university (classes, parties, and assorted student leadership positions make for a full life) I also happened to need money, and occasionally took on some freelance projects. Here's some recent work:

  • Co-founding Enactus Western

    Enactus is a fantastic program that encourages social enterprise in university students, and I'm proud of my part in helping found the Western chapter all those years ago. If you ever want to hear a story of epic drama and intrigue and a ragtag group of first-years struggling against the odds to found a club, feel free to ask me about it anytime!

  • Plus some miscellany sitting on Github

    I've got some side projects that I like to play with sitting on Github

    • Reimagining Western's Student Services

      Any Western student knows how painfully outdated (a 50mb e-mail account may have been big back in '04 but now....) our web services are. So for a class project, I put together a few static mockups of a new student center that was slightly less hostile to the modern-day web user. It's a very rough concept, what with being put together in roughly a weekend.

    • The Dungeon Mapper

      When I was heading in to an interview a year ago for a company that works in HTML5 games with no experience in the field, I felt a little nervous and unprepared. Which I was. Naturally the only rational response was to try and learn how to use the <canvas> the night before and build an interactive D&D board exploration system. Didn't get me the job, but it DID teach me a lot about drawing which I expanded upon for projects like CityWide Performance.