about.html

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excerpt: About Martin Bean, his work, books he’s been involved with, and talks he has given.
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title: About Martin Bean
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<h1>About</h1>
<section id="about">
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    {% include headshot.html %}
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  <p class="lead"><strong>Hi!</strong> I’m Martin Bean, an experienced web developer and team lead based in the <abbr title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr>. Day to day I work with PHP, Laravel, JavaScript and TypeScript, and <abbr title="Amazon Web Services">AWS</abbr>.</p>
  <p>I have over 15 years’ experience in building web-based solutions and <abbr title="Application Programming Interfaces">APIs</abbr> for companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.</p>
  <p>Outside of my full time role I run a company called <a class="font-weight-semibold" href="https://www.yourfightsite.com" rel="external nofollow" target="_blank">Your Fight Site</a>, where I help independent professional wrestling and combat sport promoters through two products: a multi-tenant <abbr class="initialism" title="content management system">CMS</abbr>, and a video on demand platform called <a class="font-weight-semibold" href="https://vod.yourfightsite.com/" rel="external nofollow" target="_blank">Your Fight Site <abbr title="Video On Demand">VOD</abbr></a></p>
  <p>In my spare time I pursue an interest in reverse engineering, particularly PlayStation&reg; 1 video games. This has been a hugely interesting and rewarding endeavour, where I’ve gone from knowing little about a computer’s internals to gaining a high-level understanding of hardware architecture, <abbr title="central processing units">CPUs</abbr> and registers, and both <abbr class="initialism" title="Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages">MIPS</abbr> assembly and the C programming language.</p>
  <p>I’m a lifelong learner with a thirst for knowledge, and enjoy sharing this knowledge and enthusiam in both my work and my spare time. I’m also active in developer communities such as <a class="font-weight-semibold" href="https://stackoverflow.com/" rel="external nofollow" target="_blank">Stack Overflow</a> and the <a class="font-weight-semibold" href="https://laracasts.com/discuss" rel="external nofollow" target="_blank">Laracasts forums</a></p>
  <p>If you think I would make a great addition to your team, then I’m open to new roles and project engagements. Feel free to <a class="font-weight-bold" href="{% link contact.html %}" title="Contact Martin Bean">contact me</a> for a no obligation chat.</p>
</section>
<hr>
<section id="books">
  <h1 class="h2">Books</h1>
  <p>I was privileged to be involved in the creation of the following printed books:</p>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <span>Technical Editor</span>,
      <a href="https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484224502" rel="external nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><i>Design Patterns in PHP and Laravel</i></a>
      <span>(Apress, 2017)</span>
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          "name": "Design Patterns in PHP and Laravel",
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    <li>
      <span>Contributor</span>,
      <a href="https://www.freeagent.com/fieldguide/" rel="external nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><i>A Field Guide to Freelancer Finances</i></a>
      <span>(FreeAgent, 2016)</span>
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          "name": "A Field Guide to Freelancer Finances",
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      <span>Author</span>,
      <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1785283014/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=marbea-21&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=1785283014&amp;linkId=01abe7a11c70ddea65e6a7663f9337a7" rel="external nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><i>Laravel 5 Essentials</i></a>
      <span>(Packt, 2015)</span>
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          "name": "Laravel 5 Essentials",
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    <li>
      <span>Technical editor</span>,
      <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1484201884/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=marbea-21&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=1484201884&amp;linkId=b1f8f61bbb869300725436fd836408d2" rel="external nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><i>Beginning Node.js</i></a>
      <span>(Apress, 2014)</span>
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          "name": "Beginning Node.js",
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</section>
<hr>
<section id="talks">
  <h1 class="h2">Talks</h1>
  <p>I’ve also given a handful of talks at my local PHP user group, <a class="font-weight-semibold" href="https://phpne.org.uk" rel="external nofollow" target="_blank">PHP North East</a></p>
  <ul>
    <li class="font-weight-bold">
      <time datetime="2016-09-20">20 September 2016</time>:
      <span class="font-weight-normal">What’s New in Laravel 5.3</span>
    </li>
    <li class="font-weight-bold">
      <time datetime="2016-01-19">19 January 2016</time>:
      <span class="font-weight-normal">What’s New in Laravel (since 5.0)</span>
    </li>
    <li class="font-weight-bold">
      <time datetime="2015-06-16">16 June 2015</time>:
      <span class="font-weight-normal">An Introduction to Viaduct</span>
    </li>
    <li class="font-weight-bold">
      <time datetime="2014-09-16">16 September 2014</time>:
      <span class="font-weight-normal">What’s New in <del>Laravel 4.3</del> <ins>Laravel 5</ins></span>
    </li>
  </ul>
</section>