MY CURRICULUM vitae was last updated July 9, 2008.

Personal

Name: Derrick Charles Sobodash
Birth date and place: February 22, 1982, Royal Oak, MI, USA
Citizenship: United States
Address: Block one Building 7 Room 208, Shuanghuayuan Nan Li, Chaoyang, Beijing, 100022, China
Home Phone: +86-10-6770-1656
Mobile Phone: +86-132-6935-5344
E-mail: derrick＠cinnamonpirate.com

Education

Oakland University, Michigan, USA: Bachelor of Arts (2005)

Major: Journalism and East Asian Studies–China (Sinology) 124 credits; Departmental Honors

Foreign Affairs University, Beijing, China (2004)

Guest student with 12 credits

Work Experience

Copy Editor for Beijing Today (2006 - 2008)

Charged with the linguistic quality of half every issue of Beijing’s only local, English weekly newspaper. Worked with reporters to improve stories and guide them to include more details and improve overall quality. Also wrote feature pieces for the paper.

Programmer for Crystal Science & Technology (2006)

PHP software developer. Work involved PHP development within the CakePHP framework to develop Web 2.0 intranet software including a form builder and a workflow chain generator and manager.

Teacher at Foreign Affairs University (2005 - 2006)

Lecturer of English courses teaching composition and oral English at the second-year level. Taught English majors how to write essays, research papers and short stories, and introduced them to various styles of news writing.

Features Intern for The Oakland Press (2005)

Assigned writer for Oakland County’s largest daily newspaper. Work involved writing several feature stories per week of varying length and maintaining regular work hours at the main office.

Freelance English editor (2003 – 2005)

Script editing and revisions for video games translations, both commercial and noncommercial. The largest project was Der Langrisser’s script.

Contracted programmer for SuperFighter.com (2003 – 2005)

Developed specialized software to meet contractor’s needs. Reverse engineered and wrote tools for translations of Fengshen Yingjiezhuan and Beggar Prince.

Assistant News Editor at The Oakland Post (2003)

One of the editors of the front page and news page of the weekly paper. Work involved writing 3 - 6 stories per week for each issue. Covered the police beat in a weekly “Crime Watch” section.

Contracted programmer for Omni Financial, Boulder, CO, USA (2000)

Developed “drum” software to look up records of liened individuals using internet databases, and process phone numbers for the telemarketing staff.

Language Skills

English: Native language
Middle-English: Literacy
Chinese: Intermediate; BA degree major; summer course in Beijing in 2004
Japanese: Intermediate; fair literacy; two years in college; limited conversation ability
Spanish: Some literacy

Computer Skills

Operating Systems

MS-DOS, Windows 3.0, 95, 98, NT, 2000 and XP; MacOS 8.6, 9.0; GNU/Linux; FreeBSD; QNX Real-Time OS

Programming

Highly skilled in PHP; some Python and C++

Web Development

HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS; Web server setup

Software

Microsoft Word, Excel, Access; OpenOffice.org; QuarkXpress; NewsEditPro; GIMP; Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat; MySQL; Vi IMproved; hex editors

Associations

China Club at Oakland University (2003 – 2005): Vice-president

Activities

Programming

Developed flexible tools for working with bitplane graphics generally unsupported by commercial software and a specialized patching format for variable-headered files; contributed code fixes to the Mambo project and its Simpleboard component

Translation

Translations of video game scripts for public use; larger projects include Heroine Anthem, Hydlide, Langrisser I, The Crest of Gaia, Space Knight Tekkaman Blade and Der Langrisser; credited with contributing to many other scripts

Awards

• Received a certificate for academic excellence in Chinese at Oakland University during the Winter 2004 semester.
• Nominated in 2003 for The Oakland Press Endowed Scholarship for Excellence in Journalism.
• Entered a research paper in the Writing Excellence Award competition at Oakland University in 2001.