As I have done each and every year in the summer, I will be taking my annual break from technology. Through the month of August, I'll be decreasing my postings and management of this site in hopes of using the time to broaden my perspective. I need to spend some time recharging my batteries and my enthusiasm for content management systems as well as information technology in general.
I seem to collect a number of books each year. A few of the books I receive from publishers with intent to review or as appreciation for my involvement with events related to content management systems. Other books just peak my interest so I can't help but buy them for my personal library. The following are five books I plan to read in 2009 and are available in CMS Report's Amazon Store.
Drupal Multimedia by Aaron Windborn
I'm sure by now, new visitors to CMSReport.com have wondered...why so few posts? Last May, I explained that I was taking a break from technology during the off hours of my "day job".
I just spent the day with my son hiking along the trails of a nearby state park. My son is only 3 1/2 so some of the the sights, sounds, and smells are still new to him. Those trails I've walked a hundred times also becomes new to me when I allow myself to see it all through his eyes. I left the cell phone in the car and the only modern tools we carried were our walking sticks which were found and left in the woods we traveled. It was a good day for both of us and the experience served as a reminder to me the value of taking a break from IT now and then.
For the rest of this summer I will be turning it down a notch on the number of posts that are placed on the "front page" here at CMSReport.com. You shouldn't notice a difference in quality, but I suspect some of you may miss the quantity of new posts. While we do schedule the time for when a post or excerpt is placed on the front page, by choice we do no automation when it comes to the placement of excerpts on the front pages. In other words, for an article to make the front page...I need to be sitting at the computer and that's not going to happen as often during the summer months.
If you really want to help, create an account today and start contributing your own CMS stories here at this site. Even suggestions for links to other articles is appreciated.
As some of you may have noticed, I returned a few days ago from my low-tech week. It's taking me awhile to adjust being stuck at the computer so you'll have to bear with me. It's been tough enough to spend the PC time at work, so spending my "free time" on the PC is challenging. It's kind of like not eating fast food for a week and then suddenly having to ingest it for every meal. Drupal addict and Yoga for Geeks guru, Sarah Pullman, mentioned a similar experience in one of her posts. To add insult to injury, I blew up three sites on my VPS and had to put the pieces back together.
Taking the term of Web 2.0 further, CNET has an article about Family 2.0 sites:
Cook is one of a growing number of parent-entrepreneurs who are putting their time and money behind their familial interests and starting a new generation of Web sites for parents and older people--sites that borrow many of the social networking concepts, such as photo-sharing and the wiki, that are found on well-known destinations like MySpace.com and the aforementioned Wikipedia.