Holland Park Press is properly going mobile, and so we’ve made the decision to make our website responsive, aka so that it will work neatly on a smartphone. Don’t worry, the website on your laptop will not change much at all. I hate people that keep tinkering with a website, don’t you? They think we won’t notice but we do.
Anyway, getting you on board with your mobiles means I have to don yet another hat and start testing our ‘mobilised’ website. I actually quite like software testing. I know I’m odd. I think this goes back to my love for computers. It’s not my first love, that’s literature and reading, but even so this second love shaped my life.
When, a long time ago (where has the time gone?), my university had the then quite forward-thinking policy of teaching all science students computer programming (yes I know!), it was love on first sight. Programming, even on those ancient computers (remember punch cards? Well, I used them!), was a revelation and, I must admit, a welcome break from practical chemistry.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, love of computing made me decide to become a theoretical chemist (sorry, it’s a conversation killer but in short it is chemical experiments on the computer), who somehow found her way into drug design, only to gravitate to electronic publishing, and then only to chuck it all in for good old books.
However, I simply do like testing software, which is what testing a website boils down to. You can be methodical and precise and no one complains. Not only that, it’s always a joy to work with the team at Reactive Graphics, who do not only designed our website, they host it, designed our logo as well as our books inside and out.
So, I like doing QA (quality assurance to use the correct term) on websites and I’ve got quite a bit of experience overseeing major programming projects, but to relax I always return to books. No computer games for me, actually, I’m probably too old-fashioned, a laptop, tablet or mobile phone just represents work. So why would I use these devices to relax? This makes it quite easy for me to switch off. No, I don’t check my phone immediately when I wake up, I deal with pressing issues after I’ve dressed and had breakfast and when I’m ready to face the new working day.
So, we’ll soon be compatible with Google’s latest update of their renowned search & ranking of search results algorithm (now there is a smart bit of programming), and I will return to my first love, reading, because there is always an exciting new manuscript out there waiting to be discovered.
