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I.T. History...
Employment
(in chronological order - most recent first)
Currently Self
Employed (own and run
Alex Nesling Ltd with my partner Jane Fairhall) and divide my time into 3 areas:
1. I.T. Administrator:
External roles (those 'outside'
Alex Nesling Ltd, and
The
Kingston Arms Freehouse):
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Includes I.T. installations, consultancy
(most notably in the hospitality trade), etc.
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As part of introducing Linux to the
hospitality trade I learned how to
remaster Linux.
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Due to popularity of introducing I.T.
to the hospitality trade (see
Remastered Linux Distributions, and
Articles for more), a lot of my time is spent on follow
up emails. I receive a lot of emails about HospitalityMachine
& HospitalityMachineKiosk technical issues, future requests, etc. I
also receive quite a few emails about my articles.
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My articles:
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"Ask An Expert: Disposing of computers"
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"Ask An Expert: How safe is the internet?"
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"Ask An Expert: What do I need in a PC?"
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"Ask An Expert: Website impact"
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'The Shape of Things
to Come' - Q&As asked of
industry leaders
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"How to
Design & host a Website"
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"Exploit
the Opportunities"
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"Setup
your own Network"
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"ePub:
Free software for pubs"
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Small
item
showing use of a website to improve the visibility of our Cambridge
based Freehouse
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Article about the use of I.T. in our hospitality based
business
To view these articles
and read a more thorough description about them, go
here
for articles by me, and
here for articles (and quotes,
media, etc) about me.
Internal roles (those typically
related to
Alex Nesling Ltd, and
The
Kingston Arms Freehouse:
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Manage and handle day-to-day
operational activities for network and data infrastructure (disaster
recovery, problem resolution, capacity management, planning, etc).
Effectively, I look after two networks. Each of which follows the
standard practices found in larger organisations, including
security & reliability safeguards, network structure, writing documentation, etc. (More info at bottom of
this page).
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Research the viability of using Linux,
and introduce Linux where appropriate. This entailed learning Linux
in depth and how to administer it. This not only led to using Linux,
and my re-mastered versions of it, in Alex Nesling Ltd and The
Kingston Arms, but I also introduced Linux to the hospitality trade
via my remastered distributions and articles (see above for more).
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Maintain several websites related to
Alex Nesling Ltd, The Kingston Arms, various 'sub' sites, and my
personal sites.
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Perform web hosting of these sites,
including providing FTP access, backups, log analysis, etc.
2. Own & Manage
Property:
Currently expanding (more info
here).
3. Commercial Property:
And lastly, one of
these properties is commercial. We own &
run
The
Kingston Arms Freehouse in Cambridge (thanks to our professional
staff, I do more
'owning' and less 'running' of The Kingston).
Previous I.T Posts
1. Network Administrator
& IT Instructor (QIS Solutions):
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Developed documented routines for
maintaining the computing environments.
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Maintained and expanded local area
networks (due to I.T. classes there were several local area networks,
all of which were 'abused' daily by students!)
2. PC Engineer (Details withheld)
3. Network Technician (Details
withheld)
4. Database User (Details withheld)
Education
(in chronological order - most recent
first)
Professional
Academic
(As
part of my Masters I wrote a 50,000 word thesis on 'The Viability of
Developing Software via an ad-hoc Distributed Methodology, as can be
seen by Successful Products such as the Apache Web Server, the Internet
Protocol Suite, and the Linux Operating System').
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A Levels: x 4. Art,
Design & Technology, Computing, Psychology, All grade c or above.
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O Levels/GCSE's: x 8.
All grade c or above.
How on Earth did I go
from art based courses to heavy use of IT? I was brought up on a council
estate (click
here for details) in a single parent family, and no one went to university before
me. As a result the whole 'university thing' was daunting, and by the
end of the art courses I was heartily sick of fine art and design. What
to do? I picked a general purpose course - Psychology. It was while
doing this I did a couple of Artificial Intelligence modules, and it was
then I realised that was what I wanted to do. During these modules and
in my own time I used Braincell and Excel to make simple neural
networks which would allow (or at least try!) stock market prediction. I
made colour sorting algorithms, and studied bottom up and top down
approaches to Artificial Intelligence.
Skills
Networking
I have extensive
networking experience:
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I have set up &
configured servers, including DHCP, DNS, WINS, DFS, etc. Configure FSMO roles.
I have set up Active Directory networks.
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I have set up workgroup based
networks, including file servers, print servers, etc.
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I can design and implement security via GPOs
and Organisational Units, configure scheduled backups, manage and
create user accounts, configure roaming profiles, use terminal
services, etc.
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Can perform administrative installations of various applications and
create MSI packages. etc. Have rolled out Windows via Riprep.
Have used Imaging software (including Ghost).
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Can configure
firewalls, including off-the-shelf hardware firewalls and software
firewalls (i.e. ipcop), configure routing, switches/hubs, open/close ports, create subnets, etc.
Can scan network (i.e. nmap) to find weaknesses, etc.
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Can set up wireless
networks, and incorporate security including encryption, no SSID
broadcasting, keys, etc.
Virtualization
I have used virtual machine software:
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I have used VirtualBox to run various Linux distributions as
guest OS's (in a desktop role, with full network access, shared
folders, etc), on Microsoft hosts.
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I have also used Microsoft Virtual PC
2007 to run various MS OS's (again, in a desktop role, with full
network access, shared folders, etc), on MS hosts.
Microsoft
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In-depth knowledge of Microsoft
server & client operating systems, including Windows 9.X, Windows 2000 Server,
Advanced Server, &
Professional, and XP/MCE.
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Working
knowledge of Microsoft Office Application suite, including
Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint,
Access, Publisher and Frontpage.
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I have also used Works4Windows and
WordPerfect.
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I have used Windows 3.x, Windows for
Workgroups 3.x.
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I have used MS-DOS, and configured its
rather fussy memory requirements via various configuration files.
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I have used DOS based command line
applications.
Website Design
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Microsoft Publisher
(useful for quickly knocking up a website. Not as flexible as MS
Frontpage - no provision for tables and percentages hence resolution,
scaling
and page centreing difficulties).
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Microsoft Frontpage
(more flexible than MS Publisher - but needs more time invested to
learn it's intricacies).
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'Dabbled' with Serif PagePlus, NVU/Komposer and various online website design
sites.
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I can configure a
site for search engine optimization (using sitemaps, type of
content, location of content, type of menus, links to a site, H1,2 &
3 emphasis, placing of tables/cells, meta tags, description tags,
etc (see
here for more.)).
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I can setup Google Analytics to aid
website traffic analysis.
In all cases, some
artistic ability or design flair is useful. I was considering going to
art college when younger, I never went, but it seems my studying art and
design at college level wasn't wasted after all.
Linux
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I have used various Linux
distributions (in both server and desktop roles), including: PClinuxOS, Knoppix, Suse and Ubuntu.
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I've used various Linux applications,
including: OpenOffice.org, NVU, Abiword, etc.
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I have set up NFS file servers to share files on a
LAN, and I have set up Samba file servers to share files in a
Windows environment.
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I have re-mastered various versions of
Linux, most notably Knoppix (manually) and PCLinuxOS (simple
commands).
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I've set up Linux Apache web servers (this
site is served from my personal web server). The Apache server uses name based 'virtual
hosts' to host several different sites.
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I have configured the
Linux Apache webserver to use FTP access (using vsftpd) so clients
can access their webspace remotely and modify their content, and I
can access and update mine.
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Have compiled Linux kernels, written
crontabs, and performed backups using tar.
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Can use webmin to administer Linux
servers remotely.
Running my personal Apache
server has been great fun! And I am now hosting several different sites on it.
Thus far the uptime has been over 99.9%. Sites hosted & designed by me:
www.alex-nesling.co.uk,
www.paul-boggia.me.uk,
www.hospitalitymachine.co.uk.
www.school-machine.org.uk.
Personal sites I have designed but not currently hosting:
www.alex-nesling-web-tools.co.uk,
www.kingston-arms.co.uk.
These are in addition to private client sites.
I am a member of the
Cambridge Linux
Users Group - very handy for expert input!
PC Hardware
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I can build servers and
desktop pcs from scratch, and ensure they are built to meet a specific
demand/role. I have built tower servers, high end custom machines,
simple client machines, boxes that are guaranteed fully Windows or
Linux compatible, installed CAT 5 cabling and various network
infrastructure components, etc.
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Click
here for my personal collection of
I.T. hardware.
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INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
About Me
My I.T. History
My I.T. Articles
My I.T. Hardware
My I.T. Designs (websites,
flyers, etc)
My Linux Distributions
My I.T. & Networking
Documents
Entrepreneurial
Current Job Roles
Hall of Fame
Personal
Bodybuilding
Other Stuff & Goals
Misc
My Favourites
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