April 2012 Member of the Month [no kidding]

I’m pleased to announce that our Member of the Month, selected based on his constant participtation and the high quality of the content he posts here, is ServerStorm.
Get yourself a coffee and read this interview to get to know him a little better.

Congratulations, Steve.

I first want to say thank you so much to the SP staff and the members of this site for making this such a great place!

How did you first come across SP and what made you stay?

In 2005, the life I lived allowed for little else than work, so I decided to leave my job as a VP Big Wig to spend time with my new kiddies. At this same time, I decided that I liked what was happening with the relatively early stages of the modern web. So, not knowing much at all about it, I searched for books and information on the Web and found ‘How to Build a Database Driven Website’ by Kevin Yank. I spent the next couple of months configuring web-servers and getting my own company website built using this book as a foundation. After that SP became a valuable source for growth for me and my new business.

Do you expect your life will change as a result of becoming Member Of The Month? In what way(s)?

In the public domain, I think that things move so fast these days that it changes life a little but in a year the only place this will still exist is in SP Archives and maybe my online information. In my personal life, I will like this forever.

Is there a story behind your choice of Sitepoint username?

In my early working years 1991 - 1994, I had a stretch where I would touch a computer monitor or a server and to my dismay they would start on fire! At a early Unix Widget company I worked at making Macromedia multimedia presentations on floppy disc, I touch a monitor and it burst into flames, the fire alarm in the building was tripped (luckily no sprinklers). When calm returned they nicknamed me ServerStorm. For years, when working on equipment, I wore insulated gloves. I always thought it was just bad timing, but the gloves gave the people around me ‘Peace of Mind’.

Many people wonder about my header and footer: Foozle Reducer and Ictus, so I put the definitions in the ‘about me’; for those too lazy to go and look :wink:

  • Ictus: rhthmical or metrical stress, associated with a musical conductors upbeat motion when conducting.
  • Foozle: To work, badly, clumsily, hurriedly - Therefore I try to be a Foozle Reducer :slight_smile:

Your profile mentions the Music and a few other things. But when you are NOT on Sitepoint what are you doing? Any interesting hobbies?

I love to fly fish. This causes me to stay in great shape for belaying down cliffs, jumping from boulders to boulders over treacherous, boiling water, wading in swift currents, meeting really interesting people and getting bit by dangerous poisonous spiders (Ask me about this some other time) . When you fly fish you don’t have to do these things, I choose this to get to some of the most magnificent areas that are rarely visited. I almost purely practice catch and release but love it from the beauty, rhythm and peace of fly fishing. It is Zen like for me and I encourage others to try it.

Other things:

  1. I ride a unicycle.
  2. I help several charities for whatever they need me to do.
  3. I write a lot of music and am commissioned once or twice a year for film, TV, or Radio.
  4. I help some local businesses and charities with 2-d animations for their websites.
  5. Each week I create a minute ‘Wall of Shame’ 3-d video nominating one person who has done the stupidest move that week in my Football Pool.
  6. I am writing a children’s book ‘Whales Playing Ping-Pong In The African Rain Forest’.
  7. I volunteer at my Kids school to teach proper HTML, CSS and JavaScript - the kids really love JavaScript so it is hard to root their understanding in ‘basics first’, but not so surprisingly they create some great stuff!
  8. I don’t sleep a lot around 4 hours a night, so I get lots done when I am awake.

What is YOUR answer to the question of “Life, the Universe and Everything”?

Wow and you asked me to write ‘Short Paragraphs’ ;)! I like Quantum Physics and I think the M-theory and p-branes are an interesting and somewhat plausible take on the Universe; however we lack to tools and math to really prove out this so at the time being I think that at least for me I am somewhat unknowing about the Universe. Quantum Physics is a big topic so my answer might sound a little vague; interestingly many physicists find M-theory too vague, so I guess it is appropriate :wink: ?

One of the benefits of MOTM is this chance for shameless, unmoderated, self promotion… Is there a website that you’d like to draw our attention to?

At this time I don’t have much to promote, I just sold my company and am considering what to do next, so instead, I invite people to focus 3 days out of their lives on a cause that involves less fortunate people in their communities or more generally, the world. There are so many people in need, that if all 1 million plus SP’ers did something to help we could make a real difference.

Any final words?

Thanks so much for this honour!

Please join me in congratulating our April MOTM, @ServerStorm;.

{I want to also recognize ServerStorm as a good sport. He insisted we continue the April Fools MOTM post for a few additional days - stealing a few days from his honored role}

Congratulations, ServerStorm! As usual, another very interesting interview. It’s always fascinating to find out what people do away from the computer.

Congratulations! I had a feeling it would come soon. I actually checked the logs to see if you already had one. Go server! Keep it up

Congratulations, Steve! I’d rather call you Steve than ServerStorm as I’d like to keep my computer equipment for some time to come. :wink:

A really nice interview. :slight_smile:

wow… a unicycle!! :eek:

this is a well deserved award… congrats :award:

Congratulations Steve and interesting interview :slight_smile:

Congrats, Steve! Well deserved! Great interview and great sport for letting us have some April Fools fun :smiley:

A very interesting interview and a well deserved award, congratulations Steve!

Congratulations ServerStorm!
And good job with the interview ParkinT.

Interesting list of hobbies. When is that book going to be published?

Is that Half of a Sine Wave?

Thanks to all of you!

I appreciate it @ParkinT; (For the interview), @ralph_m; , @RyanReese; , @kohoutek; , @r937; , @Paul_O_B; , @DaveMaxwell; , @TheRaptor; , @guido2004; .

I am not sure just changing my name will protect your computer equipment, but I am willing to give it a try, but are you? :wink:

guido2004, I have the rough draft of the book plus most of the illustrations already done, my Sister who is a trained Screen Writer is trying to convince me that it would be better for a short film, so at this point I am contemplating whether I find a small publishing house or fund it myself as a independent short film. Once I get it to its’ final home then I will let people know in the News section, but I promise I won’t make it a ‘commercial’ pitch :slight_smile:

I think this is really more about the anit-string-theory camp about splitting time from space :slight_smile:

Regards,
Steve

Do both! Harry Potter docet. And yes, please let me know, I would love to see the result.

Congratulations!

Well deserved.

~TehYoyo

Congratulations, ServerStorm, on a well deserved award and to you and ParkinT for such an interesting interview.

I’m another one who’ll be eagerly awaiting the book/film/both. :slight_smile:

You don’t have Scots ancestors, do you? I think we may be related. In one of my first jobs, I was banned from using the office photocopier, because every time I did, I fried its circuits. :lol:

Congrats Steve, what a fun interview…so much we don’t know about our fellow members, gotta love MOTM! Well deserved and enjoy it! :spf:

Kudos to ParkinT for some corker questions :tup:

@TehYoyo; , @TechnoBear; , and last but not least @mizwizzy; , thanks so much for your kind words and thoughts, I appreciate it greatly!

My Mother’s maiden name is Cameron. My Grandfather came from Scotland, so I am 3rd generation Scott :slight_smile: We may be related, maybe weird electrical currents run in Scottish blood?

To this day, I ground myself before touching any electrical device, including remotes, fridge, and car radio. If I wear a watch the battery is dead within a few days. I bought one of those citizen eco drive watches and fried it in two weeks and it didn’t even have a battery. The only cool part about it is that when I am at a party and someone who drinks too much become obnoxious :beer::cheer:, I wist by them and put my hand lightly on their metal beer mug or back and give them a big electrical shock, enough so to stop their verbal assault. I always apologize of course :wink:

Thanks for the encouragement for the book. You can’t trust your family or friends when wanting critical assessment of ideas as they generally find good in it even if the idea stinks, so I was surprised to see some people mention the book.

I have enjoyed learning about all the other MOTM, it is so neat. What shouldn’t surprise but does strike me none the less, is that their really does seem to be a pattern of highly creative yet analytical people in a Web/Technology driven site. I guess that is what is needed to be a good web person. I bet if we interview 100, 000 SP members we would find similar stories. Yet when posting we direct so much our attention to asking questions or posing answers that we never peel that layer off the onion, so it is not until something like this until we see how same we are to others… it is great!

Thanks also to ParkinT for the great interview and indeed corker questions. Where is Shyflower when neat words are used?:weyes:

Regards,
Steve

I’m noticing a very strange noise in my machine…

Well done, ServerStorm. And a great interview.

Mike

:eek: Eek, what a party trick! Damn, I wanna be able to do that (:

Exactly, it’s great, I always love reading the MOTM threads. Most times it’s always something that makes you go “ooh, imagine that” and it’s usually the non web stuff that’s the real eye opener! And I do agree with you, there’s so much we don’t know about who we communicate with on here, for me, the most unusual thing is how “social” people are, I mean… one might imagine that a person who invests a lot of time online, growing/maintaining a business in addition to managinig various web projects, would not have time to maintain a busy lifestyle outside of work but in most cases it’s quite surprising that they do! Great to get a small insight into your life and I wish you all the best Steve with your projects, sounds exciting!

:rofl:

Thanks @Mikl;

Well I wafted through the Hamburg airport yesterday so who knows? :cool:

Maybe condition yourself on a Van De Graaff Generator each day and eventually it might come? Or come and visit me and I will pass it on:afro: :smiley:

Steve