One package is a charred oaken barren filled with corn squeezins’ and let sit for a decade. The other is a crude, yet effective attempt at medieval artillery fashioned out of bits and pieces from a local hardware store. Either is glorious!

It just so happens that I have photo galleriess of both such glories: 2006.05.04 – Taste of Oak and 2006.05.19 – Trebuchets.

The “Taste of Oak” thing was a fundraiser for the Easter Seals. Normally held during August, they moved the event to before the Derby (in fact near Oaks Day). The event involves a bourbon tasting and food from many different vendors, though the bourbon is the main attraction. Most of the major distilleries in Kentucky show up and are more than happy to give you all the bourbon you want in their custom glassware. Meanwhile, the Six Million Dollar Man and that Dead Guy From Lost Who Is Related to Tom Cruise wow the audience with their presence.

The trebuchet (treb-you-shay) thing started I-don’t-know-when, but suffice it to say any man with sufficient space at one point or another at least considers building a catapult. Last year, you may remember that some folks from our crue built potato guns for the Fourth of July. This year, we intend to keep up the sciency challenge with the building of catapults out of readily available materials. Rules and regulations are still in the works, but today (as witnessed by the photos and video) I put my small trebuchet through it’s paces with the help of Charlie Dillon. In the end we semi-reliably flung a golf ball about 60-75 feet. Glorious! This small model (named Cheap Plastic Artillery #1, aka CPA One) will be scaled up into a larger contraption that I have named THE POWER OF LOVE

I wore my “Microsoft Freedom to Innovate” t-shirt today. I consider it the most ironic $10 I’ve ever spent, and I guess most folks get the joke. I did get my picture taken with someone with a “NO SOFTWARE PATENTS” shirt a lunch, so I consider that a small victory. His shirt was black, and mine was white. Nested ironies, I think. While I’m on the subject of attire, I’ll say that it’s been shorts and t-shirts for most everyone here, including the presenters. The “Schroedinger’s Cat is Dead” t-shirt I spied on a certain lass made me chuckle. The real “thinking outside the nerd attire box” award has got to go to Marcus Baker. I sat in on two of his sessions on two separate days, “Is Agile Development Right for You?” and “Breaking the OO Sound Barrier”. Both days he was wearing the same pair of pants. Big deal, right? I often wear the same pair of khakis a few days in a row at work. But Marcus doesn’t prefer the inconspicuousness of khaki – he prefers leather. Leather pants. Marcus, you have won the con. Congrats.

All kidding aside, I will say that Marcus’ sessions have been the most enlightening of all that I have attended. He is a natural and fluid speaker who doesn’t bombard the audience with a lot of code or pedantic knowledge. Granted, his topics haven’t been “Migrating from version X to version Y” or “The New Features of Some Code Gadget”, but instead have focused on analysis and design topics that lead to programming strategies. He does a very good job of it and and while their topics may differ, I think most of the folks I sat in with here at php|tek could take a cue from Marcus.

A certain level of knowledge about PHP is assumed if you are coming to this conference, yes, but I think that level should be fairly low. Many of the speakers here are actual developers *for* PHP. This obviously grants them wonderful insight on the depths of the language, but I would rather see more general and real-world applications of PHP. This is something that Rasmus Lerdorf did very well in his keynote. Oh – and before I forget the one session I sat in with Christian Wenz was also very good.

Dan and I took the free Zend Certification Exam this afternoon. I don’t know how well I did, and honestly I’m not that concerned having taken it. Many of the questions dealt with detailed specifics of the language and it’s constructs, which is something that I normally let the webserver worry about. I have bigger things to consider and remember when I use PHP. A certification is only a nice thing to put on your wall, I think. Programming’s name belies it’s complexity – a complexity that supercedes the language itself.

“PHP Pool Party” later tonight with an open bar! More later?

Technorati: phptek

Some say that the second Internet bubble is upon us. I think they might just be right, based on the amount and complexity of work that has been coming in to us at work. This time, however, it’s considerably more
robust and “pop-proof” (or at least we all hope so). The ideas that inflated the first bubble seem to have
risen from the ashes of that first wave. The idea of the Internet as Desktop and Desktop as Internet.
The dreamy “thin client” that was going to be everywhere, cheaply and clawing its way onto your TV, into your
car and on the front of your refrigerator. Rockets on your shoes and teleporters and the whole thing, too.

So maybe it’s apt that I’m here in Orlando, so close to Kennedy Space Center where, back in the 1960s, we
actually did make the impossible possible without an implosion. Lives aren’t on the line in the Internet,
and so such irrational exuberance can lead to such things. The hype was believed back then, but now the
people behind the scenes are wiser for the experience. There were so many great, grand ideas in the late
90′s, but so little consideration and so much money doesn’t fly in the world of the Internet.

In the meantime, things have settled down on the Internet. The browser wars have gone from hot to cold, and
the medium that is the Internet is a little more predictable with fewer outliers. This has allowed companies
like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (and a thousand smaller joints) to create applications for all people, all
browsers, all platforms that *work* and bring a little of the promise of the grand ideas of the late 90′s.

Gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, digg.com, etc. all make use of these grand ideas, like /your data on the web/ and
/the web as read/write/ and the web as a moving, usable and up-to-date desktop application. The technologies
behind these are various and sundry (mostly sundry), but focus primarily on the easy exchange of easily
readable data. Things like map info, stock information, search results, whatever. Make that information easily
available and portable and great things happen.

The reason why I am here at php|tek 2006 is specifically for PHP, but a lot of the content so far has centered
around that overarching idea of what I was just musing about. The “Web 2.0″, the “next generation”, whatever
you’d like to call it. How does PHP fit in there? How is it changing to fit in? Knowing just where the
tech on the web is heading is truly the only way to know what is going on in PHP.

PHP is one of the most widely-used, profilic and advanced technologies used on the web. Rasmus Lerdorf started
PHP back in 1995 and has been instrumental in it’s development ever since. He now works for Yahoo!, and seems to
be focused on these emerging Internet technologies. Suffice it to say, he remains very much a “blue-collar” guy
who created and directs the development of a technology that has affected so much of the “white-collar” world.

Rasmus’ keynote speech earlier this morning was considerably less “high-level” than I had expected. This is what I have come to expect from the open-source world. The people who are making the changes and pushing things forward still have their hands dirty in the real world. However, those people who are truly successful are the odd ones who can do so and still keep a grip on the big picture. I get the feeling the Rasmus is one of those
people. He, in his hour-long keynote presentation (I wouldn’t call it a speech), explained by example and in code the pitfalls of the new-school web apps, and how to mitigate those pitfalls. He also showcased how PHP can simply and easily be integrated into these “Web 2.0″ apps. An interesting blend of real-world considerations, code and examples that underscored how important is the inter-relation between technologies.

An unusual keynote, for sure. Part of me was hoping for more of a “state of PHP” sort of address, but much like any good programmer, you leave that stuff for the brass, and get down to nitty-gritty with the troops. I’m sitting here in shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops, so what else should I expect? More later!

You can check out Rasmus’ presentation in it’s entirety here: talks.php.net/show/tek06

Technorati: phptek

The promised free WiFi access didn’t materialize until about 3 PM here after a fandango of new access points and provider snafus. Probably a good thing, though, as it allowed the small cadre of geeks who showed up to this con a day early to focus on the “In-Depth Seminars”.

Dan and I chose the “Master OOP in PHP 5″ talk hosted by Marcus Boerger, one of the architects of the PHP 5 object-oriented code. Marcus, who lives in Germany, offered up a very straightforward, detailed talks spikedwith a wry sense of humor that pops up when you least expect it. PHP 5 introduces a “revamp” (a term Marcus didn’t care for) of the OO system in PHP, and pushes it more in the direction of what passes for a standard in the OO world. Better privacy control, extensibility and overall greater functionality. A very worthwhile talk and very much on the bleeding edge of the PHP world.

The next talk was “PHP & AJAX: A winning combination” with John Coggeshall, a very outspoken and enthusiastic guy who works with O’Reilly (the publisher of many a great book on technology) and Zend (the engine behind PHP). AJAX is one of those buzzwords in the industry right now like “LAMP” (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) and “podcast”, which aren’t anything new (see earlier post on podcasting) but now have a name people can talk about. AJAX is Javascript (the duct tape of the Internet) and XML (sorta) that powers things like Google Maps and GMail. Very whiz-bang stuff that brings the web interface a little closer to being what you might expect on the desktop. John spoke a lot about what is wrong with AJAX, and suprisingly little about what PHP can offer it. He didn’t really tell Dan or I anything we didn’t know about AJAX, but in a roundabout way inform everyone that AJAX is still very new and fraught with problems. AJAX apps may seem simple on the web, but behind the scenes there are some very touch problems borne from the challenge of making computers interface with humans a little bit better. From that and the little PHP content, I gather that even PHP doesn’t really know what to do with AJAX until it matures a little.

John wrapped up around 3PM, which luckily allowed Dan and I enough time to beat a path eastward to the Kennedy Space Center. I’m a sucker for anything involving space, so this was a welcome and awesome side-trip. Kennedy Space Center sits out on a island off the Florida coast and our rented Toyota Prius got us there quickly, quietly and burning little gas.

Technorati: phptek

Hola muchachos! I’m here in Orlando this week for the php|architect php|tek conference. PHP is the programming language that powers this site, and I have the opportunity (thanks to work) to attend this year. The keynote speaker is Rasmus Lerdorf the guy who started PHP, so I’m pretty hyped.

“All this for a programming language?” you say! Why, sure, yes. PHP is one of the best languages for creating dynamic web (and otherwise) content, and I have used it to create things such as phpfeed and instantRSS, both which enjoy(ed) moderate success and allowed me to further my knowledge of the language. Not to mention this site, LouisvilleSoaring.org among many other sites with which I have been involved.

So, all ye nerds, stay tuned. I’m staying at the Marriot Airport Orlando, and I should be blogging throughout the week-long conference, as php|tek has graciously offered up a WiFi access point for our usage.

Technorati: phptek

Over the weekend, Kelly and I helped Hunter and Jamie move into their new digs – a second story walkup apartment on Cherokee in the Highlands. A sweet two-story apartment with a master bedroom and bath down below and a big kitchen and living room upstairs. And it doesn’t even stop there! Above the living room there is a loft, which Hunter has deemed the “fapcave”. Also, a semi-private deck outside the master bedroom. Really unique place.

The move-in went pretty well until we got to the sleeper sofa. The stairwell leading up to the apartment was too tight, and even with the sleeper out of the sofa, we couldn’t cram it up the stairway. The only other choice? Over the 20-foot deck railing, of course! With only rope! The probability of failure lead us to choose the name Project Ridiculous.

Surprisingly, it all went fairly well. The sofa made it up in one piece thanks to no less than 10 people. Adam ensured us that we could get it up the second flight of stairs, and it actually did! Mission, operation, project — accomplished. Photos were captured and are in the 2006.04.03 – Project Ridiculous gallery.

Focused readers of this site know that I enjoy “do-it-yourself” stuff, from my own software projects, to all that soaring stuff and I’ve even made my own beer (not to mention the picnic table)

In a world where most every thing we could want is ready-made and cheaply available from Wal-Mart or Target, there is a certain romantic and satisfying (to some) ideal in making your own whatever, be it a scarf, or a hat, or even a microprocessor-controlled lost-model-alarm.

Last year, I was alerted that the venerable O’Reilly publishing company was going to publish a magazine for DIYers called (aptly) MAKE. It’s a great compilation of geeky and not-so-geeky DIY projects from Kite Aerial Photography to Making Your Own Biodiesel to learning to weld! And, on a not-so-side note, for a day-to-day DIY fix, make sure to check out the MAKE:blog.

Finally, what really fueled this post was Talk of the Nation‘s interview with the editors of both MAKE and ReadyMade magazines back on December 28th, called Inside the World of “Do-It-Yourself”. Give it a listen.

The weather sages around town say that snow en-quantite’ is incoming to Louisville tomorrow, so in reaction I’ve updated my silly little exploding snowflake javascript thing called snow2. Originally written way back in 2002 (also here), it has been updated to work in today’s modern browsers. Enjoy!

I decided to build myself a nice, flat workbench last night. I looked for some free plans on Google and quickly came up with Building a Basic Work Bench. It’s a little smaller than what I wanted, and I already had a perfectly good workbench-top, a door (80″ x 30″) that we had removed from it’s hinges upstairs! 80″ x 30″ = 2400″ square inches of pure workbench. So, with a rough plan in mind, we headed to Home Depot.

I already had one 2″ x 4″ at home, so we got 5 of the straightest 2×4’s we could find, and box of 3″ deck screws. I returned home and made a quick plan (as you can see in the image above). It only took about 2 hours to complete, so I was happy with my spur-of-the-moment build. Now I have a nice, flat place to build the next sailplane I will crash! Some photos were taken and my rough plan was made with The Gimp, and you can see them in the workbench gallery.

There was a big, big cicada-killer bee-thing on the window in the stairwell at work. It was confused, but awesome. As per usual, the University of Kentucky has come through with information about the cicada killer wasp. “ The wasp stings its prey, turns the victim on its back, straddles It, and drags it or glides with it to the burrow.”. My father claims to have seen this actually happen in mid-air!

Recently rescued from Target where it was on clearance, this bonsai is being called “Bunny” and the other one “Mr. Peapod” (though the latter prefers “Young Master Peapod”).

Both of these things have their own galleries. Make with clicky on photos.