For over five years I've been using the scripting language PHP in my webpages. Now I'm working on filling in some of the gaps in my knowledge so I can take the test to become a "Zend Certified Engineer". Woo hoo!
Most of the material covered in the official Study Guide is familiar to me, but I've already learned some new things, and upgraded some existing code, based on the study guide subjects. Good stuff.
Hey I missed it. Yesterday was the first birthday of this site. Happy Birthday to TechPopuli.
BTW, yesterday was also the birthday of The Famous Steve Garfield. Happy, happy, Steve.
TechPopuli reader Peter Wood sends along this about the earphones I mentioned in my BMac notes.
I think the person who mentioned the Koss in-ear phones is probably talking about The PLUG. I have a pair of those and use them with my iPod. They do work great, and have terrific bass response, and I do believe $14.95 is about the right price.
UPDATE: Peter sent along this link for the earphones.
It was a really good meeting at BMac last night. Here're a bunch of notes. I may report more later on some of these.
The main speaker was Hadley Stern, a local guy who has written "iPod and iTune's Hacks" for OReilly. He talked for about 90 mins describing some interesting stuff.
Stern's website: Apple Matters applematters.com
A good source for iTunes related applescripts: Doug Adams dougscripts.com
Make the iTunes visualizer into your screensaver: scriptsaver
Source of alternate itune viualizer plugins: MacUpdate
Freeware app that will convert text into a spoken word sound file. TextReader.
A good place to get text of classic written works: Project Gutenberg.
Source for ideas on creating iTune smart playlists: smartplaylists.com
Source for mp3 tools: mp3 rage.
Someone recommended good "in the ear" earphones from Koss. Did he say they only cost $14.95, maybe.
iPod car controller from Griffin. Cassette plugin, plus remote controls.
Duke Univ. gave all freshman an iPod preloaded with study material. Jury still out on whether this was a good program.
An audience member reports that a local Boston Univ. will announce soon a similar program.
Overall, a very interesting session from Stern.
Some interesting things that got mentioned during Q&A:
Simple Finder. I'll be looking into this.
Portfolio keeps being mentioned as a good photo manager for the professional photog.
Disk Warrior seems to be the disk management/repair utility of choice. Note: I used to be up-to-date on this kind of info. No longer.
Tinkertools mentioned again as a good util for customizing various OSX features.
I'm apparently the last person to hear about Google Maps. This is a new Google tool, made public in the past few days, which offers Yahoo!Maps/MapQuest type functionality. But it seems to have a very cool UI. It apparently only runs on some browsers right now. Firefox only? More on this soon.
Heading out for the monthly Boston Mac Users Group tonight.
The NetAttack of the Day is the corruption of the site belonging to open source forum software phpBB. Some are claiming that the exploit was the result of a flaw in the phpBB software.
The leaders of the phpBB community are insisting, and I believe them, that they think the flaw was in another part of the webhosting software (awstat), and that they have no indication that this is a flaw in phpBB. Again, I find their analysis believable.
Here's from their current report:
It is actually quite fustrating at present that some hosting providers are asking or forcing their customers to remove installs of phpBB 2.0.11 due to the loss of phpbb.com. As I say above, our best available information right now is that phpBB was not to blame. If a hosting provider knows different perhaps they can inform us (along with details of how they know!).
I've evaluated phpBB in the past, and I think now is the time to show my support by setting up a phpBB forum on one of my sites. Over the next few days I'll be installing it over on my infoPawtuckaway.com site. More later.