development / design / triathlon

Archives for category: Betfair

Moving on…

August 27, 12 //

Last Friday was my last day at Betfair! After almost 2 years, I’ve decided a change was needed. I learnt a lot while being at Betfair, both technically and in team working skills. Some might argue that I’m opinionated and grumpy, but I’m just passionate about my job and I certainly grew a lot as an independent developer with my own ideas.

I’m starting straight away after this bank holiday week-end! No time to cool off or become a couch potato, I’m really excited to go to Lovefilm/Amazon next week, and it should be a great place to be!

I’ll have to update my commuting plans, the distance now being roughly 14 miles by bike, but I should be able to do that a couple of times a week without impacting too much my energy levels to be able to still have good week-end focused sessions. The train will have to become my friend a few times a week too, but I also have in mind to restore my mum’s 1974 motorised bike in the future. That should make for a nice little mechanics project, and a new way to get around!

Recruiters = Scammers?

August 17, 11 //

Parcel Farce

Today I received a strange phone call. Someone whom I forgot the name from claimed to be from parcelforce, and told me there was a parcel waiting to be delivered to me, but for security reasons, in case I wasn’t able to receive it myself, he needed me to give me “two security names”…

Now, I’m aware those sort of phone calls are simply dumb stupid recruiters trying to obtain names of people inside the company, and I could well have hung up straight away, but I was keen to dig a bit more!

(more…)

I’m a front-end dev!!

July 29, 11 //

This post could also be entitled/summarised with “rant, rant, rant”, but for my own sake, I’ll make the effort of explaining what’s behind it.

My full time job title is “Front-end developer”. To anyone outside the web industry, it either means “err…. no idea”, or “a dude that makes websites”. To the initiated and (most) of my coworkers and industry pals, it means a whole lot more: I’m an expert in HTML, CSS, javascript (front-end technologies)… (more…)

Working on a Saturday

May 28, 11 //

Courtesy of Ivan de Marino, while taking a break from the total lack of aircon at work today.

On the terrace at Betfair

100 days

March 30, 11 //

… at betfair =) And unlike the many things that happened on Ivan’s 100th day, mine started quite quietly.

Well, that’s if you can call a 5:30am work day start quiet, but to some respect it is

It’s still pitch dark when I woke up, and only for a few birds singing here and there, there was no noise outside.
Cycling to work was the easiest, smoothest and fast I’ve ever done. Given the time, there was no one on the road and for a cyclist in London, that’s absolute bliss!!
No one on the office! I can put my music on and relax a bit while not having to cope with some others loud interactions and constant calls for attention.
I’ve been entrusted the responsibility to deploy content to the live production website of Betfair and all went super smoothly in less than 15 minutes.
Light is coming through the bay windows, sun is going to rise soon over the Thames.

So far it’s been an incredible journey these last 100 days, both professionally and personally, and this just makes me happy.

colleagues

January 4, 11 //

Isn’t that beautiful?

this=that

November 3, 10 //

Just posting a link for you javascripters: incredibly useful reminder from Timbo on OO Javascript and the his follow ups on method and technical
God boost for my start at betfair!

This is it!

October 24, 10 //

After 4 years with Orange, I am moving to a new company!

Since my masters project in June 2006 on TCP-UDP interactions in IP networks, I have covered quite a lot of ground. Going through IMS platforms and heavy SIP testing, full blown javascript Mobile Web OS running on Symbian and a myriad of prototypes using web technologies with PHP, Ruby on Rails, prototype, jQuery and a lot of other fancy things that I call “job search keywords”; I have become the web developer that I am today.

I have had the chance to be in projects that have made it all the way to being products, like My Social Life and snapshot, and although most of the stuff I’ve done did not get through the stringent French filter on what is good and what is useless (according to their ideas), I can’t complain too much for I had a nice ride! (Quite comfy as well!)

There have been quite a few nice people around me that taught me a few things, Simon and Thomas in particular, and other like Calum and Ivan hat have always made me want to push myself to show them who’s the daddy! (Not sure this last one has been successful, but the battle shall continue as I’ll join him!)

To all of these people, named and not named (sorry I can’t name you all, but you are not fogotten), I want to send a big thank you! (And I blame Simon for getting me into triathlon. Thanks man! You need to come for a ride some day!)

So, I am going to join the front end development team at Betfair in a weeks time and I can’t wait to start! I know that sounds strange, but hey, who with reasonable ambition does not like a good challenge?!

So Ivan, warm up that coffee machine, I’m coming!