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
- 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
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:
- I ride a unicycle.
- I help several charities for whatever they need me to do.
- I write a lot of music and am commissioned once or twice a year for film, TV, or Radio.
- I help some local businesses and charities with 2-d animations for their websites.
- 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.
- I am writing a children’s book ‘Whales Playing Ping-Pong In The African Rain Forest’.
- 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!
- 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 ?
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}