@TheKeyboard » php|tek

Opinionated Software, The Podcast

Chris Hartjes — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:18:33 +0000

A while back I was contacted by Cal Evans over at the Zend Developer Zone to contribute to a new podcast he was starting up called PHP Abstract. Very cool idea, a small 5 to 7 minute podcast by PHP developers where they talk about a topic of interest to them (and hoepfully to you). Well, being one to never miss out on an oppurtinity to promote myself I agreed to contribute what I could. I settled on a brief talk about opinionated software. Also known as “convention over configuration” by the Ruby on Rails crowd.

Go over and have a listen and don’t be shy in sharing your feedback via the comments there or here. Opionated software / convention over configuration / tools with rules is a powerful yet misunderstood programming practice.

Live from php|tek!

Chris Hartjes — Thu, 17 May 2007 22:01:00 +0000

Just finished giving my talk at php|tek 2007, and feedback was good. Still talked a little too fast, but I think I can conquer that problem. Anyhow, I totally forgot to record the talk as a screencast (the speaker before me talked all the way through my prep time) so all I can give you is the slides. If any of the attendees read my blog (c’mon, I know you do!) I’d appreciate some feedback. I was planning on retiring this talk…but I think it still has some legs for future conferences.

Slides from php|tek 2007

Off To php|tek

Chris Hartjes — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:06:40 +0000

I fly out to Chicago tomorrow morning for php|tek where I’ll be giving my talk “What Can PHP Learn From Ruby On Rails” on Thursday. The talk is significantly different from the one I gave in Vancouver back in February (with colour and graphics even!) as I’ve cut down the number of slides so I can talk slower and leave room for questions at the end. If you’re going to be in Chicago don’t hesitate to come up and talk to me. I may be grumpy (ask the people on the CakePHP mailing list) but I love to talk about programming and technologies. Just like last time, I’ll be doing a screencast of my talk and posting it up on the site. It will also be an excuse for me to learn how to properly use Amazon S3 to save on my bandwidth bills.

On an unrelated note, I’ll be able to play with my Neuros OSD, an open source media center that runs Linux, when I get back from the conference. All I need to do is plug in an external drive and I can start recording TV shows and showing movies I already had before. Awesome piece of technology and a great price at around US$230 depending on where you buy it from.

What’s In Chris’ Brain, April 2007 Edition

Chris Hartjes — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:13:22 +0000

Here are some of the things bouncing around in my head this month:

Following my “just build it, damnit!” mantra, I finally got the new web site for my simulation baseball league launched. It’s not 100% the way I want it layout-wise, but I can tweak that going forward. It at least has all the content that’s required.
Make sure you test your stuff in IE7. I spent 2 hours debugging my RADAR-based stuff for the above-mentioned site and gave up on it, pulling it all out in the interest of getting the damn thing working. I’m obviously doing something wrong, but at 12:30AM I was interested in making sure it just works.
Now, I have time to work on the interactive console for CakePHP, hopefully getting it done in time for php|tek
Speaking of php|tek, I have to also start working on fixing up my presentation with the shiny new graphics (Ian, you need to email me about this!) so that it looks better and flows better. Lots of complaints that I went too fast so I want to cut about 10 slides, slow it down, and leave time for questions. I’m sure there will be lots of hecklers (I’m looking at you, Nate) so I’ll need time to smack them down.
Don’t worry Mom, I haven’t forgotten about that sidebar widget I promised you
My friend Kevin B. continues to delve deeper into Rails, and thanks me for pointing him at Erlang (check out this blog for some more info about a guy doing some cool things with Erlang)
I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t watch enough TV for a MythBox to be of use to me, but my oldest still watches a lot of TV. Unsure what to do here. Maybe the XBox Media Center is still a good solution, and teach my oldest to use the interface to download stuff she’s interested in.
Komodo vs. Zend Studio still rages on for supremacy on my MacBook Pro. I want to support the Komodo guys because I’ve developed personal relationships with some of the employees, but Zend Studio just feels a little more responsive and lets me setup remote projects (I like to edit my files remotely instead of locally and copying them over). The latest beta of Komodo that I was asked to check out is getting there in terms of auto-completion, and I hope they’ve found my feedback to be of value.
My own Rails stuff has been shoved aside for the foreseeable future. I just don’t have the time, and my PHP chops are getting back to where I want them again thanks to my work projects. I guess I just don’t have the hate-on for PHP that some of my friends do.

Ruthless Refactoring and Other Activities

Chris Hartjes — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 03:24:53 +0000

As I finally wrestle down my Sportsticker parser and scoreboard system into submission, I spent some time going through my code and applying the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) wherever I can. So, I’ve moved some functionality into a support library and are slowly replacing old code with calls to new functions I’ve created. The result? Easier testing of my code when I add new features AND less lines of code to go through when figuring out more tweaks.

It also looks like I have a large amount of side work to do in the next little while. Marco over at php|architect has asked me to get involved in a few projects over there. Firstly, he’s asked me to contribute a smaller version of my recent magazine article to A/R/T. That shouldn’t be too hard to do, the trick will be figuring out what to cut out. Secondly, Marco also mentioned that he was interested in having me do a 20 minute webcast about “What Can PHP Learn From Ruby on Rails” as a teaser for my talk at php|tek 2007. Again, that should be fairly easy…but I will have to definitely cut down my presentation from php|works to focus on just the basics. Maybe just talk about “convention over configuration” or something. I’ll figure that out.

Lastly, I’ve been asked to participate in the creation of an introduction to Ruby training course. This is very exciting and very scary at the same time. While I’m no Ruby expert, I feel that I can show other people with programming experience just what Ruby has to offer. Of course, it’s ironic I’m asked to do this while I’m busy ignoring Ruby while fooling around with Python and Django.

Not to feat though. Your humble correspondent is up to the task. Since I love to talk, coming up with up to 18 hours of instruction on Ruby (and some Rails as well), while challenging, is the type of task that kicks my butt and tends to help me create something good. First step is the outline of the course. If that goes well, then we can figure out how to turn that outline into a large quantity of slides for the actual course.

Back to my Django tutorial…

Speaking at php|tek

Chris Hartjes — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:02:28 +0000

I got an email this morning from php|architect telling me that my proposal to give my “What PHP Can Learn From Ruby On Rails” has been expected. My talk is tentatively scheduled for May 17th at 4:00PM.

For more info check out the conference schedule to see what else is being offered. Hope to see you there!