Happy 13th Birthday Linux!
From a Slashdot post: today is the official Linux birthday!
Send the penguin presents!
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Tags: linux
Archive for August, 2004
Making a GUI Mess of PHP
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Making a GUI Mess of PHP: Building ‘Stand-alone’ GUI Applications with PHP-GTK by Ben Ramsey International PHP Magazine Issue 05.2004 (Sep/Oct 2004) |
From the introduction:
“PHP-GTK has been around for several years now, and you may have heard what it can do – allow developers to create graphical applications using PHP. Egads! It sounds as if it’s the Holy Grail of PHP, something that can take PHP to new heights, breaking it free from the bonds of the Web. In fact, it can do just that, as we see with a practical application: a simple text editor.”
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Tags: articles, php, php-gtk, php-magazine
Does a PHP programmer need a CS degree?
I’m proud of my degree. It makes me happy that I have one and that I can consider myself somewhat more worthful to people in the business world because I have it. But I’m a programmer, and my degree, well, let’s just say that it has something to do with a language and that’s where the similarities stop.
I have a Bachelor of Arts in English. English lit., English language? I don’t know. It doesn’t specify. It’s just English. Yet, all this time (for nearly 6 years, at least), I’ve been a Web application programmer in some sort of professional capacity.
During the dot com boom, degrees didn’t matter at all. If you could program, you were hired. If you had experience, even better, but, now, it seems that a degree is becoming more important to weed out potential candidates for a position. After all, programmers—especially Web programmers—are a dime a dozen.
Pair that together with the folks in India who are willing to accept your outsourced programming jobs for quotes as low as USD 5.00 an hour (and even lower), and you can see that the job market is getting stiffer all the time.
So, when I was asked to submit my resume to what would become my new job, it didn’t surprise me in the least that they had a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science listed in their job requirements. What did surprise me were the types of questions I was later asked in a sort of quiz to know my strengths and weaknesses.
I was asked about Fibonacci numbers, tries, parity, and more, questions that are basic knowledge to a CS 101 student, no doubt, but to a mere PHP programmer and student of English literature, I was unfamiliar with the terms.
Well, needless to say, I got the job, but the questions and the nature of the IT industry got me thinking. Do I really need a computer science degree to continue in this line of work? No doubt, it wouldn’t hurt.
What do you think? And, if you say “yes,” what’s the best way to go about obtaining it? On-line or through classes at a traditional school?
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Tags: computer-science, degree, php
PHP 5.0.1 released . . . and I wasn’t paying attention
After waiting around for several weeks with the words “hope to roll PHP 5.0.1 soon” or even “tomorrow,” the day has finally come, and I wasn’t paying any attention because I was too busy at the office trying to wrap things up on my last day.
So, PHP 5.0.1 was released today.
This is a maintenance release that in addition to many non-critical bug fixes also includes new UNIX and Windows installation docs which are now auto-generated from the PHP Manual.
I’ve compiled it without any problems, and it seems to show up as version 5.0.1 just fine when I run php—version:
[ramsey@orome cvs]$ php --version PHP 5.0.1 (cli) (built: Aug 13 2004 22:53:26) Copyright (c) 1997-2004 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.0.1, Copyright (c) 1998-2004 Zend Technologies
But, when I load up phpinfo() in a Web page, it shows PHP Version 5.0.0 with a build date of Jul 22 2004 01:09:03.
It seems I’ve had this problem before, but I can’t recall how I solved it.
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Tags: php
Wordpress syntax hiliter
I’m just trying out a nifty syntax hiliter plugin for Wordpress. This particular plugin handles HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, and SQL. I’ve modified it a little bit to suit my own personal tastes.
function hello_world() { echo 'hello, world!'; } hello_world(); // tells the world 'hello'
UPDATE (3 Oct 2005): I’m now using CodeHighlight
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Tags: php, syntax-highlighting, wordpress
PHP-GTK 1.0.1 released!
And you thought they were done.
PHP-GTK just announced the release of version 1.0.1. This release implements some new features of GtkToolbar, as well as some bug fixes and a new build system. It’s proof that the folks at PHP-GTK (which includes myself) are dedicated to continuing the project and working toward PHP-GTK 2. Overall, activity has increased tremendously in the project; take some time to check it out.
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Tags: php, php-gtk
Interesting disposable e-mail service
Through a post over at Tom Sommer’s weblog, I found this interesting disposable e-mail service called Mailinator.
Here’s how it works: you’re filling out a form and you need an e-mail address. All you have to do is think up an @mailinator.com address, such as dude@mailinator.com, and use it. You don’t even have to go to the Mailinator Web site to sign up or create the address ahead of time. The moment Mailinator receives mail at that address, an inbox is created for it, which is cleared several hours later.
On the surface, this looks pretty cool and awesome, and it’s great for filling out on-line forms, but the problem enters when you start thinking about identity and security. If you’re signing up for a forum or some other service that sends your password to you via e-mail, using Mailinator may look appealing, but anyone could be sitting there typing in random addresses to see what’s in the inbox, and they could grab your password.
The long and the short: don’t use Mailinator when you need to receive sensitive information—and don’t use the same password for on-line banking and credit cards as you do for forums, etc.
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Tags: disposable, email, mailinator
Switching to Wordpress
When you hit my site today, you probably noticed a few different things. The first thing you noticed may have been that you were whisked away to a new URL. The second, and most noticable, thing was the new design.
Why the new location and look? you ask.
Because I wanted a nice, PHP-powered blog, I reply.
Yes, now I am running Wordpress, a full-featured blogging suite, that includes all those fancy pings and trackbacks that bloggers have come to love. This time, however, I’m running it with style in PHP—along with the nice GNU GPL (two features that Movable Type, my previous software, did not have).
Don’t be dismayed, however. Despite the fact that I have moved the location of my articles and am using new software, I have set up Apache Redirect directives for every page in my “old” site. So, there will be no broken links to my site; just be sure to update your links to the new pages over the next few months. I have yet to move many of the older postings over, and I will be doing that over the next few weeks, but they are still available on the old archives page, and I will implement Redirects for the pages as I move them.
I hope you find this new site better, more easily navigable, and just downright more sexy than the previous one.
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Tags: movable-type, php, wordpress
Call for a national IT advocacy group
Each week, I receive a complimentary issue of eWeek in my mailbox. I receive complimentary issues of other magazines, which I usually promptly toss aside, but I never toss aside eWeek. I could make a nice advertising plug for eWeek right now, but I won’t. I’ll simply say this: I read it because of Jim Rapoza’s “Tech Directions” column.
Rapoza seems to have a lot of sense about what’s best for the IT industry. He encourages the use of OSS, and he’s not afraid to speak out about problems in the industry (sometimes related to Microsoft, SCO, etc.). For these things and others, I always find Rapoza’s column an interesting read. For the August 2nd issue of eWeek, this was no exception.
This week’s “Tech Directions” was a clear call for the formation of a national IT advocacy group to spearhead the industry and be its voice in Washington. Nothing of this sort exists at present, and so legislation, such as the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) (see also the Anti-DMCA Web site) and the Induce Act: (see also the Induce Act blawg and their post about Rapoza’s proposed IT advocacy group), gets passed without anyone in the public batting an eye.
There needs to be a voice for the industry, backed by industry money, and run by the industry. According to Rapoza, there are several groups seeking to do something of this sort, but there is no unified effort.
A unified effort sounds nice, but how can it exist in an industry that is so fragmented? The IT industry consists of extremely large super-companies (i.e. Microsoft, Sun, IBM) and very small companies and individuals. No doubt, the large companies have entire departments dedicated to lobbying Congress in order to advance their own corporate goals and agendas, but in the case of companies like Microsoft and Sun, those goals usually don’t match those of the other hundreds of thousands of individuals working in the industry.
There needs to be a group that is the voice for the rest of the industry, and as Rapoza suggests, if this group were to form, it would most likely be larger than any other lobbying force in Washington, since the IT industry itself is vastly huge, incorporating many different types of technologies.
How do we form such a group? I’m not exactly sure of that, but I do have an uncle that is the director of such an agency for state courts. I intend to contact him and find out how an organization of this type works. Then, I will contact Rapoza, as he encourages readers to do, and offer my suggestions.
I think it’s time that the IT industry had a voice to protect us from Congressional acts that are detrimental to the industry.
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Tags: eweek, it-advocacy
Atlanta PHP job
I have recently accepted a Web application development position (heavily involving PHP) at Hands On Network in downtown Atlanta. This leaves the position I have with my previous employer, EUREKA! Interactive, wide open, and he needs a developer that has a strong command of PHP (and also ASP) to take over where I’ve left off. Because of my good relationship with him, I have informed him that I would try to provide him with a list of local PHP developers before I leave, so that he has an easier time finding someone to replace me. The company is a creative place to work, and the culture is very relaxed.
If you’re interested in this opportunity and you live in or around the Atlanta area, please send your resume to me and I’ll forward a recommendation on to my previous employer.
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Tags: atlanta, eureka-interactive, hands-on-network, job, php