thomasbarker.com - Portfolio

Final Year Project

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 23:29:12 +0100

The current vogue for social networking software is being matched by an increase in academic interest. My final year project surveys this area, seeking to demonstrate that such systems are workable and can be implemented without raising unresolvable privacy concerns.

Computer technology can transform the way we think about and act on trust.

To this end a small peer-to-peer application, entitled Hearsay, is developed as a proof of concept. The aim is to provide a guide to the creation of a number of interoperable implementations on the XMPP transport layer.

My Toy Black-Litterman Optimiser

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:45:34 +0000

As a self-education exercise I wrote myself a crude Black-Litterman portfolio planner following the algorithms given on Willian Sharpe's site.

Screenshot of my toy Black-Litterman optimiser.

You can see the source code which is attached below.

94% Pass as Sun Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform

Sat, 05 Mar 2005 20:44:05 +0000

I have qualified as a Sun Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform. The Developer's certification covers the entire J2SE stack from networking and I/O, to the GUI and documentation.

Marking

Section	Max Points	Actual Points
General Consideration	100	92
Documentation	70	66
OOD	30	30
GUI	40	27
Locking	80	80
Data Store	40	40
Network Server	40	40
Total	400	375

Competitive Advantage

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 16:29:20 +0100

This essay was written as part of my Strategic Management course.

"Skill at creating, exploiting, and exiting crucial alliances beats ownership of fixed assets" - Tom Peters

"Know thy enemy and know thy self and you will win a hundred battles." - Sun-Tzu

"Lead, follow or get out of the way." - Arab Proverb

Sustainable competitive advantage is achieved by the efficient synergy of resources and core competences within an organisation. This takes place through effective strategic management. Such management requires a strategic leadership able to adapt to an increasingly dynamic international business environment.

IS Coursework Report

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 16:23:03 +0100

This report was written for a business course on information systems. It received a 78% grade, with a 1st degree being 70%.

It is based on an imaginary employment agency called AA1. The report outlines how AA1 should change its IS policy as it moves towards becoming a professional services company.

The report uses standard business analysis to form an action plan

The full report in PDF format is attached below.

Concurrency Coursework

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:39:33 +0100

This coursework received a 100% mark. It is a multi-threaded Eratosthenes filter written in Java, which can be shown not to deadlock.

Software Engineering Group Project

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:28:46 +0100

The Living Proof Timetable Information System (LPTIS) was a group project with five people. We built a system for displaying and searching timetables. I was responsible for the overall architecture, and the technical documentation.

Below are this the technical documentation, architecture diagrams (E/R + UML), sourcecode and executable jar file for this project.

LPTIS uses a model-2 MCV architecture, with the domain model having no dependencies on the GUI.