Software consultant (freelance)
September 2021 - December 2021, March 2022 onwards
For the 2021 Christmas edition, I built a new site for the Icelandic Book Journal using a Ruby on Rails setup.
As data entry from the original legacy system was phased out, ActiveAdmin was used as the administrative interface for publishers to enter information about each book and to assign in to each year's catalog edition as well as a management system in a wider sense.
The print process was also reworked, with a combination of a PowerShell script, an XML feed from the system backend and then a second round of XML transcoding using XSLT before being imported into Adobe InDesign. Print quality images were also processed using the system backend.
The Ruby on Rails system's source code and history is accessible on Github, including the print process .
WordPress consultant, systems analyst (freelance)
December 2019 onwards
Worked on integration projects, upper-tier support and consulting services related to WordPress at the most popular web hosting provider in Iceland. In addition to upper-tier support, my role also includes WP plugin development and related DevOps work, performance audits and infrastructure work.
WordPress plugin developer
October 2018 - June 2019
Worked on Jetpack Sync and the Gutenberg block implementation in Jetpack and WordPress.com as well as internal documentation and accessibility efforts. Other efforts included contributions to the WordPress Core and the Gutenberg editor.
WordPress Web Developer (Freelance)
June 2018 - December 2018
During 2018, I revamped the website of UNA Iceland — un.is. It included a substantial amount of textual information and educational material that was moved from a proprietary CMS to WordPress. Due to the use of the site in public education, accessibility was highly prioritised.
Senior Ruby Backend Developer
April 2018 - June 2018
Was brought in to help overcome certain development obstacles. Amended workflow and documentation; and drastically improved the Rspec and Capybara based test suite.
Code Wrangler (Freelance)
November 2017 - October 2018
This was an 11-month trial period whereas I worked on accessibility issues in the new Gutenberg editor, facilitation of support work and on several internal accessibility issues among other things.
Backend developer
August 2016 - June 2017
My role was mostly related to the development and maintenance of data models and JSON API endpoints in Ruby on Rails using JSONAPI::Resources as well as location matching and other features using Elasticsearch, Chewy and PostGIS.
I also revamped many documentation and style enforcement efforts in using the Ruby Style Guide, using Travis, YARD, Overcommit and Rubocop to maintain compliance.
Later on, my responsibilities included work with external app developers and screening, interviewing and training of job applicants and new recruits.
Software development consultant (Rails, C# MVC, Cordova, Android)
2014 - 2016
During my brief time at the United Nations, I worked on monitoring and reporting systems for UNRWA and the Monotiring Mechanism for Syria (under the SG's Office).
In both cases, it was important to adapt to the internal capacities and methodologies and perform field testing on location and to coordinate with the relevant focal points.
One of those systems was written in Ruby on Rails, with data entry done using ActiveAdmin and hosted in the UN's secure datacentre. The other was developed using C# ASP.Net MVC for the REST backend and management and used an offline-first Android app developed using Cordova, with Microsoft PowerQuery facilitating reporting.
WordCamp Vienna
April 2019
Provided a talk on accessibility for those getting into Gutenberg block development. The talk went into the basics of web accessibility, the importance of the semantic web and how those techniques can be used to develop Gutenberg blocks.
Automattic Grand Meetup
October 2018
Provided a flash talk on postal code systems, misconceptions about and the overuse of postal codes, over validation and their use as location indicators as an anti-pattern.
Autumn 2010 - Summer 2011
Spring 2006 - Spring 2008
Autumn 2002 - Spring 2005
| Icelandic | Native speaker |
|---|---|
| English | Fluent |
| German | Basic knowledge |
| Scandinavian languages | Basic knowledge |
For the past couple of years, my WordPress volunteering work has mainly been directed towards maintaining the Icelandic side of the WordPress community, despite me being located abroad. In the past, I have been active in the Icelandic translation group and brief code contributions. My earliest WordPress contribution dates way back, with the container attribute for wp_nav_menu().
I am one of the people who authored the Transgender Flag Emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium. After being embraced by WhatsApp, Facebook and other vendors prior to Unicode's approval. It was finally included in version 13 of the Emoji standard after a couple of attempts.
I strive to be a good open source citizen and have recently contributed code fractions to projects such as the AtomLinter PHP_CodeSniffer package and xkeyboard-config.