Brian Linville

Foster City, California ยท brian@brianlinville.com

Hi. I'm Brian. I was born and raised in Sacramento, CA, but now live in the bay area. I built my first computer game when I was 14. Been dabbling in writing code ever since, from C++ to full stack web and app development.


Experience

IPTV Systems Engineer

Sunnyvale, CA
Mar 2019 - Sept 2021

* Trouble shot video encoding settings for h264, h265, and MPEG-3 Transport Streams for IPTV.
* Built and supported digital signage and IPTV solutions for Vitec's clients, pulling JSON data to populate menu items.
* Created video and art content.

IT Lead

Sacramento, CA
Sept 2016 - Jan 2019

As the IT Lead at the Golden 1 Center, I had the following responsibilities:
* Wrote code in PHP, JavaScript, JQuery, HTML, CSS, Drupal, and MySQL that ran the digital menu boards
* Trained and managed the Game Day IT team while working under the IT Manager.
* Assisted in maintaining the computer and Point of sale systems for the food and beverage stands.
* Researched, tested, and deployed updates for 3rd party software.

Owner

Sacramento, CA
Oct 2011 - Dec 2016

Stigma Games is a Sacramento based game development studio currently on hold. I oversaw all production, human resources, and business development, as well as did much of the production work in terms of art and design. I also built and maintained all company websites in Drupal. We used a combination of Agile development of SCRUM and Kanban.

During the course of the company's existence, we had work outsourced to us and did projects for other clients, including building a game simulation for Wells Fargo.

Evaluation Supervisor

Sacramento, CA
Apr 2015 - Jun 2015

Primary job was to lead a team of evaluators to ensure they were verifying data according to instruction. This was a seasonal position.

Junior Software Engineer

Sacramento, CA
Mar 2015 - Apr 2015

Primary function was to write code using JavaScript in the NodeJS framework for the research and development section of the company. This was a short term, learning position.

Education

California State University of Sacramento

Bachelor of Arts
Anthropology

American River College

Associates of Arts
Social Science

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools

I have some professional experience with Node.JS when I briefly worked for a telecommunications company. I also recently did a code test in Node.JS, which got me an interview. The code test, Madlibs, is under the Projects section.

While I don't have any professional experience with C and C++, I did study it in college, along with data structures and a year of Calculus for a Computer Science degree I didn't finish. I also completed a code test in C++ for an interview that landed me a job in 2015.

While certainly not an expert in Bootstrap, this, and many other sites I've built used Bootstrap for responsiveness.

One of the constraints of the set top boxes that the Sacramento Kings had in their brand new arena is that they could only decode basic HTML, without changing the DOM after rendering with JavaScript. I knew PHP would be the best language to pull menu board data from MySQL and render simple HTML from that.

For the King's menu board project, I also used MySQL to hold all data and query correct data to be displayed. I've also used MySQL for custom forums on sites I've built over the years.

To manage user input and content editing, I used a Drupal CMS to manage over 100 food a drink items from the King's menu boards. I've also used Drupal to build several other websites.

Interests

Music

I was 16 when I first started taking music lessons. Within a year or so, I was playing in bands, performing at local music festivals and small clubs. In addition to performing, I started teaching music through the Rocklin Scool District and at local music stores. Finally, I dabbled on the otherside, working as a studio producer for other bands and booking bands at popular local night clubs. I actually got my start with web development by building websites for other bands, night clubs, and recording studios.

Art and animation

I first got into 3d modeling and rendering as a means to animate characters from my fictional stories. I own a 3d motion capture suit and have built a facial motion capture helmet. As a modeler, I used to work for my father's architectural firm doing 3d conceptual renders for commercial and residential buildings. When I owned a game development studio, I did some of the modeling and animation for a game my company built for one of Wells Fargo's museums.

Writing

I finished my first novel when I was 13. Though it was terrible, I've continued writing fiction and organizing writing groups to collaborate with other writers. In addition to my uncle Larry being an actor, he'd also published a book that got turned into a Disney Movie. From a young age, my uncle mentored me on becoming a better writer. I've since got some of my poetry published and had some of my fiction and game design work published in Dragon Magazine, the flagship publication for Dungeons & Dragons at the time. I would later go on to write fiction for video game companies. On the non fiction front, I worked professionally as a journalist for a music magazine for several years.

Projects

Madlibs

Node.JS project

Madlibs is a project I built as a code test. The objective was to get a word and number combination input from the user, and create unique and repeatable output. I decided to go in a humorous direction by outputing a funny life story. I followed a traditional Model, View, Controller design.

Tech used: Node.JS, Express.JS, and Bootstrap

Menu Board @ Golden1Center

LAMP stack project

While doing general IT at the Golden 1 Center, home of the Sacramento Kings NBA team, I was dismayed at the clumsy way we did our digital menu boards. I wrote an app to manage them and made this video to show the culinary team how to use it. The content system is written in Drupal, but the end points at the concession stands could only handle simple HTML, so I built templates in PHP to render appropriate data from the MySQL the Drupal CMS used. After making this video, I continued to add more features to the code, making the system vastly more robust.

Tech used: Drupal, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and JQuery