PHPCON 2003 Presentations Online! 

I know it took too long.  I'm sorry.  Still here's a dose of frothy, exciting php goodness.  And that's not all!  I even threw in Dirk Elmendorf's PHP Database Design BOF slides (with his approval).  So enjoy:

• Main Web Page
• Getting Started with PHP -- PPT  / HTML
• PHP Subtleties -- PPT / HTML
• PHP Database Design -- PPT / HTML

Miscellaneous:

• There's more stuff on the main page so you might want to check it out as well. 
• And I know that at least 1 point (probably 2) goes against what Rasmus said in his keynote presentation.  Don't beat me over the head for it.  Thanks in advance.
• And if anyone out there wants me to teach the PHP Getting Started / Introduction to PHP Class for which the slides are listed above, just drop me a line.
• Thanks to Dirk for letting me post his slides

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Any Interest in Boston.php ?

I noticed at php-con that while there is a New York area php user's group and there are other groups all over, there doesn't seem to be one in Boston.  Anyone out there interested in such a thing?  I know Andrei's here as is Kellan and others.  And I'm here for whatever that's worth.

Basic concept would be similar to what the Boston.pm (perl mongers) folk do -- get together once a month, geek about technical stuff and then end up somewhere for a variant on pizza & beer.

Happy to organize it and run a mailing list for it although since I don't work a big company, I don't have a place to host it (although I'm sure that's addressable).

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So Why Is Dan Bricklin Fascinating ?

Dave is asking:

Oh by the way, there's another Dan Bricklin piece in today's NY Times. I like Dan, but why is he so endlessly fascinating to these guys? 

Well I'm not a journalist but here's my .02 on this one.  Now I don't know Dan Bricklin at all but like most of us I've followed his career for years.

• Accomplishment.  The man invented the damn spreadsheet.  That's a big deal.  The spreadsheet was the killer app for the Apple II which got us where we are today.
• Knows technology and business.  Very important since few journalists are all that technical.
• He's a nice, non-arrogant guy.  Again I don't know Dan but from what I've read about him, this seems to be true.  Look at it from a journalist's perspective -- talk to arrogant geek or talk to approachable, nice guy?  Which would you talk to?
• Good PR folk.  I don't know if this is true or not but I'd suspect that Interland / Trellix have a PR person working on his behalf.

So from someone who doesn't even know the man, that's what I'd suspect.  Way too many of us tech professionals are arrogant and difficult to deal with.  That tends to cost us big time in the PR department if we're not a really big company where such conduct is just plain expected.

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Recommended: Registry Mechanic

Found via the Gnome folks newsletter.  Well worth downloading and running on your box. I'm not going to report how many issues it found save to say that the number was odd, the number was not prime and the number was large.   

Thanks Chris!

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DOH !  When You Change Your Password, it Affects Everything ...

**Groan**  I just looked at the Feedster blog and discovered that the last update was April 29th.  Its fixed now but the reason is instructive -- I changed my a password on one of my servers.  And magically my blog stopped uploading.  Of course the password I changed was the one Radio uses to upload.  So logically this makes sense but as a user I'm kind of pissed.  I mean here I am working away thinking all is good and **nothing**.  That's just lame.  Now to Radio's credit, this "Can't upstream because "530 Login incorrect. Bad Username or Password"" was in the event log -- and I realized the mistake immediately but shouldn't the system have let me know ?  Definitely a situation where some level of intrusiveness would be much appreciated.

10:35:34 AM  | Permalink:   | comment []  |  IM Me About This