Personal data
Name: | Paolo Manna |
Birth date: | March 4th, 1961 |
Birthplace: | Naples, Italy |
Address: | Sometimes in Milan, sometimes around Europe and/or US |
Ph. (work): | +44-20-71935917 / +39-045-9818188 |
E-mail: | paolo(at)paolomanna(dot)com |
AIM/iChat: | plmanna |
Skype ID: | epimenide |
MSN Messenger: | Say what? |
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Preface
This is meant to be a non-conventional resume: I'm writing it after some months of going over my "official" ones at least twice a week,
trying to make them both interesting and complete. The results are discouraging: they're probably as boring as anyone else's, so they turn up
to be thoroughly read only when I've skills so rare that the recruiter/examiner has very few of them on his/her desktop. Thus, the idea of writing
one that takes things a bit on the fun side, so that at least the reader can have a good time having a look at it. The fact that this CV
is meant to be fun, however, doesn't mean that the skills or experiences are not real, nor that I take a job less seriously: in fact, as any of
my employers can witness, sometimes I can even be too serious about my job...
Legenda
- Skills active, but not used recently are in normal text
- Old skills, not used in a long time, have a stroke through
- Skills presently (or recently) used are in color
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Profile
Paolo is an experienced Technology Specialist / Team Leader that has worked with many different technologies and platforms: separating him from his Mac
(the 17th, at this moment), however, is known to be a task just as easy as convincing 4 protons to stick together in an helium nucleus. He has worked on
a very wide range of projects, mostly as the senior developer, but he still dreams to be an oceanographer when he'll grow up.
If you talk with him about XP, be sure to intend Extreme Programming, otherwise he'll look at you with contempt (best case) or will just laugh out loud
for 5 minutes before walking away: he's fundamentally lazy, and this means
- he's in love with XP with its smaller phases and frequent tests, because he can sleep in between
- he tries always to find the simplest code to achieve a task, no matter how complex it has to look to the management and the budget that has been allocated
Being born in Naples, he's genetically programmed to know everything about espresso coffee, pizza and spaghetti: thus, don't bother to argue or even give
your opinion about those arguments, he couldn't care less (unless you're from Naples too, of course).
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Key Skills
- Wide experience and in-depth knowledge of the graphic industry in most of its aspects
Being himself completely unable to draw a square, he's been so fascinated by graphic artists that has dedicated a good part of his life to harass
them with improbable tools.
- Ability to solve problems out of conventional schemes
Why use a can opener to open 1 can when you can just as effectively open 100 with a 800-ton hydraulic press?
- High level of experience in working with highly advanced technologies
Sometimes he has to stop and wait for the technologies to keep up with him...
- Excellent experience in soft- and hardware integration
He's even able to avoid industry's leading strategy: write the software, then force people to buy the hardware to make it run reasonably...
- Ability to work on projects on his own as well as part of a team
Most of the time, the team prefers when he works alone, though, preferably in another room.
- Leading of small specialized teams (3-5 developers)
He's loved by junior members: however, a bit of attrition arose when he proposed lashing as a tangible consequence of poor performance appraisals.
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Education & Professional Affiliations
- 1979 Scientific secondary school - Liceo Scientifico "P. Lioy", Vicenza (Italy)
- 1981 Two years of Electronical Engineering - Padua University (Italy)
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Publications
Well, these are fake, actually: but, when there will be enough time, he'll really write something like that...
- Baldness as a milestone to happiness in life, Amsterdam, 1999
- Sexual implications of Italian cuisine and ingredients, Amsterdam, 2001
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Summary
Boring part of the CV: yes, Paolo has worked, at one time or another, with all the items listed below and some more, now obsolete (ever heard of
punched cards?). On the other hand, he had more than 20 years in this field to test a bit of
everything, so why wonder?
Job skillsSystems analysis and design, development, small team leading |
Industry sectorsGraphics, Internet, Scientific, Telecom, Banking |
Operating Systems
- MacOS X
- iPhone OS
- Linux / FreeBSD
- Windows 9x / NT / 2000 / XP
- MacOS 9
- NeXTSTEP / OpenStep
- Digital Unix OSF1
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Programming languages
- Objective-C (18 yrs.)
- C / C++ (25 yrs.)
- Java (8 yrs.)
- SQL (9 yrs.)
- Shell script (10 yrs.), JavaScript (4 yrs.)
- PostScript (15 yrs.)
- Pro*C, Pascal
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Formats
- Quicktime
- XML
- SVG
- PDF
- HTML
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DBMS
- MySQL
- Oracle
- FrontBase
- FileMaker
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Tools
- Apple Xcode/ProjectBuilder & WebObjects
- Apple Quartz Composer
- Eclipse
- Standard Unix development tools (make, gcc, gdb, ...)
- Apache / Tomcat
- CVS / Subversion / SourceSafe / PVCS
- MetroWerks CodeWarrior
- Borland JBuilder
- Oracle JDeveloper & 9iAS
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Technologies
- Cocoa
- OpenGL, Quicktime
- Sockets, TCP/IP
- Agile & Extreme Programming, JUnit
- RMI, XML-RPC / SOAP, J2EE, DOM
- AWT / Swing
- EOF / EJB, JDBC, JSP / Servlets
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Applications
- Adobe Illustrator, PageMaker, InDesign, Acrobat & Photoshop
- Microsoft Office
- Macromedia FreeHand & Dreamweaver
- Quark XPress
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Spoken languages
- Italian (native language)
- English (fluent)
- Spanish (fluent)
- Dutch (basics)
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Professional Experience
May 2010 - Present
Freelance,
Milan,
Italy
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Out in the wild
(Objective-C / C - Mac OS X - iPhone OS - OpenGL)
Look out, world, I'm coming back!
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January 2008 - April 2010
Clonwerk s.r.l.,
Milan,
Italy
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Real-time graphics for professional broadcast
(Objective-C / C - Mac OS X - OpenGL - Sockets)
Video is the new frontier for high-performance computing, so Paolo has been
the evil mind behind Clonwerk's application
suite, aimed at fulfilling broadcast stations' need for high quality real-time
graphics production. Yes, Sony hasn't been enough, there's still some damage to do...
Plus, now, everyone has one more person to blame about how lame TV has become!
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April 2006 - December 2007
Citrix Systems R&D Ltd.,
Gerrards Cross,
England
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Remote application execution and management (Access Suite)
(Objective-C / C - Mac OS X - Sockets)
Paolo is working on the port to Intel processor and future updates
of the Mac client for the well-known (if you're a Windows corporate user,
that is...) remote access packages (Presentation Server/Metaframe & Access Essentials).
OK, good sales pitch, isn't it? And I wasn't even reading the brochure...
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May 2004 - April 2006
Sony Business & Professional R&D,
Basingstoke,
England
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Professional Broadcast Video Processing
(Java - Quicktime)
Paolo is working on a complete system dedicated to professional broadcasters:
from tape acquisition, to video editing, to archiving, to final on-the-air broadcast,
the product aims to be a one-stop integrated solution at an affordable price.
OK, good sales pitch, isn't it? And I wasn't even reading the brochure...
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January-April 2004
Wellington,
New Zealand
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Automatic Dialog Replacement / Sound Processing
(Mac OS X - Objective-C / Cocoa - Quicktime)
Paolo has worked on the GUI of softwares aimed at sound editing for the professional movie industry.
One of the products, developed and used in its original form in the all-Kiwi "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy, is
described here. The other, for the overdubbing market, is
here
After that, having failed both interviews for a position as Hobbit (too tall) and as Orc (not enough teeth),
he's then returned to Europe.
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Autumn 2003
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Harrogate, England
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Movie editor/tagger
(Mac OS X - Objective-C / Cocoa - Quicktime)
Paolo has worked on some fundamental classes of a new media asset management application with a revolutionary
visual interface for the consumer market to be published.
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Spring/Summer 2003
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
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Open Source Library for 3D applications
(Mac OS X - Objective-C / Cocoa - OpenGL)
Paolo has recently come back to 3D graphics, one of his first loves: once again, the fact that OpenGL is NOT Object Oriented, and that it has little
liaison with his beloved Cocoa, bothers him to no end. He then decides to found and maintain an (oh so trendy!) open source project for a library to
simplify the introduction to OpenGL on the Mac OS X platform.
The project, featuring both basic and advanced techniques for 3D visualization, is hosted here.
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Spring/Summer 2002
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
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Cross platform application for e-mail processing
(Multi-Platform - Java / Swing - Internet protocols - Threading - Sockets - XML)
Paolo, as any mortal being on this planet that has an email address since more than 30 seconds, is fed up with "unsolicited (junk) e-mail", better
known as "spam": after a unsatisfactory research for cross-platform solutions with a reasonable success rate, he has decided to build one himself.
And then, PostArmor was born! A free-/shareware application to process e-mail while still on the server,
and automatically filter out junk e-mail. Amazingly enough, the application has been reviewed on many on-line magazines, most notably on
"TidBITS" on Nov, 2003.
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Aug. 2001 - June 2003
Principal Developer
VNU Publitec BV,
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
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Cross platform graphical front-end for custom pagination system
(Windows NT / Mac OS 9 & X - Oracle DB & iAS - C++ - Java Applets / Swing - JSP & Servlets - PostScript - Off-the-shelf graphic applications)
In order to make artists' life worse than it normally is, and allow them to completely miss the deadlines with someone else to blame, Paolo follows the
development of applets & plug-ins for standard applications (Quark XPress, Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, ...) for the management &
production phase of adverts, custom-tailored for the Yellow Pages environment.
Interactive Yellow Pages advert editor
(JavaScript - SVG / PDF)
Pushing unknown and apparently useless technologies is Paolo's favorite task: he has then developed a working prototype of an interactive editor based
on the scriptable SVG format, capable to edit a complete set of pages from a Yellow Pages book within a normal browser.
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Oct 1999 - May 2001
Technical Specialist
The ObjectZoo Ltd.,
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
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ModusMedia International - Lettertool
(Objective-C / C++ - OpenStep - Oracle DB - PostScript)
Writing thousands of letters is a boring task, and outsourcing to India isn't a sensible solution: Paolo has led the team that followed the porting,
maintenance and extensions for a tool to automatically print custom letters, merging DB contents with graphical elements. The tool was based on OpenStep,
and used its Display PostScript capabilities extensively.
MacOS X technologies / XML specialized parser
(C / C++ - Mac OS X - OpenGL)
A new star is born, a Unix with a nice and consistent GUI: Paolo led the team that conducted an evaluation and testing of different MacOS X technologies,
with a special attention to XML parsing and OpenGL implementation.
Ikraft
(Objective-C - WebObjects - Oracle DB)
When you try to hide the fact that you're wasting your time playing online games, it's better if you do it right: Paolo has worked on some components of
this web-based time & expense management system, bringing his contribution to this major WebObjects development inside the company.
Huethig portal (Rechtsforum)
(Java - XML/XSLT - WebObjects - FrontBase SQL DB)
Lawyers are possibly the least useful breed on Earth, but they need to be educated at it: Paolo has followed the general set-up of the portal site for law
students, and was responsible in particular for the team developing the communication tools (message board, news board...), using the WebObjects technology
to achieve a unique look-and-feel for these widely diffused way of communicating between groups.
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Mar 1998 - Sep 1999
Senior Developer
ITT Publitec BV,
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
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Maintenance and extension of a custom pagination system
(Objective-C / C++ - NeXTSTEP / OpenStep)
We all know Japanese don't think the same way than Western people, and this is no exception: Paolo has followed a project for extension and maintenance
of a pagination system for a well-known Japanese company. Based on NeXTSTEP's Display PostScript technology, the set of applications achieved a
unique degree of accuracy and match between representation on screen and actual printout. At least, this was the intention: those little drawings on the
pages looked all the same...
Graphical front-end, PDF & XML-based, for custom pagination system
(C / C++ - Windows NT / Mac OS X Server - Oracle DB)
Working on the apparent success of the previous system, Paolo has set up the foundation for its successor: the resulting development was complete and functional,
and has been the test bed for a set of relatively new technologies like PDF and its XML-based equivalent SVG. Obviously, it has been discarded as soon as possible.
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Winter/Summer 1998
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
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Cross-platform application for personal finance management
(Java / Swing - Oracle Lite DB - JDBC)
Money is a fascinating subject for everyone: asked by a financial institution, Paolo has developed from scratch a full-fledged application in Java
to work both as an independent tool to handle personal finance (bank accounts, credit cards, etc.) and as a front end to public stock trading services
to manage and evaluate shares and currencies.
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Oct 1996 - Feb 1998
Senior Developer
Omnitel SpA (now Vodafone),
Milan,
Italy
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Device Interface between Customer DB & GSM HLRs
(Java - RMI - Digital Unix - Oracle - CORBA)
Warning: some obscure acronyms ahead! Paolo has collaborated to the extension and maintenance of a specific application to handle communication
between a large corporate DB (over 2 millions records) and a cellular network's HLRs for one of the largest European mobile telecom providers.
An extension for IN capabilities has been developed, with communication between an Oracle DB and a Java app through CORBA standard protocol.
Customer Care processing for payments
(C / C++ - Digital Unix - Oracle)
For the same company, Paolo has followed a large part of the development of an automatic system to progressively disallow customers
the use of the network, preventing frauds, based on data coming from the invoice & payment system. The extension he proposed to automatically
blackmail non-paying customers when caught phoning their mistresses was not approved.
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1994 - 1996
Senior Developer
ExtraWare Deutschland /
Rösch GmbH,
Munich,
Germany
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Customisation of PostScript interpreter for large format printers/plotters
(Mac OS / Linux - C / C++ - PostScript - mathematical algorithms)
Paolo developed, for this German company specialised in cutting edge graphics, a special driver for large format printing plotters. The development
included modifications and extensions to a full-fledged PostScript interpreter (GhostScript) with special algorithms (dithering, partitioning, etc.)
for use with large format printing.
Microcontroller-based (Motorola 68HC11, SGS ST6) circuits for industrial and home applications
Hardware/Software devices for generic stepper motor
For the same company, Paolo has developed special hardware / software combinations to drive their custom-made machines in production.
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1988 - 1994
Technical Manager,
Co-founder
ExtraWare International,
Vicenza,
Italy
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Scenario - 3D CAD software for interior design
(C - MacOS - mathematical algorithms)
Special software, installed at a furniture producer's selling points, to easily build perspective views for potential customers and produce
at the same time a component list for the order.
PSPlot / CutXtra - Driving software for drafting and vinyl cutting plotters
(C / C++ - MacOS - PostScript)
A very specialised software, very popular in the signmaking industry, to couple off-the-shelf graphical applications (generally based on
PostScript-like formats) with cutting plotters. The software has sold over 1000 copies in Europe, overseas and in Asia.
Facile! - Driving software for industrial machines - 2D custom CAD software for graphical industry
(C / C++ - ISO G-code - laser & waterjet - 2 & 3D milling - MacOS)
Highly custom-tailored versions of the cutting plotter software.
Utilities for graphical industry
(format translators, extension modules (plug-ins) for standard software, etc., C / C++ - MacOS / DOS)
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Last Update: 2010-05-13 pmanna
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