When I go away on holiday I’m always torn between trying to make my job as easy to care-take as possible for the people that are covering, and making sure that I don’t make it SO easy that they wonder what I do when I’m here. I think I got it right when I went away last week because everything seems to be in order, and I still have a job. I was disappointed to notice that the Community blog post that I lovingly crafted in preparation for last Monday and scheduled through WordPress didn’t go live though. I’m not sure what I did wrong. Perhaps it’s timely that while I was away our WordPress book launched! Never mind. That holiday is already a distant memory.
It’s an exciting day for me today. It’s my birthday. I am traditionally someone that celebrates for an entire week – known as the Hawkstravaganza. Who knows what kind silliness will take place. One thing I do know for sure is that I won’t be getting a cake anywhere near as cool as the one that our Facebook fan Tim got. This guy has one very talented wife. Check out the photos of her creation.
Whilst we’re talking Facebook, I’ll take the opportunity to remind you that my new ‘Get To Know Us’ campaign is now into it’s second week. I won’t go into great detail as I did that the week before last, but if you’re interested in the people that work at SitePoint and why it is that we do the things we do, head on over and check out our Facebook fan page. Last week we talked with Mark Cipolla and this week it’s Creative Director Matt Magain on the chopping board.
In my absence I left the management of the SitePoint forums in the capable hands of my team of volunteer staff. True to form they stepped up to the plate and actually ran an entire programming competition. Contestants were required to write a private message utility application. We’ve now entered the judging phase and the winner will be announced just as soon as we have one.
For those of you that are less interested in programming than you are in making things look pretty, we have launched the third in our series of photography tutorials. In part 2 of the series on Photography Principles, forum mentor Shaun(OfTheDead) talked about exposure and shutterspeed. This week he moves on to part 3 which is all about focal length and angle of view.
The last thing I’ll mention this week is the fact that we’re currently hiring at SitePoint. We are looking for a talented PHP developer to join our team. If you live in Melbourne (or are prepared to relocate) and think you fit the bill, take a look at the job description and get in touch.
Hot Topics This Week
There is a great thread in the Web Hosting forum this week. It discusses strategies for choosing a new host. How do you go about it?
Ever wondered how to store images into Access database along with page per records? Of course you have! Well we have the answers over in the .NET forum.
In Computer Hardware and Software this week they’re discussing the best software for editing PDFs. Do you have a favourite?
The talk is all about commenting in the HTML and XHTML forum this week.
And that’s it from me. I have celebrating to do. Later.
Feature image by Chris Roberts from Digital Precision
Sarah HawkFormerly a developer in the corporate world, HAWK (known as Sarah by her mother) said goodbye to the code and succumbed to the lure of social media to become the Community Manager for the SitePoint network. Now Hawk is working with Discourse to build their product and community.
