Who is Jules Jam?
Projects
Skills
Contact
julian.wyatt@julesjam.com
07805 574707
Learning Angular 9 and looking for freelance work
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Who is Jules Jam?...

Picture of julian wyatt

Hi. I am 'JulesJam'. My name is Julian Wyatt, you may ask why I have called my site 'JulesJam', it's a long story but Jam and Jam making seem to have popped up a number of times in my life and at one point I considered setting up a business making jam, however after one week of peeling oranges to make marmalade I began to think maybe that jam making was not the way forward! But I liked the name JulesJam which I had used for labelling and it kind of stuck...

So here is a little more about me...

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I qualified as a registered Pharmacist in 1989 – I resigned from the register in 2016 to pursue a new career in technology. Throughout my Pharmacy career I have very much focused on using technology to improve and enrich the businesses I have worked for. From helping to implement early EPOS systems to working with developers on an interactive online Doctor site more recently working with Webstar-Health in their development of a site to enable communication between Community and Hospital Pharmacists.

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Along the way I have taught myself Basic, DOS, QBasic, Visual Basic, Filemaker Scripting language, basic HTML, CSS, PHP and HL7. This year I was able to take time to undertake formal web devloper training with General Assembly, attending the Web Development Immersive course for 12 weeks through the summer of 2016. Over the 12 weeks we covered a whole host of the most up to date technologies, as listed in the education section of my site. I realise there is still alot to learn but now have a good formal grounding in web development. I am currently looking for a Junior Web Developer position in London.

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To see my full emplyment and education history you can download my CV here or visit my LinkedIn Profile.

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When I’m not undertaking an immersive coding course I keep myself busy with cycling, gardening, cooking, or travelling. I am also a keen but very much amateur photographer and so I usually like to combine all of these things by travelling to new places, if possible cycling around and trying the cuisine whilst taking photos. I am also very much interested in technology and science, I read New Scientist Magazine every week and bore my husband with Quantum Physics although this again is very much in an amateur way!

Projects...

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Here are the projects I have worked on.

The last four are projects which I created during the Full Stack Web Developer Course that I undertook at General Assembly. They are all pretty much minimum viable products I have decided to take these down from Heroku where they were hosted as they require numerous patches I have therefore just put links to the code on GitHub. I am now working on new projects which I am starting to add to this site.


Process...

I like to work by starting writing some pseudo code, a user journey to describe the project or by making a list of points I want to include in the application. I now use Trello to record these points so that they become action points. Once I have what I feel is a relatively comprehensive list of points I like to build fully formatted wireframes - I use Omnigraffle for this. I find that this helps to identify issues with missing components and makes it easier to keep a vision of the end product in focus. Once the wireframes are complete I add to the Trello board creating blocks of tasks to achieve.

This process is still evolving but seems to work well.


HTML CSS PHP Kirby CMS
A mutipage site built using Kirby CMS PHP as a backend with some vanilla javaScript for algorithims

This client required a speedy and cheap solution to build a webiste for better communication with the public. To expedite the speedy result I opted to use a ready built CMS using Kirby CMS I had already used this to create backends for two other sites for a client who specialises in Front End design and build but did not want to do the backend work Fennesz.com and JanaWinderen.com

To integrate Kirby I revisted my knowldege of PHP and updated it to the latest version (PHP 7.2). The result was my first full blown commercial project. The client was very pleased with the result.

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HTML CSS Angular (5) Node.js Authentication Google Maps
An authenticated web app to enable users to save and share lists of favourite restaurants, cafes and bars, users can invite other users from within the app.

Built using an Angular (5) front end with a separate Node.js API on the back end this was my first major 'post GA' project built to learn the differences between Angular.js and Angular. Of course things keep moving on so I am working on updating this to the latest Angular version.

Some key points were: To build on Authetntication, this application sends user confirmation emails by integrating Sendgrid to improve authentication of users.

Also to further make use of Google Maps API's to reduce user generated input, so this application locates users using the HTML5 geolocation api and then uses Google Maps to provide options for the location the users wants to add to their list and pre-populates the input form from the google data retrieved.

This was a good test at setting up the architecture of a front end, self built backend API and a remote Mongo database (currently hosted with mLab but to be ported over to MongoDb) without assisstance from GA tutors and to add SSL and a proper domain name.

MVPThis is very much MVP but it works and can be used however I will from time to time flush the database and will be undertaking some changes to the underlying datastructure in the future for new functions I have in mind so please don't use for real...just yet!

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The jules jam icon Screenshot of Scarbble game

Project #1 - SCARBBLE
July 2016

HTML CSS JavaScript jQuery API's Speech

Based on Scrabble, SCARBBLE was my first project built over 4 days. 2 players can play using regular scrabble rules. The game uses two API’s; one to check that words are valid and the other to speak the definition if speech is activated.

This was my first attempt at writing a full web applictaion and to use Javascript / jQuery. I had 4 days to build the app over a long weekend.

I am paticulalry pleased that the app uses a constructor function to build the board and two API's, at this point in the WDI course we had not covered API's so I was pleased to implement these myself.

If you currently try to play the game there is an issue with way in which the letter racks are currently auto-positioning but this can be fixed. The project was quite a challenge from a logic point of view as the scoring is a little more complex than I had originally anticipated, the app checks word validty using the Mashape Words API. Currently the logic will score words that cross over but there are some issues with the scoring words where the word starts or end with a letter that pre-exists on the board. On the last day of the project I found a better way to analyse the play for word intersections and re-wrote the logic for words intersecting on characters other than the first and last but still need to do this for other intersections - I intend to fix this in a re-write.

To play; the player in play clicks a letter on their rack and then clicks the square on the board where they want to play, letters can only be placed in playable squares. Whne the word is complete the player can click 'commit' to play the word. If there is no playable word the player can skip a turn and play passes to the other player.

If you click the speaker symbol at the top left of the screen then the word definitions will be converted to speech using the HTML5 Web Speech API. originally the app 'spoke' every letter that was picked up and put down - currently most of the seech options are turned off as during development they were becoming somewhat annoying!!

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HTML CSS Ruby on Rails API's File-Upload DEVISE (Authentication)
An authenticated web app to enable gym users to register with a gym, book classes and communicate with the gym / trainers using websocket messaging. The system generates a QR Membership card. Built over 7 days.

Built using Ruby on Rails, this was a first Ruby project. The application was inspired by a friend who owns a gym and wants to rebuild their web site. This application was built as a proof of concept whilst fulfilling the brief of building an authenticated Ruby on Rails application.

Some key points were: to have some means of generating a user membership card which could potentially be used as an entry key, for this I considered looking at nfc but with only 7 days from concept to completion this would have been too much of a challenge so I opted on generating a QR code using the rqr-code GEM. This could potentially be read by a qr code reader linked to an automated lock...an interesting future project.

A photo gallery was something that 'the client' was interested in so I added the Carrierwave GEM, this was then also used to add user images.

As a challenge I thought it would be useful to have a means that trainers could communicate with their clients using a chat module within the application so there is also websocket based chat.

Bugs!This is very much MVP and currently the app on Heroku does have a number of bugs. If you would like to test this further please fork a copy from my GitHub, as with all my projects from WDI I intend to re-visit MyGym to work on fixing the bugs now that I have completed the course.

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HTML, CSS, jQuery, MongoDB, Express, Node, Google Maps API BCRYPT (Authentication)
A team project built over 5 days this is an educational game where users navigate around a Google Maps world currently using flags, the aim is beat your opponent back to your starting point.

This was the first group project on the General Assembly Web Development Immersive course which enabled us to explore a different way of working. Working as a team enabled us to use Git and Git Hub in a collaborative fashion.

The scope of this project was to use a MongoDB database and to utilise at least one API to produce an application. After much consideration my team decided to build a version of Risk. Having decided how to divide the work between each of the team members we started work building a module using the Google Maps API and Fusion Layers. Unfortunately we discovered, after almost 3 days of coding, implementing Fusion Layers in the way that we wanted to would take considerably longer than we had available and so we had to make the decision to scrap 2 days work and start again.

The final project was a two player game based on the Jules Verne story of Around The World In Eight Days the application utilises Google Maps API and the RestCountries API.

Start of the Game

The game starts in the UK in honour of the Jules Verne book "80 Days Around the World", though this could be set to any country in the world.

First Round

At the start of the round the player has to decide which country to travel to next. The player may choose between all the UK's neighbour countries. Player two starts after player one has selected a country and can chose all the neighbouring countries apart for the one selected by Player 1.

Next Round

As aforementioned, the aim of the game is to return to the UK in less than 80 clicks touching all the continents. Once one player visits a country the other player is able to visit it and has to find a way around.

End of the Game

The game ends if: 1) One of the two players returns to the UK. 2) When one of the to players exceed the 80 clicks. 3) One of the two players remains blocked in a country (no neighbour countries available).

For the project I worked with Antonio Rossi and Chetan Barot and it is our intention to look at developing this game further as we believe it has some educational potential.

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HTML, CSS, Mongo, Express, Angular, Node, BCRYPT and Oauth Google Maps API & Zomato API's

An authenticated web app where users can build a profile, users are then shown on a map, other users can interact with live chat. If users choose to eat, local restaurants are listed from Zomato.

This was the final project for the General Assembly Web Development Immersive course, the scope was to use the MEAN stack and at least two API's.

I decided to utilise the Google Maps API and Zomato's restaurant API to create and app enabling users to find other people who would like to meet up to eat. The application is authenticated using BCrypt or Oauth through Facebook. Once autheticated users are shown on a map or in table format. Users can chat to each other using websocket chat, the chat is deliberately not saved as one key factor was not to store huge amounts of personal information.

The Google Maps reverse geocoder was used to identify locations of users from just a town name and the Zomato API then generates a list of local cuisines, the aim being to then extend this to show restaurants based on the selected cuisine on the map of users

Bugs! Chat on the version on Heroku is not currently working and needs to be fixed. The app should identify users with similar tastes but that has not yet been implemented. The intention is to work on these bugs to fix them now that the WDI course is over.

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Skills...

If you have already read the 'Who is..' section of my site you will know that I completed the Web Development Immersive at General Assembly in London. The course covered a wide gamut of technolgies but in addition to learning new languages and frameworks the course also taught me how to work using Agile principles including daily stand-up review meetings, the benefits of wire framing and using planning boards.

These are the technologies which I have worked with to date....

Whilst I have worked with all of the above there is plenty more to learn and I am always keen to work on developing my knowledge either of my exisiting skills or to take on new ones. I also have some leaning towards backend technology and skills.

Contact Jules Jam?...