Garth Denley's Home Page
  

Welcome to my humble home page! Thanks for dropping by.
 
About Me
If you'd like to find out more about me, please skip down to the section that is of most interest to you. Potential clients and employers are probably more interested in my professional side. Everyone else is probably interested in my personal side.
Professional
I have over ten years of commercial software development experience, and many additional years of software development experience in a hobby capacity. I am also an experienced system administrator and have worked in an IT support capacity.

I hold a First-Class Computer Science Honours degree from the University of Adelaide, and graduated at the top of my class. I won the School prize for the highest overall result that year.

In my career I have worked in commercial game development, in Defence performing software development in the area of computer security, in system administration and support roles, in a high-performance computing environment, in a national Cloud/Grid computing role, and in my own business. I have worked with external and internal clients. I have worked as a tutor and in a mentoring capacity with fellow employees and students. In my business I developed a commercial software product from initial conception through design, development, and to successful completion; followed by maintenance, sales, and support.

I have been both principally and primarily responsible for many successful projects through my career. I have the proven ability to undertake and successfully complete software development projects of considerable complexity, both under direction and completely independently as required.

I have considerable software development experience, the majority of which is with C++, along with some Java. I am also skilled with Ruby scripting. I have a solid background working with Linux systems. I have knowledge and experience in the use of many other languages, tools, and operating systems. I have the demonstrated ability to learn quickly.

I am interested in and presently available for part-time or casual work from early November 2009. I am also available for short-term contracts from January 2010. Please note that I am not available for permanent/long-term full-time positions at this time. I am happy to take on short-term and emergency appointments to cover additional projects, increased workload, unexpected short-staffing, or other requirements. If you cannot allocate the funds to cover a full-time position but would still prefer a highly-experienced system administrator or software developer ahead of a less experienced employee, you may find my willingness to work part-time on a long-term basis to be very useful.

I am based in South Australia in the Adelaide suburbs, approximately twenty minutes from the CBD. I am happy to work remotely from my home office if you are not based in South Australia. I am not looking to relocate at this time.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you feel that I can be of assistance to your business or organisation. My Curriculum Vitae is available on request. I can provide numerous positive references from past supervisors and coworkers. If you are interested, my contact details can be found at the bottom of this page (or click here). I hope to hear from you soon.

Game Development
I have been involved in successful commercial game development as part of a team, as a sole independent game developer, and in a hobby capacity.

Some of the games I have worked on are:
  • E.V.E. Paradox: A game suite of five games that I successfully developed as a sole independent developer as part of my business, Entropic Software. I took this project from initial concept through development to completion, sales and support. Sadly, whilst it did sell, it did not sell well enough to be a commercial success. More information can be found here.
  • XBlast: A multi-player dynablaster clone. As co-author, I contributed a number of levels and a features back in my Uni days.
  • A commercial car racing game: I worked on the physics, control code, and initial networking, amongst other things.
  • Crossfire: I made some small contributions to reduce the severity of character death and balance low levels in this game.
  • Stun Chasey: My first ever attempt at shareware. :) This was a game for the Amiga. You've probably never heard of it, unless you tried a lot of Aminet software.
  • Raid of the Easter Eggs: My first game with a wide audience. This Easter-themed game was apparently a hit at my old primary school. It involved sneaking around the house collecting easter eggs before your family woke up. I wrote it whilst in high school.
  • Literally dozens of small, unreleased games for the Amiga and C64.

I am working on a new game as part of my business Entropic Software. I am keeping the details fairly quiet at this stage, but this will change in the future. If you'd like to know more, let me know. When the time comes, I'll drop you a line.
Personal
My past and present interests include: Rock climbing, squash, netball, chocolate, live music, chocolate, game development, and chocolate. Did I mention chocolate?

I am throughly addicted to chocolate, especially from these guys (though these guys are pretty good too).

If you meet me in person or talk to me, I will come across as friendly, outgoing, and optimistic. I am, however, a realist, and tend to be the one who is prepared when things don't turn out quite how they should.

I tend to question the status-quo when I feel there is something wrong with the conventional approach. I do this because I firmly believe in embracing improvement where the opportunity exists. I believe that most advances in society have been brought about by someone questioning the status-quo.

Everyone has a talent for something.

I like to learn.

I can admit when I am wrong, but I try my hardest not to be.

I have my flaws; we all do. What is important is what you choose to do about them.

I'm not much of a TV person, but I have been known to enjoy: Futurama, Firefly, Drawn Together, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Iron Chef. Of course, my enjoyment of a program pretty-much guarantees that it will be canceled at some point.

I have a throughly inappropriate sense of humour. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, in time I will make you laugh.

I have no shortage of ideas, just the time to implement them all.
Contact
If you'd like to drop me a line, please feel free to do so. I can be reached here:



I hope to hear from you soon! :)

Garthy