me talking out loud

I have the IT Crowd intro as my cellphone ringtone and got to wondering when and if there will be a season 2. Started checking around and found this, which says a new episode should be showing on Jan. 5th. Supposedly there will be 8 more episodes.

Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Try taking this quiz and see how well you know your holiday specials. I thought I knew them pretty well but I guess not. Only got 17/36 correct. Have to pay closer attention next year.

And just to have it PHP related - the site uses the .php extension.

So what is your score?

Just want to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday. Have fun - eat lots of food and don’t forget to say thank you to whatever divinity you worship.

Normally when i write something I do it because I want to with no deadlines no pressure and only the occasional editor to “suggest” alternate ways of writing an area. Man - this writing thing is hard! Deadlines, formats, style sheets, Oh my.

Now don’t get me wrong - I am enjoying the whole thing (sent out my first chapter today). But I have to admit that coming home from work to write and code for 4 hours EVERY day kinda sucks for me and my family. My husband is actually cooking dinner so I have more time to write (granted pizza and hamburger helper is a common dinner choice - but still) - he is doing it!

So to all the authors out there - I salute you. Never again will I pick up a book and not appreciate all the work you went through to make it. Thanks.

Did you know MySpace runs on asp.net 2.0? I didn’t. I thought it was on Coldfusion after all it has those little .cfm tags right? Wrong.

While just kinda surfing on the net I came across this blog post from one of the people over at asp.net (sorry I don’t know who is who). Which lead me on to do some digging to validate it (call me paranoid but I rarely believe something I “just find” on the internet). And I’ll be danged.

Seems the cfm extensions are still being use to prevent breaking links to the site. And to quote Tim Anderson from ITwriting.com

Second, MySpace uses a product called BlueDragon, which lets you run ColdFusion pages on either J2EE or .NET - without using the official ColdFusion application server.

Does that mean the pages are still written in Coldfusion?

Was having problems getting my PDO to connect to the SQL Server with ODBC.
And to make matters worse I am on a windows LAN, the web server is a *nix box and my testing computer is M$. My DSN just was not right and wouldn’t play - my host string was off and any permutation I used wasn’t working. Looked at the PDO docs, the DSN docs in the manual, connectionstrings.com and no love.

I am most comfortable working with MySQL so getting the SQL Server to play had been frustrating in the extreme (hate when simple things are made hard - wanted to kick something). Turned out I needed to add my “instance” of the SQL server (not my word - bosses) to the host. So what did I finally come up with that works

[php]
$host = ‘192.0.0.0\InstanceName’;
$user = ‘user’;
$pass = ‘xxxxxxxx’;
$db = ‘test’;

$dbh = new PDO(”odbc:Driver={SQL Server};Server=$host;Database=$db;Uid=$user;Pwd=$pass;”);
[/php]

* was it just me or was that an alphabet soup?

Can you believe someone actually asked me to help write a book?! Me. LOL. Anyway the papers are signed and I already have a looming deadline. Can’t say what it is on other than PHP - but was just so tickled pink I had to share.

Am playing a bit with the ZF - basically doing shiflett’s tutorial on it, when I came upon a bit of a problem.

*Right about here I should note I haven’t even looked at the ZF in almost a year and quite a bit has changed.

Anyway - I am using a subfolder of web root to play with the ZF and was having troubles getting my controller to go to the correct place. After considering hacking both the Apache doc root and the actual Zend_Controller_Router code and writing a patch, I stumbled on the answer - Zend_Controller_RewriteRouter.

[php]
// url - http://localhost/Test/www/:controller/:action
$router = new Zend_Controller_RewriteRouter();
$router->setRewriteBase(’/Test/www/’);
$controller->setRouter($router);
[/php]

Seems to be working so far.

A friend of mine showed me this today (it is based off of an older version found here). Now sexism aside I have to say it was pretty dang funny. PHP’s write up:

PHP - Slick and slim lady. Very portable. Does nice and amazing things with her small body. Very good in aerobics. Not very sexy but intact. She is the kind of women that most men are happy to wed, though she will need a house maid because she is unable to carry heavy workload.

To the friends and family of the sailors injured this weekend on my husbands ship - I just want you to know that you are in our thoughts and prayers.

Sorry for being gone for so long - was having problems with my comments table. Luckily my hosting company is very nice and more then willing to help me fix it. Took a bit - and we thought we had it fixed 2 times but - not. Anyway, hopefully it is fixed permanently now so all should be good.

Woohoo it is finally published. Now why would I care about this particular book - I’m not an author after all. Well you see I am it’s Technical Editor though and I have to say it was a lot of fun doing it - stressful at times with short deadlines but still fun.

Just a quick note to wish everyone a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving.

Been going crazy the past couple days - cooking like mad. On Sunday we had an early Thanksgiving dinner with Mom, and a number of friends (Ham, garlic cheese mashed potatoes, traditional family stuffing, peas and bacon, gravy, salad, biscuits, pumpkin and apple pies) and then on Monday Jason reenlisted in the Navy for an additional 3 years. We threw a BBQ at one of the beaches to celebrate. Only had ~15 people there since we wanted something small. Ribs, ribeye steaks, and brats with the various sides for that one.

Have to admit having 2 major cooking events going on right after each other was a bit more cooking then I have done in a very long time and I am friggin’ tired. Mom and Jason are worth it though.

Ok - I finally have uploaded some of my pictures. I have the Tokai Maru pictures Jason took as well as the Halloween pictures from at my job.

I have only gotten half way through the pictures we took today with Mom so I will be finishing those tomorrow and posting them. Though I am still unsure where I will post them - Family or Guam… so many decisions

Well my mom-in-law made it in tonight. She flew in from Maine USA and her travel time was 32 hours (she over-nighted in Houston). Jason is very excited to have his mom out so be prepared for pictures to be posted later.

I am normally a vim user when I code but I decided to pop my head out of my cubicle and try something new on the editor front. So I decided to check out NuSphere.

What I like:

• Works very well straight out of the box. Very little configuring needed to activate the various capabilities and all of them “just worked”.
• The built in FTP/SFTP client - very handy when working with remote files -
• The built in DB navigator - covers multiple RDBMS
• built in ssh/telnet terminal
• built in cvs
• built in debugger
• very customizable - I like dark themes
• Code Insight shows the input params of a function while you are typing it - no need to look in the manual
• Multiple manuals included in the HELP menu - offline - they are right there

What I don’t like:

• php4 and php5 syntax highlighting are 2 seperate things - and you can’t copy one “theme” to the other. They must be set individually by hand.
• to send SQL to the DB you have to open a wizard - would prefer to be able to right click on the DB client and select “open SQL window”
• code completion when using mysqli and PDO in an Object Oriented manor is not available. It is available in the procedural style however. (To make it available I have to create a php file with all the methods documented. They do have a file for the SPL to show you what it looks like. And then point to it in one of the projects properties.)
• Code Insight can be irritating if it just happens to be covering something you want to see while you type (displays above the line you are typing. Can’t move it anywhere else like below or to the side.)
• No code folding. I use this all the time. It has a code browser though so I may not mind it as much - least that is what I have been told by friends who love their code browser.
• the libmysql.dll that comes with the default install does not work with MySQL 4.1<= . From what I understand it has to do with the new licenses. Anyway - if you are using a later version of MySQL you need to use the newest version of the libmysql.dll (I just copied it from my PHP 5 install to the nusphere install).
• not having an embedded Firefox to go with the IE. It does work with the external FF - but it would be nice to have it all in the IDE (and yes I want it on a silver spoon too )

Overall impressions - pretty dang cool. A lot of the things I didn’t like were nit-picky kind of stuff - but i have to admit I am like that. All the built in stuff was very cool and easy to set up (normally use various apps to do them).

The one major downer is the price - $119, $299, and $495 USD (comparable to Zend Studio). You can see what you get for each version here. If you want to try it out for yourself - they do have a free trial version available for download.

After over 8 months of silence, I noticed Richard Davey posted to his blog today. Seems he has been a bit busy with a new little one in the house.

Anyway - just want to give a belated Congrats to him and maybe a slight nudge to remind him that his PHP Life comic strip hasn’t been updated since he left either. Yeah - I’m selfish like that.

Was just cruising around on the Yahoo! job listings for the farts and giggles of it when I came across this job announcement. What caught my eye was the job title - MySQL Geek

I would apply for it if I was even remotely qualified just to have that on my desk and business card!

Oh and FYI - there where pages and pages of jobs when you searched using PHP as the keyword.

OK - PHPWomen.org has been around for about 2 weeks now and we sure have been busy. Currently we have just under 50 registered users on the very active forums, a basic site set up with a page explaining what we are about as well as what we have planned for the site. We also have a couple of writers who are busy getting a couple of series articles together that will be published on the site.

Currently the site has been busy with everyone getting to know each other and where everyone is. We have had a few people surprised to find they had another woman not to far from themselves which is what we wanted.

I can’t beleive the wonderful response this has had from the women in PHP and the PHP Community in general. I want to thank everyone who has volunteered to help with the site (from suggestions for the site to being a moderator on the forums to helping me implement some of the ideas the community has come up with) and all those who have joined and become a member of our community. You are awesome.