Grep My Mind Wonder what’s on my mind? Now you know.

Terry Chay will be returning to speak again!  Due to popular demand Terry has agreed to give his recent “Making frameworks suck less” talk that he gave to the ZendCon08 UnCon this year. Be sure to wear comfortable shoes ’cause Terry will pack the room!

RSVP here: http://php.meetup.com/139/calendar/8911737/

The blurb from ZendCon08:
Terry Chay, the original PHP Terrorist, is well known for his criticism and ridicule of the Ruby on Rails framework. He criticizes, mocks, and f-bombs his enemies into surrender. In this discussion, Terry will share his ideas and thoughts on making frameworks better.

Map to CNET Networks, Inc.
When you arrive, please look for the PHP Meetup sign pointing you to the conference room. Please RSVP if you are attending so that I can prepare enough snacks and beverages.

Look forward to seeing you there!

This event can be found at:
http://php.meetup.com/139/calendar/8911737/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39294579201
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1195581/

Posted under Events, Internet, PHP, Technology, Web Development

Kudos to Mariano for taking the lead while I’m out on paternity leave (I’m going to write about that ones of these days) and setting up July’s PHP Meetup.  Thanks to an introduction from Terry, Mariano asked Andrei Zmievski to talk about the unicode updates to PHP 6.  Due to the 4th of July, we’ve moved the meetup from it’s normal date/time to Thursday July 10th @ 7pm.  It is still at CNET like usual (thanks to GameSpot.com funding the meetup).

Title: PHP::$unicode->i18n()

Description:
PHP 6 brings fully functional and mature Unicode support to the Web world. This talk will cover all the layers of the PHP (bread)/Unicode (butter)/i18n (jam) sandwich. Come and find out how to work with locales, use collation to compare and sort strings, and format numbers, currencies, and dates for any country in the world. Bring your appetite because the toasty goodness is waiting.

When: Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 7pm
Where: CNET Networks: 235 2nd St, San Francisco, CA  94518

You can RSVP on the SF PHP Meetup’s site or just show up.  I always like it when people RSVP so that I know how much food to buy.  But it isn’t a prereq or anything.

EDIT: I just saw that Terry mentioned PB&J and I like the idea.  So PB&J it is; plus the usual chips, sodas, candy, etc. of course. 

Posted under Events, PHP, Technology, Web Development

A shameless plug for CNET… We’re hiring a few Senior Software Engineers for GameSpot.com, TV.com and Chow.com. Yes, that’s a Sr SE positions for each of those sites. We’re raising the bar and looking to bring on some powerful coders to expand the functionality of our sites. Here’s a brief list of the job skill requirements:

Must Have:

• Expert PHP skills, bonus for RoR
• 5-7 years of real world experience engineering web solutions for LAMP stacks
• Strong relational DB knowledge (table optimization, query optimization)
• Ability to prioritize and lead multiple simultaneous projects effectively
• Excellent understanding of OO software engineering concepts
• Ability to arhitect solid, scalable, extensible solutions for SE needs
• Excited by working on high-level design and architecture
• Comfortable mentoring junior engineers
• Expereince with formal release processes
• Strong verbal, written, analytical and communication skills

Bonus for:

• Admin experience with MySQL, Apache, SVN
• Background developing in a more structured language (C, C++, Java, etc)
• At least 3 years experience in high-traffic/high-availability web sites
• Strong UI experience with javaScript and AJAX using mootools or other JS Frameworks
• Experience with following technologies: Memcached, Smarty, SOLR, Lucene, Zend Framework

If you think you have what it takes, head over to our Jobs site and apply: https://careers.cnetnetworks.com/joblist.html

If you want to discuss the job in more detail first, please don’t hesitate to send me an
at michael[
]tougeron[
]cnet[
]com.

Posted under PHP, Web Development, memcached, mysql

I started off the day today listening to the keynotes at the MySQL Conference. Unfortunately I had to work on something so I wasn’t able to really pay attention. I hope I didn’t miss anything important.

After the keynotes, I decided to start off with the Testing PHP/MySQL Applications with PHPUnit/DbUnit session by Sebastian Bermann. I know I should already be using PHPUnit, but honestly I’ve never gotten around to it. I’m hoping that this will give me the kick in the ass that I need to start.
Read More…

Posted under Events, PHP, mysql

Wow, I just realized how long it has been since I last posted here. It has been a crazy few weeks. Everything from setting up the baby furniture to fixing my rental condo, taxes to layoffs at CNET and more. I’m beat.

Anway to the topic at hand…

April’s PHP Meetup is looking like it will have another great turn out. The group just keeps growing and growing. Our average attendance for the last two months have been over 70 people! I still have a hard time believing that this many shy, techie geeks like me actually show up.
April’s topic will be run by Dustin Whittle from Yahoo! and will be about the symfony framework. He’ll be doing a brief overview of the framework and then walk people through setting up a site. If you’re planning on attending, bring your laptop and code along with us.

Posted under Events, PHP, Web Development