me talking out loud

InformationWeek | Net Neutrality | Net Neutrality Battle Shifts To Full Senate | June 29, 2006

Woot! PHP Architech’s Article Repository (A/R/T) has accepted an article I have written for publication. It should hopefully be released in the next couple of days.

They even gave me a pretty picture to put on my blog.

Can you beleive Apress has picked me up as a tech editor for a book? Now I know it isn’t that big a deal (not like I’m authoring a book or anything). More like I’m a bottomfeeder but to me it is really cool. I get paid to read a tech book, hopefully learn and comment on it to help those who will use it later. Not bad.

Though I must admit that some of the turn over dates can be kinda tight… especially since I still have my normal day job and a life (or at least I pretend I have a life).

The extra money will come in handy in Australia.

Went to Siapan over the weekend on my husband’s ship. Wasn’t too eventful other then my getting bitten by a rock in the Grotto when we went snorkeling. Tried to hook up with the coders while I was there - but since it was a Sat. no love.

Oh well. all in all it wasn’t a bad trip. To bad we forgot the memory card for the camera - standing at the top of the mountain - you could see the whole island as well as Tinian.

Woot! I have just been asked to become an Administrator over on Codewalkers.com. Needless to say i accepted. Been active about 2 years on their forums with some code and tutorials submitted. Honestly wasn’t expecting it.

Your Web, Your Choice: Opera 9 Gives You the Control

Opera 9 has been released. will be downloading it later to check it out. I love my FF - but sometimes it can be a real resources hog.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, Kayla is now a certified Junior Open Water Scuba Diver. Isn’t that fantastic?!

The only problem is that she is technically only supposed to go to a max depth of 40ft. Honestly thought she could go 60 -100 ft but guess not. Need to make sure the Australia dives aren’t to deep.

Kayla
Kayla started her dive lessons this Sunday. She is enrolled in a 3 day - all day - Kids Scuba Diving Class. So far she says she likes it though it is kinda “freaky” since she had to take off her mask, breathe through the resperator, swim, put back on her mask and clear it. She hates getting water in her eyes.

Anyway, yesterday was most of the confined dives, today they are doing a few of the open water dives and tomarrow is the last of the dives as well as learning about beach habitat and how important it is to protect it.

Jason
Jason managed to give us all a scare this weekend when we all thought he had lost his wallet. Both his and my dive cards are in there, so if it was lost - we wouldn’t have been able to get replacements in time for the Australia trip. I would have had to kill him then. Luckily the wallet was found. A friend came over to visit and on his way out saw it , thought it was his, picked it up and left with it.

Family
We had a good time at the husband’s divisional picnic (though Jason was gone the whole time on a dive to western shoals) on Friday afternoon. Kayla may have found someone to hire her for occasional babysitting there. It will give her some money to do with as she pleases. I met a number of Jason’s co-workers and bosses and they all seemed very nice.

Saturday we again went to picnic. This time at Sean’s house (friend of Jason’s) and had a wonderful time. Sean made a mean marinade for the beef steaks.

Sunday I searched the house for the wallet, dropped off and picked up the kid at her class, did some cleaning and laundry, picked up dinner for Jason, delivered it (he had duty and was on the ship) and visited for a bit and later that night attempted again to build php6 from source. Didn’t get it done completely yet - but definately getting closer (I actually knew how to do a buch of parts on my own - shocking). I’ll be blogging about that when I finally get it finished.

PocketHPH — A PHP Engine for the Pocket PC Platform

Anyone know anything about this? I was just recently given a link to it and am curious if anyone has used it.

Been getting some really good news lately - some personal, some professional… Just wanted to Woot! And say thanks for the opportunities coming my way - you know who you are.

Yes - you heard it correctly. We have bought our Australia tickets and will be flying out at the end of July. We have also started organizing our tours for while we are there. We started the ball rolling for the dive trip and are considering signing up for a ECO jungle 4X4 tour. A lot depends upon how expensive things get.

So - are you jealous yet?

Been wanting to learn Javascript and DOM but can’t seem to find anything that really teaches it well. Read the W3C tutorials - but don’t see how to make it apply to what I am doing.

So if anyone knows a good book or tutorial that shows javascript and DOM working together (especially with forms) I would be interested if you care to leave a link for me to follow up on. Also want to check out AJAX but figure I should first get a handle on the other stuff.

I hate Monday’s. Just the thought of going back to the office after only 2 short days off always kinda depresses me. This Monday turned out to be worse then usual. Woke up late, rush to get ready for work, and find my front driver’s side tire has gone flat. Husband is gone - no one to change the tire but me (well the kid was also there - and yeah she did help me a bit). Crap.

*sigh* so back in the house I go to change my clothes (happened to be wearing business clothes today rather then my usual shorts) since I’m going to be laying on the wet ground and getting all nasty and dirty. Eventually come back out and start changing the tire. Luckily my father insisted that all of the girls learn how to change a tire before we have to really change a tire. Though I am girly enough to admit I would rather have a guy change the tire for me then do it myself.

As for the whole tire changing experience - All I want to say on that is - WHY do people tighten the lug nuts so much it is almost impossible to loosen them? With copiuous amounts of WD40 and the proper application (and lots of heaving, pushing, pulling, and eventually standing on) of my tire iron to the lug nuts - we were eventually able to change the tire. Even remembered to loosen the lug nuts before raising the car though it took me a good 15 minutes to remember how to get the cap over the lugs off.

Back to the house again to wash up and change into my office clothes again. Thank goodness I didn’t hit any traffic in to work… Don’t know if I would have bothered to go in if something else went wrong.

I hate Monday’s.

Well the kid is finally back home. We have definately missed her. Picked her up at the airport last night, went home, grabbed something to eat - and she was out like a light.

For those that don’t know the story - Kayla wanted to go live with her dad for a while in California. Though I personally wasn’t too keen on the idea (go figure) - she really wanted to go. So off she goes and yeah - she still wants to stay there again next year.

Unfortunately that means that Kayla will only be out for the summer for a visit. Really sucks hard core - but she is now a teenager with a mind of her own.

Anyway - while she out this summer we plan to get her scuba diving certified and will be taking her to Australia with us so we can all dive the Great Barrier Reef together. Needless to say we are very excited about it.

Oh and one last note - you can see Kayla’s 8th grade graduation pictures in California. I’ve posted them in the gallery.

Welcome to Google Spreadsheets (Limited Test)

Hmm

Noticed an interesting thread on the PHP-general mailing list. The original thread was someone asking why should the world start adopting PHP5. Rasmus came back and answered the question with a list of benefits of making the change (using 5.1 not 5.0). Now I admit to not working with any of these, but many of them certainly look interesting enough for a second glance.

Rasmus’s list:

To me the main user-visible benefits of going to PHP 5 are (ignoring the OO changes for now):

1. Simplexml

eg. One-line RSS parser (of Flickr’s upload queue feed)

$url = ‘http://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne‘;
foreach(simplexml_load_file($url)->entry as $it) echo $it->content;

2. Much improved DOM support

eg. various things you can do to a DOM

// First, load your XML document into a DOM
$dom = domdocument::load(’test.xml’);

// Apply a stylesheet to the dom
$proc = new xsltProcessor;
$proc->importStyleSheet($domxsl);
echo $proc->transformToXML($dom);

// xpath query on the dom
$ctx = new domXPath($dom);
$result = $ctx->query(’/top/child[@attr > 3]/foo/text()’);
foreach($result as $node) {
echo $node->nodeValue;
}

// pull it into simplexml and access it
$s = simplexml_import_dom($dom);
echo $s->child[0]->foo;

3. xmlreader/xmlwriter

eg. SAX document validation using xmlreader

$reader = new XMLReader();
$reader->open(’test.xml’);
$reader->setParserProperty(XMLReader::VALIDATE, true);
while($reader->read());
echo $reader->isValid();

4. PDO

eg. Prepare execute against MySQL with named parameters

$pdo = new PDO(’mysql:dbname=testdb’);

$sql = ‘SELECT name, colour, calories
FROM fruit
WHERE calories < :calories AND colour = :colour';
$prep = $pdo->prepare($sql);
$prep->execute(array(’:calories’ => 150, ‘:colour’ => ‘red’));
$red = $prep->fetchAll();

5. SOAP

eg. Exposing your PHP code as a SOAP web service

function Add($x,$y) {
return $x+$y;
}
$server = new SoapServer(null,array(’uri’=>“http://test-uri/”));
$server->addFunction(”Add”);
$server->handle();

6. SPL

eg. Iterating over entries in a directory

$dir = new DirectoryIterator(’.');
foreach($dir as $ent) echo $ent;

7. Filter

eg. Define a default filter and use form input safely without cluttering
up your code with htmlspecialchars() calls everywhere and provide
easily auditable access to the unfiltered data

php.ini: filter.default = special_chars

echo $_POST[’data’];
$raw = input_get(INPUT_POST,’data’, FILTER_UNSAFE_RAW);

8. Native Date/Time mechanism

Date/time functions now behave exactly the same way on every platform regardless of the differences in locales if you choose to use the native mechanism.

Beyond that the compiler produces smaller opcode arrays and the executor is faster. Not a directly visible thing, and this is still improving, but definitely a plus.

Note that for all of this I am referring to PHP 5.1.x, not 5.0.x.

I am so jealous. Some really good friends of mine are hosting a PHP conference - and I can’t go. Camping, PHP, conversation, friends and fun are all in store I’m sure. And at only $15 - why wouldn’t you go?

What:
PHP Appalachia is an informal gathering of PHP enthusiasts who just want an excuse to get together and enjoy exchanging information in a relaxed, beautiful setting. There is no set agenda, no formal speakers. Just 3 days of camping and talking PHP with people just like you. Come join us!

When:
September 27-29, 2006

Where:
This gathering will be held at the Cherokee/Great Smokies KOA in Cherokee, NC.

To learn more about PHP Appalechia check out it’s site.

Well I finally did it. I upgraded the blogging software and now have to set up the site so everything matches again. One would think that I would learn to leave things alone - but noooo. Anyway - I love this look, but the header takes to long to load. I will be messing with the CSS and the image to try and speed it up. Also need to bring the rest of the site in line with these new looks so don’t be surprised if you come across a page that doesn’t match.

*Sigh* Also need to learn the new control panel and all the “gadgets” that go with it. All things come in time. Hope the husband likes it… don’t think it is too girly..