Atlanta PHP User Group

We had a really cool presentation on load testing using JMeter and Xdebug by Brian DeShong. Load testing and profiling are very important to help identify possible bottlenecks in your application/server before reaching a breaking point. JMeter allows a user to setup different scenarios to run with varying loads (number of users, ramp up time). It’s pretty fancy with all the options you can do such as submit variables to pages to simulate login ins to an application and tracking sessions. Xdebug lets us analyze logs to see what was going on in your application to easily spot which part of the execution process took the most amount of time. At that point, you can look at your code to see how to improve that particular process.

At work we have an outside firm doing our testing/load testing so it was nice learning about JMeter so eventually we can start doing some of our own load tests for things we need done asap. I currently use Zend Studio’s profiler to profile my applications so I probably won’t be using Xdebug any time soon.

TEK-X

I asked around our local user group what conference they would recommend if they could only attend one PHP conference and this was the one I heard the most good things about. This was my first time attending a PHP conference and it was WELL worth it. The sessions were great with three tracks daily to choose from. The conference was small enough where you could spend time with the presenters interacting and asking questions. I met a bunch of new people which made the whole experience that much better. There was always something to do during presentations as well as after hours.

This is the web site for TEX-K if you want more info or want to take a look at the schedule. Some of my favorite were the two Flex sessions by Keith Casey since I want to start doing more Flex and the Lost Art of Simplicty by Josh Holmes was interesting as well. It was really nice having a bunch of Adobe and Microsoft people there. They were all great and helpful. We had been having some server hiccups at work and the guys at Microsoft were extremely helpful in trying to help us figure things out. We also learned from various people (both the MS and PHP crowd) that we (at work) should start using IIS instead of Apache for Windows. Microsoft has been spending resources in working with the PHP team to make sure things run smoother with PHP on IIS for Windows than before.

Two thumbs up for Microsoft and Adobe for being there and supporting the community (and for the drinks and dinners :p) . I’ll definitely try to go next year again.

Flash Builder for PHP

I took a one day-8 hour course on using Flash Builder and wow… I’m sold. After working on Flash for so many years, Flex is just too amazing to ignore. The class was taught by Adobe certified Jeanette Stallons and it was a small class which was great for us since we could get a lot more time for questions and one on one time. She did a great job keeping our attention and was very easy to follow. This was a hands on class so we each had our own computer to work the examples with.

The class started with us learning about the different Adobe applications, the difference between Flash/Flex, and reasoning behind changing the name Flex builder to Flash builder. Then we went through the basics of the IDE and how to setup a project and what the different folders and files are for. Next is when things got fun. We started creating an application that communicates with the database through PHP. We did all the code manually to better appreciate the last lesson which was creating the exact same application in an automated fashion with literally only a few lines of code at most. That was the coolest part of this class, how easy it is to use the wizards (that actually spit out good code!) to be able to just click and drag and have everything working correctly in such a short amount of time.

I already downloaded the two month trial from the Adobe’s site and have been playing around with Flash Builder at work and at home.

Google AdWords API v13 to v2009

A few years ago I wrote an application that heavily uses the Google Adwords API. It worked without me touching it for years until recently Google changed their Adwords API and my app completely stopped working. This was my fault of course since many months ago Google emailed me letting me know this was going to happen but at the time I figured there wouldn’t be much difference between both versions so I didn’t pay much attention to it… boy was I wrong.

The new API v2009 is very different since you call things differently now and many of the old services I was using no longer exist in the new version. I spent some time trying to rework my code to use the new calls but that was not working well for me. It just seemed as if I was wasting time instead of just starting over with a clean rewrite. Fortunately for me, after doing some research, I found that Google had already created a client library for PHP that already did all the heavy lifting code to interact with the services. I downloaded the library, ran a couple tests and everything was working perfectly. All I had to do was rewrite the application using the client library and everything is running smoothly again.

Thanks Google! You saved me a lot of time but don’t change your API again

My Birthday

Not much to mention here other than it was my birthday last month as well so had dinners with parents and drinks with friends. I have been running a lot lately so I bought myself a nice new watch with my birthday money: Garmin 405. I saw this watch on sale on slickdeals.net for under $200 and I couldn’t resist. I’ve used it a couple times already and it’s great. The GPS seems to be working flawlessly for me so far and all the features it brings are neat to play with. My biggest sellers were: GPS to track my distance and pace and the heart rate monitor.

Peachtree Road Race, here I come!

I also created my first widgets! The ‘Interesting Links’ and ‘Interesting Images’ on the sidebar are no longer hacks done on the themes sidebar.php file. I learned how to create a plugin in WordPress and make it into a widget. Here is what one of the widgets looks like:

I had to go back to all my old posts and make updates. If you find any issues anywhere, please let me know so I can fix it asap. I’ve found instances in code where there should be two && and instead the code blocks shows &&. I’m currently trying to figure out why my preview button doesn’t work, hopefully I’ll figure that out soon so I can move on to changing some colors around and finally updating my ‘About Me’ page. I hope to have some content in that page by the end of this weekend. Other than that, I hope you all enjoy the new look and am looking forward to hearing some feedback!

And here is a bit more info:
http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6210641/microsofts-project-natal-3d-camera-system

I personally don’t own a console but am very eager to try this one out.

If you aren’t familiar with Emotional Intelligence I recommend you read some more about it. I recently learned about EQ at a work seminar and thought it’s a great concept that others should know about as well. Here’s are a couple resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligencehttp://www.time.com/time/classroom/psych/unit5_article1.html

If you like psychology you will probably enjoying learning more about this.

Taken from the wiki page:

“The model introduced by Daniel Goleman [16] focuses on EI as a wide array of competencies and skills that drive leadership performance. Goleman’s model outlines four main EI constructs:[1]

Self-awareness — the ability to read one’s emotions and recognize their impact while using gut feelings to guide decisions.

Self-management — involves controlling one’s emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.

Social awareness — the ability to sense, understand, and react to others’ emotions while comprehending social networks.

Relationship management — the ability to inspire, influence, and develop others while managing conflict.”

Some of you may find some of this common sense but others may not. Why is this important? Because even the smartest person in the world (IQ) will have problems succeeding if he/she can’t manage their emotions or the way they interact and are perceived by others (EQ). I think the more understanding a person has of EQ, the easier life becomes. There are various situations that can be avoided or easily overcome just by paying attention causing less unnecessary stress.

Here is an example of where I think I use EQ relating to technology. When I go to speak to a person about say coding, I have to ask myself – “Do I know this person and if so, how tech savy are they?”. Based on that answer, I’ll adjust the way I speak to this person and use wording and or acronyms that I think this person would understand. If I don’t know this person and don’t know enough of their background to guesstimate, I’ll start talking to this person in a very general level (not too low to insult them if they are techy but not too detailed to lose them from the start if they aren’t) and based on the way this person interacts with me, see if I can go more tech details or if I need to get more generic and use none-tech related examples.

From then I also try to pay attention to see if this is a person that really truelly understands what I’m saying or is just knoding since many, including myself, are guilty to this. And finally based on the interaction or lack of I know if it’s time to change the subject or if we can keep going. All that just to have a conversation…

Have any similar experiences to share? Please do! We can all learn from each other.

http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/

Atlanta Startup Weekend
During the meeting I found out about this really neat event. The objective of the Atlanta Startup Weekend is to get a bunch of people together, divide them into groups (developers, marketing people, business people, etc) and in one weekend finalize a product from a concept. Tickets are already sold out so I’ll have to try for next year. I’m sure I could learn a lot.

PHP Wiki
I didn’t know about this page: http://wiki.php.net/. You can get lots of neat information from the PHP group. The rfc (request for comments) section is also very informative. You can see what requests have been made, which request are going to be implemented and which have already been implemented. It’s a good way to stay ahead of the curve since you would know what’s coming out before it’s out.

REST
Don’t quote me on any of this, this is just bits and pieces that I think I gathered from listening to others talk. If I understand correctly, REST is a standard for creating RESTful url/url/web services that are efficient and scalable… maybe? I heard REST mentioned a lot during the <head> conference a couple weekends ago and I heard it mentioned a few times last night during this meeting. So, now I need to go do some more research and figure out what this REST thing is all about. Seems like it’s something worth knowing about and maybe even following? If you have any info or resources you can recommend please do.

Building Personal Brand with Social Media (Gary Vaynerchuk)
I really enjoyed this session. It was all about why personal branding is so important and various ways to get a person started. A lot of this was stuff I’ve been hearing for years (specially from my friend Moses) but I never did anything about. Gary said things that made sense and put things on a different perspective for me. As you call tell, it worked. I now have a blog and even a twitter account!

Google App Engine: An Overview (Pete Koomen)
This was a good introduction to Google App Engine for me. I first learned about Google App Engine from Aral Balkans blog but I never did much research on it to find out what it’s all about. After this session I have a better understanding on what this does and how I could use it at some point.

Beyond Web Standards: Crafting Design and Development Standards (Kimberly Blessing)
This was another good one. All about trying to create/use standards. This should be common sense but the reality is I haven’t worked anywhere yet were we had any kind of standards. I’m going to make it a personal goal to create some sort of standards to implement at my current company. We do so much and all our documentation, code, naming conventions, folder structures, everything is different. Every project seems to be completely different from the next. Things would be much more efficient at least for us (the developers) if we all followed some sort of standards.

Architecting Human Behaviour (Andy Budd)
This was one of my favorite.  Andy did a great job on making a very fun and interesting presentation. I was 100% engaged the entire time wanting to hear more on what he had to say. It was very interesting to hear the tricks being used out there in the way buildings are structured to guide customers through certain paths increasing the amount of time customers stay in the building and increasing the chances the customers will purchase more items. The coolest example was all the levels of details put on how things are laid out on a grocery store and why they are built the way they are. There was a ton of neat info that I now have to think about how I can put these ideas into practice on my own projects. Looking forward to hearing more on what Andy has to say.

Building Pyramids out of Bits: How can we build software that lasts? (Cliff Hall)
This was an interesting one too. Cliff shared his experiences on how over time, things change and the code you were so proud off can eventually fade away. Technologies change, new languages surface and old languages sometimes stop being used. It’s important to develop code in a way that will be easily transferable from one application to the next. He talked about PureMVC and I’m definately going to look more into it. The idea behind it is having a single framework that is platform independent based on MVC. If you code in AS3 using PureMVC, you should be able to transfer the same code to Java or PHP without too many problems since the structure is the same.

Now I need to look at some of the recordings for the sessions I missed. I’m sure there are a few other great ones out there.