Our family braved the chilly and drizzly Sydney winter to visit Taronga Zoon last Sunday. Here we are on the ferry pushing off from Circular Quay.
Most of the animals were more sensible than us and stayed indoors, so there wasn’t as much to see as in the summertime.
We saw three giraffes, one meerkat, some gorillas huddled up to keep warm, three penguins, and lots of lizards and snakes because they had heat lamps.
However, the trip will now be referred to as:
“Remember when we went to the zoo and got attacked by a kookaburra? 😵“
Here he is. Watching. Spying. Waiting.
We let our son play in the farm play area while we sat down and had lunch sandwiches. Rest and sandwiches – yep, we’re getting old 🙂
Suddenly, the kookaburra swooped down to snatch my wife’s sandwiches!
I managed to grab her glad-wrapped lunch by a miracle of sudden reflexes.
It was a standoff. Me and bird. Lunch or starvation. Better than a spaghetti western.
It was touch and go for a while. I stared into its soulless eyes, and it growled back kookaburra-style, refusing to let go of the plastic wrap.
The standoff lasted a few minutes before a defeated bird let go and flew off in search of another victim’s lunch morsels.
I didn’t mind him having the sandwiches so much, but I couldn’t let him eat the plastic!
My boy found the spectacle “Amazing,” and it was all he talked about for the rest of the day. 🤣
WordPress Work
I’ve been busy the past fortnight with client WordPress projects. One is using GeoTargeting to deliver UK-specific pages and content to their customers.
Another client is an NPO with a very outdated website. It’s running WordPress 4.9.25 and has the search engines discouraged option checked. 😕 We’re rebuilding from the ground up.
I took some time out to rebuild my WP Wingman website in Elementor. It was the last of my websites running Beaver Builder, which I no longer use or support. The rebuild took three hours, including revamping the CSS to use a fluid type scale for typography, margins and paddings. I used this handy, fluent type scale calculator.
What am I reading and listening to?
I’ve started reading Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone. It’s about networking and improving social and business relationships.
Recently, I’ve been listening to the Marketing with Brendon Burchard podcast, specifically S2E61 How to Become a Highly-Paid Expert and S2E62 How to Build a Marketing Webpage. Those two episodes contain some gold nuggets of information.
Interview With My Host AU
Max from My Host Australia interviewed me a few weeks back about my eighteen-year journey with WordPress. We had fun during the interview, and Max is a champion.
Give it a read, and let me know your thoughts.
WordCamp Sydney
I’m reviving WordCamps in Australia with the reboot of WordCamp Sydney 2024 this November 2-3 at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). WordCamp Sydney (#WCSyd) is the first Australian WordCamp since the pandemic shut us down in 2019.
WordCamp Sydney will be a two-day technical conference with two talking tracks, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and a Saturday evening social networking event starting from $70 dollar-bucks.
Who should come? Every web beginner, freelancer, developer, designer, user and business owner. We’ll have some WordPress goodness for everyone.
Tickets are on sale soon!
That’s my wrap-up for this newsletter – fun, work, learning and community building.
Let me know what you’re working on this fortnight.
Until next time, keep thriving!
Wil.
