Hello,
my name is James Kan and this is my life
About Me
Hi! The name is James. I am currently working as a software developer in the Asset Intelligence department at Unison (electricity distribution company), with the aim of becoming a full-stack ASP.net developer eventually. You can count on me to format my code nicely (I love my vertically lined-up nested code), write insightful reports, and talk to people fairly normally.
On top of the above, I also work as a test analyst at RxOne (pharmacy dispensing software), which serves as an opportunity for me to apply both IT development and pharmacy-practice skillsets.
When the IT side of the brain is not being used, you may sometimes find me working as a locum pharmacist or writing a speech for the next Toastmasters meeting.
Experiences
The concept of a generic decision support system (DSS) is based on harvesting and analysing business data so that business information can be derived in order to make the relevant decisions. An example is Countdown collects customers' shopping habit (data) and analyses the data to determine the purchasing choices (information) so that the planograms can be re-arranged to promote certain business objectives (decision).
DSS is about harvesting data from the wide range of sensors installed at various points of the electricity grid system so that relevant information can be compiled. This allows optimisation decisions to be made in the interest of the company's vision.
As the team leader, I learned how to delegate sections of the projects to my teammates and how to keep track of their respective progress. As a student developer, I learned the art of "two-way traffic" between my team and the client.
Although the deliverable was not implemented as NOW Internet's replacement customer portal, the experience has given me insight into the "real world" and shown me the difference between being a programmer and a developer.
The deliverable was formally accepted on the 3rd of November 2015 by NOW Internet, with 96% being the final score.
This year (2016), I rebuilt the website using Foundation and AngularJS, giving a modern impression to a now responsive single-page application (SPA) website.
Education
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20142016
Graduate Diploma in IT
I scored straight A+ for all completed papers, with 94% being the average score. The papers accomplished are as below
- Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
- Advanced Object Oriented Programming
- Business Application Programming
- Special Topic Programming
- Project Management
- Information Technology Management
- Database Management Systems
- Database Administration
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20072010
Bachelor of Pharmacy (upper second-class honours)
I studied a variety of chemistry, biology, medicinal science, pharmacology, pharmaceutical, pharmacy practice, and law and ethics papers at School of Pharmacy (The University of Auckland). For my elective subject, I pursued the Introduction to Computer Science paper and achieved an A+
Essential Skills
Life Skills
Languages
Paper co-published
Hobbies
What am I doing these days?
I recently developed a PHP / C# system to be used by health professionals in New Zealand. The planning process involved coming up with wireframes, user stories, and UML diagrams, while MVC and TDD were taken into account during the execution phase. Having completed the application development, efforts are now concentrated on usability testing and creating an Android application to facilitate one of the work processes. Details to follow
When I am not messing around with coding, you can find me out cycling on the road in Hawkes Bay or doing a bit of cooking. On top of that, I recently cycled from Napier to Mahia (170km) in September, stayed a night there, and cycled back to Napier the next day!
Profile photo credit goes to Tsumei.com
Pro Bono
Tongan name correction (29th - 30th October 2016) - While visiting a close friend of mine in Tonga, she described her pharmacy dispensing software automatically capitalises the first letter after an apostrophe (exa'Mpl'E) for Tongan names. I developed two solutions to the problem:
- Existing records - Upon doing a bit of user interview, I discovered Tongan names typically contain multiple apostrophes in the names (e.g. Tu'i'onefoa, Ha'ato'ou). A C# program was written, where it uses entity framework to retrieve values that contain a capital letter immediately after the apostrophe in either the first names or the last names. The values are then populated as checkbox texts, giving the user the choice of ticking the appropriate names and changing them into Tongan format (e.g. don't change O'Connell). MetroFramework was used for the purpose of aesthetic compliance with Windows 10.
- New records - I implemented an SQL trigger that screens the insertion of new patient records for the presence of the "apostrophe - capital letter" combination. On top of that, I create a user-defined function that changes the casing of an argument into Title Case (Proper Case). With both mechanisms in place, a new patient's first and last name records are now appropriately "case-d" depending on the spelling.