Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

The dust has settled, the swag-bag has been rifled through and the drink tickets have all been exchanged for various combinations of kool-aid and vodka.

Since I can’t find any of my Microsoft friends who can can me into the beta for the new Microsoft Courier, I had to go old school and take notes in my Moleskine. Flipping open my tattered journal and thumbing through my notes, I realized I had a few really good takeaways from PodcampNasville. Here are my top 3
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Dear Reader,

Today was the day! Podcamp Nashville 2010, downtown Nashville at the Cadillac Ranch. As always with the Nashville camps, overall it was great experience. The sessions were quality with speakers like Mitch Canter and Kate Gallagher. It was great to meet some new friends and catch up with some old ones.
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Dear Reader,

I met Kevlin Henny back in 2007 at the PHPUK Conference in London. (For a year or so I called him Kevin Hennly until I finally got it right) One day out of the blue, Kevlin droped me an email and invites me to participate in a new project he’s working on for O’Reilly, a collaborative book called “97 Things Every Programmer Should Know“. Not being one who is ever short of advice and opinions to give, I gladly submitted two entries that eventually made their way through the editing process and into the final book.
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Dear Reader,

I love Zend Framework. I love it so much I wrote the very first book about Zend Framework. (Note: It’s no longer the best Zend Framework book, but still, it’s a good one) I’ve written projects using it and I now find myself teaching another class on it. One of the cool things about Zend Framework is it’s cli tool, Zend_Tool. (zf) When zf works, it’s awesome. However, when it breaks, it’s a real pain in the butt. Thanks to buddies like Ralph Schindler though (the author of the tool) when it does break, I can usually get help getting it back up and running.

The latest version of zf that comes with Zend Framework 1.10.x and better is much better than previous version and it shows that Zend (well, at least Ralph) listens when people point out problems and work to solve them.

Even though it’s made great strides, setting up zf is still not seamless. To that end, here is my list of steps needed to setup zf.

My setup

I should note before I start that I am running Windows 7. This means symlinking stuff is right out and we have to resort to physically copying files around. On top of Windows 7, I’m running XAMPP. (anyone know, is that pronounced X-AMP ot ZAMP?) this means that my PHP sits in \xampp\php. I’ve added that directory to my WIndows path so I can execute php from any cmd window. With that understanding, here’s my list.

The steps

1. Download Zend Framework and unpack it somewhere on your harddrive where you want it to live.
2. Make sure php.exe is in your PATH and make sure you know where php.exe is.
3. Find the bin directory in your Zend Framework directory. In it there are 2 files, zf.bat (or zf.sh for Linux) and zf.php. Copy those to the same directory php.exe is in. (Linux users, feel free to just symlink them)
4. Your Zend Framework directory should contain a library directory, change directory into it.
5. from the library directory, test your zf to make sure it works, zf show should give you what you need.
6. Type zf --setup storage-directory On Windows 7, this will create a directory named .zf in c:\Users\<Your Profile Name>
7. Type zf --setup config-file. On WIndows 7, this will create a file .zf.ini in c:\Users<Your Profile Name>
8. Using your favorite text editor, open c:\Users\<Your Profile Name>\.zf.ini. There should only be a single line in it that contains the include_path zf will use. Add the full path to your Zend Framework directory here. It should end in “\library\”.

Test it

That’s all there is to getting it setup. (I remember the days when it took twice as long and required cursing just to get it working) To test it out, cd to any directory other than the Zend Framework directory and type zf show version That should give you the current version of the framework you have installed.

Now you are free to start using it to create projects, etc.

Small problem

There is still a problem with defining your own providers. I tried to add my twitter provider (yes, I can use zf to tweet!) and it won’t yet recognize it. I’ve brought this to Ralph’s attention and impressed upon him the importance of being to tweet from zf. I have no doubt that a solution will be forthcoming.
UPDATE
As pointed out in the comments, this has been fixed, just not documented. This page shows how to add your own providers either manually or via a command.

You can either manually add a line to your .zf.ini

basicloader.classes.0 = "My_ClassName"

or you can use zf to update itself

zf enable config.provider class-name

So now I can tweet from zf again. :)

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

[Disclaimer: I use to work at Zend and still have great friends there like the lovely Nili and the walking ray of sunshine that is Andrea. That having been said, it's been a long time since they gave me any money. So the point of this disclaimer is really just so I can mention Nili and Andrea. :) ]

Dear Reader,

This weekend’s Flex project was more successful that last weeks. At least the code has survived this far without me declaring it a bust and moving on to the next project.

This week’s project involves (among other things) calling an API that returns a graphic and then displaying it on-screen. Being the Flex neophyte I am, I assumed that this was a simple call to HTTPService. Unfortunately, as I found out, that won’t work. HTTPService is designed specifically to work with APIs that return specific types of data.
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Dear Reader,

I am a web developer. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve done serious desktop application development. So when I fire up Flex Builder to write my first AIR application, it takes a while for things to start coming back to me. One of the things that is only now starting to come back is Event Driven Programming.

This past week I decided to start working on a small project to scratch a personal itch. The project itself fizzled but I learned something none-the-less. I learned how to create custom events in Flex 3.

The project required selecting a file for processing. Flex 3 has a control for actually opening the dialog box and selecting the file but no control that shows the button and the selected file name.

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[UPDATE: New Slides posted, the link is below.]

Dear Reader,

Pop Quiz: How many of your developers wake up in the morning excited to work on your project? If the answer is not “all of them”, you probably need to look at how open source projects attract developers and motivate them to write code for free.

Put yourself in your developer’s shoes for a moment.
You are a professional developer, you work on a project all day at work but you live to get home and start working on your passion, an open source project. Suddenly, instead of slogging through the day, you are actively engaged in a project that may be much more complex than the one you are working on at work. Worse yet, you may actually have more responsibility, more input, more voice on your open source team than you do at work. You wish your day job excited you as much as your open source project. You wish you could be as engaged in it.

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Dear reader,

“Failing doesn’t bother me as much as failing to act does.”
– Cal Evans

It’s not a unique thought, others have written about it as well. However, this simple thought was driven home to me recently.

I got a call one day in December from a good friend of mine. He started talking about an exciting opportunity he had and that he was considering myself or one other person to help him with it. I knew deep down inside that if I did it, it would push me way out of my comfort zone. I also knew that if I did it, the project would have had a much higher ROI for my friend because I was best suited to help him promote it. Foolishly however, I passed on the opportunity giving a lame excuse because I was just too afraid to act. I failed. I failed my friend but more importantly, I failed myself.

I passed on an opportunity when I could have simply stepped up and stepped out of my comfort zone. Yes, there is a possibility I could have failed miserably. However I will never know if I could have done the job or not. I don’t regret many actions in my life, I do regret a lot of my in-actions, like this one.

As I sit here in the new year and write this, it’s not to whine or complain about a missed opportunity. I’ve learned from my mistake and moved on. This blog post is just a reminder to myself to seize opportunities that push me out of my comfort zone. Yes, I will fail at some of them. However, I’d rather be known as the guy who failed than the guy who didn’t try.

Until Next Time,

I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

After several years in the PHP Community I’ve come to realize that there are 4 major events on the PHP social calendar, tek, DPC, ZendCon and MSWDS. (Microsoft Web Development Summit) There were 3 MSWDS that took place while I was at Zend and try as I might I could not score an invite to this private party. However, last year my number came up and I was luck enough to be invited. (My thought from MSWDS08 can be found here.) While I had a good time last year, this year was an order of magnitude more interesting, fun and productive for me personally.

I met some new people

This year wasn’t just about the PHP core community, we had attendees that represented the Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress communities. I don’t think any of them were official representatives of those communities but they were developers who worked in and around those projects. It was great to meet these guys and I look forward to growing the friendships that started there.

I reconnected with old friends

There are a lot of people in the PHP community that interact with each other almost daily but we only get to see each other in person a few times a year. It was great seeing all my old friends and just hanging with them.

I was co-host this year

Those that know me well know that I’m an attention whore. I love being up in front of a crowd. So I was honored and happy this year when Karri asked me to help host the event. I got a lot more credit for the success of the event than I deserved but was happy to play my small part.

I learned a few new things

To be brief:

• Even if you don’t like installing plugins, Bing Maps makes Silverlight worth installing. It’s not a game changer but they are doing some things that Google isn’t and competition is always good.
• WebPI is continuing to grow and get better. Each time I look at this tool they have either added something new and cool or sanded down a lot of the rough edges to make it more useful.
• WordPress will run on Azure. I seriously had no idea. I can’t afford Azure just to run my blog but if they adjust the pricing a bit, this could be a serious game changer for small-time bloggers like myself.
• The more people I get to know at Microsoft, the less I’m able to despise the company. Oh sure, they patented sudo and nobody at the conference was able to do anything about those “special kind of stupid” decisions that big companies make. As long as they keep hiring people like Josh, Peter, and Karri though, it’s hard to just paint them with one big evil brush.
• Blocking irc on your “guest network” is an exercise in futility. It does no good and 30 minutes after we’ve all connected and found ways around it, we just laugh at you.

fClose()

Again, I can’t seem to say thank you enough to Karri and Tanya for all the work they did to put this summit together. Y’all were awesome hosts and we are all in your debt.

I want to say a special thanks to all the attendees. This year’s summit was great because only a few people just sat there and listened, almost everyone participated at some point. A special thanks to Keith for standing up and getting righteously pissed off because it was the right thing to do.

Most of all though, thank you Microsoft in general for asking my opinion and listening to it. Be warned though, I’m watching you. I want to see if you actually listened.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

Recently my son, who is a senior in high school, asked me the following question. (In typical Evans family tradition, it came via instant message)

This may sound weird but it’s for a bible project. I need you to answer the following question:

What three qualities do you think that an effective leader must possess, and why?

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Dear Reader,

That is how I started a blog post to my Ibuildings friends yesterday announcing that I will be leaving the company in December. It has been a great time for me – and I hope for them as well – but my time there is drawing to a close.
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Dear Reader,

This is the last of my CodeWorks 09 posts. For those of you looking for the slides from my talks, I just wanted to point you to my new Talks page. It is where I will archive my slides for all conferences, starting with CodeWorks.

Each time I give a talk, it changes a little so I will upload the new version and mark them with the conference name and year.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

Well CodeWorks 09 is over and I’ve mostly recovered. (I still have a bit of a cold that I picked up in NYC but other than that, I’ve recovered) I did a total of 24 sessions across 7 cities and enjoyed every one of them. Each city was different and it’s impossible for me to pick one as my favorite. So I’m going to list my favorite memory from each city.

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Dear Reader,

CodeWorks 09 Vital Stats

CodeWorks 09 day #: 14
Cities left: 0
Miles Traveled: 9,677
Cups of Coffee: 23
Current Current City: New York, NY

Random Statistic of the day

New friends made while on the Codeworks tour: hundreds
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Dear Reader,

CodeWorks 09 Vital Stats

CodeWorks 09 day #: 12
Cities left: 1
Miles Traveled: 9,472
Cups of Coffee: 18
Current Current City: Washington DC
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