#intro I like building things.

I've spent the last 10+ years writing code for startups and small companies remotely and in Cape Town where I'm based, namely SaaS Mates, Datawisp, Superbalist & Bikehub. All of which have been amazing experiences.

In their own ways they've granted me the opportunity to learn and build with a great number of different technologies, notably but not limited to:

PHP (Laravel, CodeIgniter, Zend), JavaScript (Vue.js, jQuery, Angular, Node.js), Python (Django), Vagrant, Apache, Nginx, Memcached, MySQL, MongoDB, Neo4j, Redis, Git, etc.
Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Heroku. A bunch of Linux (Ubuntu) server management.
Third party API integration such as Hubspot CRM, Mxit platform, print service providers CafePress / MerchMo and payment providers PayPal / iVeri / 2Checkout.com. Dynamic PDF / PNG creation & manipulation.

#whois

Who am I is a touch existential so here are the basics: my full name is Nicholas de Merindol Malan, a mouthful I know. Nic will do. Born and bred South African I come bundled with the ability to communicate proficiently in English, conversational Afrikaans, drivers license & good sense of humour.

A few things I enjoy: making photos, a little bit of writing, music, analytics, data, the internet, side projects, working with smart & passionate people, solving problems, results.

My recent kindle history looks something like this along with a ton of random internet articles:

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean _{Susan Casey}
The Minimalist Entrepreneur: How Great Founders Do More with Less - Sahil Lavingia
The Mom Test: How to talk to customers - Rob Fitzpatrick
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup - John Carreyrou
Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers _{Gabriel Weinberg}
Lost and Founder _{Rand Fishkin}
An Economist Walks Into a Brothel _{Allison Schrager}
How to Change Your Mind _{Michael Pollan}
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success _{Carol S. Dweck}
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World _{Cal Newport}
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us _{Daniel H. Pink}
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley _{Antonio Garcia Martinez}

#edu

Highschool: 1998-2002, Crawford College North Coast.

Matric Exemption: English, Afrikaans, Maths, Computers, Science & Accountancy.

Tertiary: 2002-2003, IT Intellect.

National Certificate in Computer Science: A+, N+, MCDBA, MCP, MCAD, Project+, MCSD.NET.

Tertiary: 2005-2006, Academy of Advanced Technology.

Certificate in Project Design: Architecture, Piping, Structural Steel, Mechanical, Civil, Electrical.

Tertiary: 2007, Varsity College.

Project Management Diploma: Resource management, Management techniques and reporting structures, Earned value and effective project control

#xp

2022+, SaaS Mates: Building out features on various SaaS Mates products with Laravel (PHP) & Vue (TypeScript).
2021-2022, Datawisp: Building out features for an interactive data tool with React (TypeScript).
2018-2021, Rawson Properties: Senior Developer primarily focused on developing internal tools for agent workflow and productivity. Primarily using Laravel & Vue, deployed with Vapor.
2016-2017, Contracting: Working on projects in Laravel, clients including Superbalist.com, NEXT & Bike Hub.
±2015, Superbalist.com: Senior Developer working on internal tools in Laravel.

#projects misc code available at github.com/n1c

Reffresh.com: No code tool for generating mock APIs.
Vue3 Avataaars: Simple random avatar generation for Vue3.
ZA Tech Slack: Created & admin a Slack community for people in the ZA Tech scene.
Bash.org Archive: Bash.org died an unknown death and the data was available so I created a simple archive to be as respectul of the original as possible.
Team Time: Toy project to show the current time for a team of people in different timezones.
Atlas: Toy project to show YouTube walking videos on a world map.
Prefire.GG: Tool that parses CSGO demos into a text commentary & 2D map overlay.
Reflex Warmers: Created a brand of disposable hand warmers for esports pros.
Setup.GG: Website for sharing the hardware and software setups for esports pros.
Wrangle _{Objective-C & C#}: App to track what game you're currently playing and report to your friends. Essentially cross-platform-steam.

MFAWAYWT.com _{[Laravel, Angular]}: Polls Reddit for new WAYWT posts to the /r/malefashionadvice community, archives and displays them in a more useful way.
Ghost Analysis: Miscellaneous experimenting with CSGO demo parsing.
StanleyBot: Tool to automate Slack group invites.
Popularinstagram.com _{[Laravel, Angular]}: Poll Instagram every 10 minutes and create a mosaic of the popular images.
Hashtagdomains.org _{[Laravel, React]}: Poll Instagram for popular hashtags and see if the corresponding .com is available.
Panovid _Objective-C: Simple iOS app built to learn and get experience on the platform.
Glitchr _Objective-C: Simple iOS app built to learn and get experience on the platform.
dressed.so _{[PHP+CodeIgniter, Memcache, MySQL, S3, CloudFront]}: Built to scratch an itch for the /r/mfa community, >5000 users and >9000 posts (sold and no longer maintained by me).
bitcoinaddressbalance.com _{[PHP+CodeIgniter, Memcache]}: Built to experiment with Bitcoin and how to build a simple website embed.
sizegui.de _{[PHP+CodeIgniter, Memcache MySQL, S3]}: Log user's body measurements so as to recommend clothing other, similar users like.
tagggr.com _{[Django, Redis]}: Primarily built as a place for me to experiment with the Imgur API and Redis for storage.
boxx.es _[JS/Node.js]: Some time spent experimenting with socket.io and 2d game development on Node.js & HTML5's canvas. Learning the very basics of how games work was new to me and a really fun learning experience.

#fun facts

At the core I really enjoy building things.

Q3 is my favourite game of all time, with Counter-Strike throughout the ages. I played a fair amount of TF2 pickups when it was first starting out along with flying helicopters in BF3/BF4.

I can type >100 words per minute on a good day.

I like to try my best to understand things. This means I sometimes ask a lot of questions.

♫♪♩ I tend to sing a lot about completely random things ♬♫♪♩♬

I've managed to get my domain-name-buying-addiction under control.

As much as I appreciate good design, and like to think I have good taste. This site shows I'm no designer. I owe a lot to Bootstrap and it's amazingness .