Borders ... Looks Great but Less Filling?

I just stopped into a Borders tonight and walked away kind of shaking my head.  Borders, to me, feels like a one night stand with someone who's just plain beautiful but turns out not to be any good.  There's tons of anticipation, the "wrapping" is great but when you get started, something just isn't right.  Has anyone else ever noticed this or am I just a Barnes and Noble snob?

And, no, this was not at all related to them not having Essential Blogging on the shelf while they did have Rebecca Blood's blogging book. 

Oh and for the amusing anecdote of "Bookstore Shelf Space Irony", there was a Windows 98 book next to a Peter Norton DOS 6.22 book (copyright 1994) next to a "Programming Tablet PCs" book.  Bizarre.  Next thing you know we'll be seeing "Tops-20 Programming Secrets" lined up beside "Inside the Kernel 2.4".

8:29:57 PM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Mapping Blogspace

This is very, very cool.  No I can't remember which blog I read pointed me over here so "Thanks to Who Ever". [_Go_]

One thing that surprised me was that even though I am a member of the dataset they mapped I don't seem to show up on the list.  I wonder if there is a threshold value I'm not exceeding (I don't have many "Ryze Friends" and that may be it).

8:24:33 PM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

OWASP On Security

Am I the only one who finds it near infinitely amusing that the new "Security Guide" has UNREADABLE examples? Take a look at page 41, 42, 44, 45, 51, 52, 59 (when I stopped caring anymore) where the example URLs wrap right off the page. [_Go_]

Yes I know that there is a html tar gz version but the PDF version is what people will download and print out. Just look at the download counts if you doubt me (when I checked the pdf had >10x the downloads). Don't get me wrong, I applaud the effort but if I can't read the examples it doesn't help anywhere near as much as it should. Quality control on the final download anyone? Sigh.

Note: I happened to see document production of this described as being done with Docbook and XML and wonder if that had anything to do with it.

Tested on a Windows 2000 PC w/ Acrobat Reader.  Results may vary.

8:22:32 PM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Jobs for PHP Folk

Well I guess if any of us PHP folk want to get a job of the type that our Mom warned us about then we know the tools we need.  [_Go_]

11:46:53 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Suggestions on a PHP Problem Anyone?

Here's the problem.  I need to pull X bytes of HTML formatted text out of another HTML file for "safe" inclusion into another html page.  What's the best way to do this while not getting into markup issues like a partially formatted table or splitting "</P>" at "</" (for example).  Anyone have a handy function or suggestion for this?

Thanks in advance.

11:05:08 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

To write: perchance to try again: ay, there's the rub¹ or Do I Write Another (PHP²) Book?

Anyone who was IMing me in the May / June / July time frame may be surprised to see this entry.  Things change and time makes pain and bad memories drift away.  I am speaking, of course, about the O'Reilly Essential Blogging writing process which was just plain awful and made me swear that I would N_E_V_E_R write another book for money.  And here I am. 

I've been approached by Sams to write a PHP 5 in 21 Days book and I'm torn.  I just don't know whether I want to walk this road again.  Here's the situation as I see it:

Pros

• I am the PHP Journal columnist for "On the Horizon" which talks about new PHP 4.x and 5.x features so it makes sense to write this
• I'm virtually certain that I'd enjoy working with this editor more than my last.  Shelley strikes me as just plain cool (she handled giving out books to a pack of ravenous open source folk at PHP CON with a lot of style and grace).
• Good self promotion
• Would probably generate consulting work although that is by no means clear
• Establishes my credentials more firmly and anchors me to PHP even more
• Chance to talk about things like templating and event driven coding
• $$$ (although there is never all that much of it)
• Having an editor

Cons

• Having an editor
• Have to create a __good__ website for the book
• How will they bungle the online side of it in a new and creative way?  Lose the source code?  Post it wrong?
• Managing the book writing and blogging and consulting process concurrently
• Will I actually make money
• Does promoting parts of it on my blog make me a schill

Questions

If anyone out there can help with these questions, I'd appreciate it:

• Anyone out there buy Sams books?  I haven't in years and I don't know the rep these books have.  Thoughts? Example of Similar Sams Book
• Has anyone written for Sams? 
• Do they pay well
• What are they like as a publisher? 
• Positive, Negative, Details?
• Was it a good or bad omen when I dropped my review copy of "Cold Fusion in 21 days" in the sink when shaving this morning?
• Would you buy it?
• Do people buy PHP books as opposed to using PHP.Net?  I myself have a bunch of PHP books but don't turn to them all that often.

There is something just plain addictive about walking into a bookstore and seeing yourself on the shelf.  That and once you've written one book then there is just something about it.  As Robert Heinlein once remarked (and the quote is inexact) "No one likes writing but people like having written".  He was definitely correct about that.

Thoughts, feedback, comments strongly appreciated.

 ¹To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. [_Go_] (sorry for the bad link but their search engine doesn't give easily linkable results)

²Oh and if you're wondering why I put PHP on the title, with PHP being the target audience I figured it would get this more attention (and syndication to other sites) from the target audience

7:01:15 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Rant: Note to Webmasters - If It's Offline, DATESTAMP the Damn Page!

I've been trying to track down a quote that I wanted to use in a blog entry today so I surfed over here.  Although the interface is just plain awful, I found the search page which says at the top:

 Sorry, the Search Facility is currently being repaired. In the meantime, please go to our mirror site.

So I go over there.  Only to get this:

 The requested URL /cgi-bin/search/search.pl was not found on this server.

Argh!!!! *Bitch, Piss, Moan, Vent, Think of Blogging It.*.  Now don't get me wrong, stuff has to go offline from time to time and I recognize that.  Nothing wrong with it (although it makes you laugh a lot when a company like Sun (Open Office) or VA has to take a website down for maintenance).  Still if you are going to do it then at least put the date and time into the "offfine" notice.  Why?  Well I suspect that this thing has been down for a while and it might not ever come back up.  If the date showed me "Oct 27th" then I'd know to just run away and never come back.

Yes, I feel better now.

Note: I'm sure I'm guilty of violating this from time to time.  I'll try and do better.

6:40:22 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This