Category: PHP

Stuff about PHP (Personal Home Page or PHP Hypertext Processor), an open-source language for developing websites and web applications. And one of the few things out there with more market share than a Microsoft product.

Have you hugged your engineer?

I was browsing through Facebook and I ran across Andrew Mager’s profile photo again. This time it was taken at the CNET holiday party.

I’ve been saying for a while now that I’m just going to compile all of his Facebook profile photos into a book and make bank. But I had to blog this one, which gives you an idea of what I’m talking about:

Mager is my hero

You can see the original photo here.

Besides, Andrew Mager, the people in the photo are Jessica Dolcourt, Caroline McCarthy, and Erica Ogg—all writers at CNET Networks in SF.

I took one look at this and wanted to tell Libby and Linda that they should use this photo for CNET’s recruiting material, this way they’ll have no trouble hiring engineers. 😀 This reminds me that a little birdy told me that they’re looking for a PHP architect.

[more random thoughts after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 12

All your codebase are belong to Jenga

Someone designed the framework like a big game of Jenga. Every time someone went into fix something they pulled it out of the core and put it on top. Now the whole thing is unstable.
—Mark Jen, talking about building code on top of bad OO architecture

Posted on by tychay 8

At ZendCon tomorrow – see my talk, drink their drink

I love teasing Zend and right now their conference, the largest PHP conference in the world, is going on.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ll be giving my talk on “The Internet is an Ogre” tomorrow at 10 AM. It’s a fun talk so you better go see it! (Besides, if everyone goes to this, I’ll have satisfied my life-long dream of rasmussing Coogle’s talk. :-D)

As a teaser, I might point out that Keith Casey finally gave me and my talk the proper billing it deserves, in front of BoingBoing, the Foo fighters, Joel on Software, and digg!

The presenter list is once again extensive and includes Terry Chay, Cory Doctorow, Chris Shiflett, Joel Spolsky, and Eli White.. with sponsors ranging from Microsoft to Oracle to Zend.

This ordering has everything to do with talent and relevance and nothing to do with something as arbitrary as alphab… (Why yes, I haven’t seen Andrei’s talk on ICU collation keys, why do you ask?)

If you aren’t attending ZendCon, then stop by to H2.O- a free Happy Hour 2.0 at ZendCon. I’m told the exhibit hall will have lots of space so you can meet all these cool people of the PHP world—I guarantee, they’re “nerd-orable.”

Oh yeah, stop by and say hi to me. I’ll be the drunk photographer mooching all the free food and drink:

Eating hot dogs at a bar

“Eating hot dogs at a bar” by Jeremy Johnstone

Moving forward…

[Terry Chay, Terry Chay, Terry Chay after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 9

Job: PHP Application Engineer

Received this a couple days ago. It involves a project of combining two codebases, updating the Ajax, and building out the scalability in each. Might be interesting to some of you:

Abby is working with a client owned by one of the nation’s largest, innovative, billion dollar companies. My client provides an online product that is the leading destination of its kind, targeting the audience of expecting parents. Millions of users use their product. They have received a lot of attention from the media, having been featured on CNN and CBS and in hundreds of articles, including in Fortune Magazine and The New York Times. They have 4 million registered users and recently acquired a very successful smaller start up and are looking PHP people with core PHP experience.

Their executive team have strong track records of success, with leading companies such as AOL, Time Inc., Neiman Marcus and Smith & Hawken.

[Job description after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

Adobe’s AIR MAX

Ever since Ed Finkler found out I use twitter a few months ago, he has been bugging me to install Spaz. Then, when Spaz became Spaz.AIR, he did it again.

But so far I’ve been able to resist his sexy advances.

Then one day, Adobe hosted a Lunch 2.0 with an Adobe AIR contest. I suggested to Ed that he submit that app of his that is so good that I don’t use it.

He did.

The problem was Ed and I were going to be at php|works. Whoops!

What to do if he won?

So I checked the RSVP and sent an e-mail to the two people who most remind me of Ed: Morgan and Karen asking if one of them would be West-Coast Ed.

2007-0097 57

2007-0097 57
CNET Headquarters, SOMA, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800
1/60sec @ f/2.8, iso 100, 16mm (24mm)

Morgan (center) introduced me to Karen (right). Those of you who know Ed, can already see the similarity.

Karen was up to the challenge.

The strange thing is, he did win. Andrew Mager was on hand to record Ed accepting his prize:

Ed, it’s her stripey socks that does it for me. Consider getting a few pairs.

All I have to say is, Ed you’re looking a lot hotter. (Maybe I should install Spaz.)

[AIR, Funkatron, Karenism, etc. after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 10

CNET Open House on Tuesday: Under the Hood

CNET is hosting an open house on October 2nd (Tuesday). Given that every PHP Meetup in SF has been cancelled the night before, I suggest you go to this. 😀

GameSpot, TV.com, MP3.com and FilmSpot.com will be having a panel discussion on using PHP/MySQL framework to share code between multiple sites that support 49 million unique visitors and over 1 billion page views each month? Attendees will be registered to win a Nintendo Wii!

Hosts: CNET Networks HQ
Address: 235 2nd Street, San Francisco
Date: Tuesday October 2, 6PM-7:30PM
RSVP:here

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

Why PHP triumphs over Ruby

“I’m really low on my scatological count here…I’m sorry I didn’t crack enough jokes or use enough [cuss words], but I’m sure people will forgive me. They can just attend one of my talks and get their cuss quota for the year. And if not, coding these web apps themselves involves a lot of swearing—a lot of blood, sweat and swear.”
—me on Pro PHP Podcast

I’m not posting my talk yet because I have to give it again at ZendCon. So here is a bit of a teaser.

A simple architecture

A simple architecture
College Park, Atlanta, Georgia

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/45sec, iso 320, 35mm (47mm)

The Internet is an Ogre and this architecture is really quite simple.

[Do not hit the jump if you are easily offended. I really mean it!]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 44

Jobs in PHP at CNET

This is actually another one of my infamous PHP job postings. But because the people of CNET are so cool, I thought I’d preface it with a couple of CNET stories first.

(I honestly don’t know if I should blog this. I have a standing invite to visit CNET networks next week and, knowing Mager and Potter, they’ll probably use this to embarrass me when I do. But I promised for weeks that I’d blog the jobs.)

CNET needs to host a Lunch 2.0

CNET needs to host a Lunch 2.0
CNET Networks, SOMA, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX
1/100sec @ f/16, iso250, 16mm (24mm)

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a coworker who for some reason or another had been to CNET’s headquarters recently: “The women at CNET are hot.”

“Really?”

He laughed, “Didn’t you just have a Lunch 2.0 there?”

Ahh, here follows my explanation on why I depend on others to tell me who is hot or not. (You’ll have to read to the end of the article :-D)

[PHP jobs and CNET hotties after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 9

Flights of fancy

Flights of fancy

Flights of fancy
somewhere over the Eastern United States

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/90sec, iso 320, 35mm (47mm)

My tweets make no sense.

This is why nobody follows me and even my friends have turned off updates.

I just can’t seem to explain my experiences in 140 characters. Maybe I should have titled this blog “The Circumlocution.” Oh well, at least two people asked me about this confusing tweet after my plane landed.

But it’s really quite a simple story, even if I can’t tell it right.

Here is a helpful diagram…

Helpful diagram

[More misadventures after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 16