W.O.X. - WORLD OF XOOPS #18 (March 2009)

The second Award recipient is  Simon Roberts  (Wishcraft) from Australia for his work on Multixoops and X-Invites 1.06. This is already the second Innovation Award for Wishcraft, who was already recognized in June 2008.

Where are you from, and where do you live now?

I am from Sydney, Australia, I live with my partner in Sydney still.

How long have you been programming?

Programming from a young age, and working in various industries, not all the time in the computer, My expertise is years of experience. I have not really wanted to sit in a learning institute and get a degree as most of the people I have met from University (at least fresh mans) have little experience and not much skill and are generally really prudent about what there course was. I find this being a bit of an anarchist and activist annoying, as well as enjoying music and culture. What got you to XOOPS? I was doing a contract with a client #1 Computing that never paid their development bill due to there dodgiest mentality, but they where using xoops for a system of roms.. I decided to check it out and decided to learn about it more. What is your expertise?

What do you like the most about XOOPS?

It flexibility and age of the project. A lot of CMS are very young and not matured but xoops has a resource and management system of websites that most people are use to. For example, when I was giving a demo of a site people where ‘ohh it is like myob’ which I felt was a great comment about the administration side of the site; also the fact it behaves much like most libraries being a very good RAD. You can have a simple module together in an hour or so that is working on the system. It also has a fantastic group of developers and support groups behind it.

In what area of XOOPS do you contribute and why?

Recently, I have been contributing to the modules repository, documenting these on the wiki and putting my 2 bits worth into most sections of the site. Kris_FR put me on the design team, which was a great honour, but I feel I would be more suited being a coder to module or core development, even though I am busy with work. I contribute to XOOPS, to make a better community for all, I also contribute to get more contacts and business, as I work from home and would like to expand my business to a few developers and an operation specializing in xoops.

What is your major achievement in programming that you're most proud of?

Well it was a couple of visual basic application, I wrote something called The Nexus Billing System, which took 5 years it was a windows application with a mysql backend that would provided interfaces with free radius etc, for billing ISP etc. The other achievement was coding a fractal encryption set (FES).

What are your hobbies, when you're not coding?

Coffee, music, events

You favorite dish and drink?

Butter Chicken and mixed dalh, I like a butterscotch snapps and soda water to drink.

What about movies and music?

Rap, Psychedelic Trance, Punk Rock & Easy Classics.

If you would have a chance for a 30 seconds commercial with a message to the world, what would you say?

One World, One Unity with a pictures of people with there computers networked.

If you could choose a place and time to live, what would it be and why?

I like Sydney, but I would consider living in Cyprus or England.

Who is the person that you would like to meet and why?

I would like to meet the queen of England to ask why sports stars should be knighted and not computer profession who are the staple foundation of the world communication are not knighted.