mehesz.net :: n:ews

BarCamp Tampa Bay 2011

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:33:00 +0000

We still live in Tampa so I didn't have to drive for 3.5 hours to get here, which was good. The Barcamp was held at KForce's HQ in historic Ybor city, just like last year. Nice facility for an event like this. I met up with Joe Nammour, a very good buddy of mine, who is a first-time camper and running a one-stop Drupal shop in Tampa. I know he had a good time.

Around 9 o'clock we gathered together and the biggest surprised was that Bob Buckhorn (YES, the mayor of Tampa) showed up and gave us a very uplifting message about how the city can grow with us and he will be helping us along the way. Thanks, Bob.

I also ran into Derek Bender who recently launched a new site called Impressto where creative people can buy, sell and share their work. Nice work as always.

so ...

9:00 - I sat in to see GazelleLab's presentation on mentor-ship and how important it is when you start a company. The internet was kinda sucky (wouldn't be a real Barcamp without it ;) so I couldn't show my new game I Know My Quotes. Well, maybe next time.

9:30 - I chose the SASS talk even though I already have a basic understanding of this technology, I wanted a little refresher and Matt Cowley delivered a high quality, entertaining "show" on SASS and Compass.

10:00 - Ryan Dorrel from AgileThought told us how he and he team built-up the company, how they put their employess first (yes, in front of clients most of the time) and how they've been voted to be the "best place to work" many times in various magazines. At this point I was pretty much ready to apply, but unfortunately they don't have a ping-pong table ... so that's a no then :)

10:30 - I was waiting for this presentation the most. A launch of a website is always exciting. We Are Tampa Bay.com will eventually collect local tech enthusiasts and companies into one place in a presentable manner. It runs on Ruby on Rails btw.

11:00 - I've been using git for about a year now, so I figured this presentation won't really have anything new to show, and fortunately I was mistaken. PRESENTER gave us a very nice overview why this source control will slowly but surely take over the world and walked us through how a git flow would work in "real life".

11:30 - I know Nick Petite from ThinkVitamin Membership (soon to be Treehouse) so I was absolutely sure this presentation will be high quality and it was. I know that Nick will show this presentation in the UK next week (month?) at a conf, I'll not go into details :) Let's just say he was talking about Responsive Web Design.

12:00 GOOD FOOD from Jimmy John's :) thanks for sponsoring ...

1:00 Right after lunch we gathered together with Ryan Price from Florida Creatives and ended with a somewhat heated argument over why there are NO talents in the Tampa area (hiding?) and why entrepreneurs have to go out of state or to India to get jobs done. It was interesting nonetheless.

2:00 Just as I mentioned the high quality of Nick Petite's talk, the same can be said about James Hopkins's Node.js and Socket IO presentation and it definitely gave us a little peek into the future. Who would've thought this 10 years ago about JavaScript, eh :)

2:30 So I promised my wife that I'll leave at 3 so at this point I just randomly picked a topic. As an application developer I don't really pay attention to SEO as much as I should (should I?) but this talk completely changed my view. I never really knew that blogging can change lives and make (this much) money unless you are a serious blogger with high profile contacts. And it's totally not true!

The audience was wowed many times(!) by this dude, he didn't even have any slides or cool toys. He is using Wordpress to power all his (hundreds?) blogs where he talks about ... stuff. From Jersey Shore to Shoes, Fashion, Electronics etc. And that's all he does. Anyhow, keep an eye on this guy Ryan Magin.

My achievements that day

pat/touched Kevin Hale on the back (Wufoo)	started following Miss Destructo ... (on Twitter!)

How Yii Framework is Developed

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 16:51:00 +0000

Devconf 2011 - PHP - How Yii framework is developed

View more presentations from samdark

Don't Distract New Programmers with OOP

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:27:00 +0000

When I get asked "What's a good first programming language to teach my
[son / daughter / other-person-with-no-programming-experience]?" my
answer has been the same for the last 5+ years: Python.

That may be unexpected, coming from someone who often talks about
non-mainstream languages, but I stand by it.

http://prog21.dadgum.com/93.html

How to make your Git command line colorful

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 04:45:00 +0000

git config --global color.branch auto

git config --global color.diff auto

git config --global color.interactive auto

git config --global color.status auto

The future of dynamic languages is less than crystal clear

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:54:00 +0000

Lessons learned from the technology hype cycle dictate that dynamic
languages should be in the trough of disillusionment by now. For the
past three years, businesses have awakened to PHP, Python and Ruby as
viable tools on the Web and in the server, and after extensive growth
for all manner of non-Java, non-C languages, many businesses are now
taking stock to see if all those promises have been fulfilled.

http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35127

Despite Steve Jobs' Predictions, RIM's BlackBerry Catches Up to Apple's iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:36:00 +0000

In October, Steve Jobs made a rare appearance during an Apple earnings
call -- not just to boast of the company's (record-high) revenues and
profits, but to pump one figure in particular that demonstrated just
how much the company had turned the smartphone industry on its head.
That quarter, Apple had sold 14.1 million iPhones--leap frogging
BlackBerry by some 2 million units.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1709485/despite-steve-jobs-predictions-rim-blackberry-catches-up-to-apple-iphone

Oracle rises, SAP dips on $1.3 billion verdict

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:29:00 +0000

Oracle (ORCL 27.75, +0.56, +2.06%) was up 2.2% in early trading to
$27.78, while SAP (SAP 47.92, -0.77, -1.59%) traded down 1.2% to
$48.10, as analysts offered mixed views on the verdict's impact on the
German company.

A jury's verdict that SAP must pay Oracle Corp. $1.3 billion over
stolen intellectual property looks certain to be appealed, says
Jeanette Borzo, who covered the case for Dow Jones Newswires.
Interview with Stacey Delo.

SAP had admitted responsibility in the intellectual property theft
case involving its now-defunct subsidiary, TomorrowNow, but had argued
in the trial in federal court in Oakland that the damages should be on
the order of roughly $40 million.

"We think this is a bad day for SAP that punctuates some rather poor
decision making over the past few years," Wells Fargo analyst Jason
Maynard said in a note.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oracle-rises-sap-dips-on-13-billion-verdict-2010-11-24

1.0 is the Loneliest Number

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 21:48:00 +0000

NOTE: I usually bash Apple, but here is something else ... ;)

Many entrepreneurs idolize Steve Jobs. He's such a perfectionist, they
say. Nothing leaves the doors of 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino without
a polish and finish that makes geeks everywhere drool. No compromise!

I like Apple for the opposite reason: they're not afraid of getting a
rudimentary 1.0 out into the world.

http://ma.tt/2010/11/one-point-oh/

Demystifying PostgreSQL (Zendcon 2010)

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:59:00 +0000

Demystifying PostgreSQL (Zendcon 2010)

View more presentations from NOLOH LLC..

http://www.slideshare.net/noloh/demystifying-postgresql-zendcon-2010
by Asher Snyder

Web form design guidelines: an eyetracking study

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:36:00 +0000

Forms can be found on almost every website; from contact or feedback
forms in small websites to bank details in commerce websites, from
registration to communication, from banking to searching.

What we wanted to do, and why we wanted to do it
TIP: Ecommerce guidelines
Read Chui's ecommerce product page guidelines in her What people see
before they buy blog post.At cxpartners, we have designed and tested
numerous new and existing forms for websites from different companies.
We use a set of golden rules that we use as a reference for form
design that we have developed over the past six years.

We wanted to validate these rules and seek further insights into
various aspects of web form design. This lead us to carry out an
eye-tracking study to observe how people react to different form
designs, and to find out where users look when they are presented with
a big list of text boxes.

http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/cxinsights/web_forms_design_guidelines_an_eyetracking_study.htm

Microsoft is a dying consumer brand

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:14:00 +0000

Consumers have turned their backs on Microsoft. A company that once
symbolized the future is now living in the past.

Microsoft has been late to the game in crucial modern technologies
like mobile, search, media, gaming and tablets. It has even fallen
behind in Web browsing, a market it once ruled with an iron fist.

Outgoing Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie called out Microsoft's
lost ground in a blog post over the weekend.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/27/technology/microsoft_pdc/

10 Beginner Tips from PHP Masters

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:19:00 +0000

PHP is the language behind some of the most powerful and pervasive web
applications around, including the ubiquitous Facebook and the
unstoppable WordPress.

Learning a new language can be daunting, so we've tapped a few PHP
experts for their advice for novice PHP coders (stay tuned for an
intermediate/advanced selection of tips, coming up in a couple weeks).

If you're a new PHP developer (or an old pro), be sure to leave a note
in the comments and let us and other readers know what specific steps
you've taken that's made learning the language easier for you.

http://mashable.com/2010/10/21/php-tips-for-beginners/

Using MySQL as a NoSQL - A story for exceeding 750,000 qps on a commodity server

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:54:00 +0000

Most of high scale web applications use MySQL + memcached. Many of
them use also NoSQL like TokyoCabinet/Tyrant. In some cases people
have dropped MySQL and have shifted to NoSQL. One of the biggest
reasons for such a movement is that it is said that NoSQL performs
better than MySQL for simple access patterns such as primary key
lookups. Most of queries from web applications are simple so this
seems like a reasonable decision.

http://yoshinorimatsunobu.blogspot.com/2010/10/using-mysql-as-nosql-story-for.html

How to use cool themes with VIM (in terminal)

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:57:00 +0000

I've been using GVIM in the past couple of years, so I pretty much
forgot about terminal based VIM.

If you ever get bored with the default color scheme (very dark),
following these tutorials/plugins you can have an awesome editor with
more than 100 colorful themes. Let's make your VIM pretty!

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=625

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2390

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_GUI_color_settings_in_a_terminal

Internet Explorer Drops Below 50% Market Share Worldwide

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 18:08:00 +0000

Despite last month's promising debut of Internet Explorer 9, the
world's most popular browser has fallen below 50% for the first time,
according to StatCounter.

StatCounter Global Stats, which looks browser market share by browser
and not by version, shows Internet Explorer occupying just below 50%,
down from nearly 60% a year ago.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_explorer_drops_below_50_market_share_worl.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+readwriteweb+(ReadWriteWeb)

Facebook Introduces High-resolution Photo Sharing

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 15:53:00 +0000

There's no denying Facebook's popularity as a social networking site,
that being said, when it comes to photo-sharing, it tends to lag
behind other sites such as Flickr. The good news is that if you're
hooked on Facebook and want to share high-resolution pictures,
Facebook has increased the size of photos stored from 720 pixels to
2048 pixels on the largest edge ...

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/10/facebook_introduces_high-resolution_photo_sharing.html

BarCamp Tampa Bay 2010 aka Sci-Fi conf. (09/25-09/26)

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:44:00 +0000

GREAT COFFEE, AWESOME LUNCH!

This was my third Tampa Barcamp Event (see 2008, 2009), but this was the first one where I didn't have to wake up at 4AM to get there in time. So, that was great :)

The organizers have decided to have a 2 day event, focusing on Media and Design on Saturday, and Development on Sunday. I only attended Sunday so if you have a wrap-up for Saturday, please shoot me a link so I can post it here.

It was also good to see friends from the Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa PHP groups.

10.30 - Puppeee
My first session was about Puppeee Linux an ultralight, user-friendly Linux distro for the EeePC presented by the author herself, Jemimah. She was talking about the different types of Window Systems (like iceWM, fWM) and some other stuff too, ie: lxLauncher which, I think, she re-wrote by herself.

Link: puppeee.com

11:00 - Alternative input devices
I didn't exactly know what to expect from this talk, but the title looked interesting ...

Orbitouch Keybowl

AlphaGrips

DataHand

Other devices: Maltron qwerty, dvorak, ABKey, New Standard Keyboard, Stenotype 375/minute, FrogPad, Twiddler 2, Ekapad, IN10DID, CyKey, Bat/Spiffchorder, Douglas-Engelbart (mosue), Perkins Brailler, GKOS,TextSkin (If I misspelled something, sorry)

11:30 Tuning MySQL Server by lig

We got a 1 hour presentation, in ~30mins. So it was faaaaast. Ligaya also posted her slides on her website: http://www.khankennels.com/blog/index.php/presentations/

12:00 TDD - Test Driven Design (!development)

Right before lunch we had a cool session about TDD aka Test Driven Design. Here are my notes:

SOLID:

Single Responsibility Principle

Open Closed Principle

Liskov Substitution Principle

Interface Segregation Principle

Dependency Inversion Principle

AAA (Arrange, Act, Assert)

SUT = System Under Test

Refactoring:

- you can make everything better

- changing internal structure w/o changing its external behavior.

2:00 Don't do it alone : Joel Lopez

Helping each other in the community, some links:

Web Venture Entrepreneurs: http://www.meetup.com/TampaWaVE/

IdeaField - co-working space in Tampa (http://ideafield.ning.com/)

2:30 About scaling by Davey Shafik

Amazon EC2 (Amazon S3 - storage)

Gentoo Linux (Ubuntu)

LAMP (5.2)

Cluster FC

Amazon Load-balancer (60 sec)

Heartbeat

Hacona

Gearman (job server) written in C

MemCache D

Rackspace

Separate MySQL server

Sharting approach NoSQL(?)

3:00 Hacking Children's Toys by @omgold

This presentation was way over my head, but I like robots and technology. These are the people who will hack and crack the first terminator, so SkyNet watch out. WE ARE READY!

Didj

Leapster Explorer (LX)

They run linux :) Get the source, get data sheets (as much info as you can)

3:30 THAT Camp

I was late to this one and I don't know how I got here ... (The Humanities and Technology Camp)

4:00 Advanced Rails by Aubrey Goodman

The usual Ruby stuff :)

Ruby is awesome

Rails is powerfull

RESTful architecture is friendly

ActiveRecord is badass

Nested Routing

Nested Access Control

Namespaces

Ruby on Rails

So good times again, if you missed it, you missed out! See you next year: http://barcamptampabay.org/

Build Your First PHP for Android Application

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:07:00 +0000

Google's open source Android mobile operating system is taking the
smartphone market by storm. Unlike Apple, which has stringent
guidelines and requirements for developers who want to offer their
applications on the iPhone App Store, Google has left the Android
platform wide open. You can even write Android applications in PHP
now. The folks at Irontech have created a PHP port to run on Android,
and with the Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A), you can build PHP
Android applications.

http://www.developer.com/features/article.php/52691_3904261_1/Build-Your-First-PHP-for-Android-Application.htm

Burglars used social network status updates to select victims

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:43:00 +0000

US police reckon a band of burglars used social network status updates
to select victims.

The alleged thieves carried out an estimated 50 burglaries in and
around Nashua, New Hampshire, after gaining intelligence on properties
that had been left vacant from status updates on social networking
sites, such as Facebook.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/13/social_network_burglary_gang/

Getting started with CouchDB : meet PHP on Couch

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:01:00 +0000

"I will not detail the installation of the CouchDB server, the wiki
got enough details. For the rest of this article I will assume that we
have a running CouchDB server waiting for our queries on
couch.example.com on port 5984 (the default CouchDB port). Setting up
PHP on Couch is not really complicated : just download it on
github.com, extract the archive : the interesting bits are in the lib
folder."

http://devzone.zend.com/article/12523-Getting-started-with-CouchDB-meet-PHP-on-Couch?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ZendDeveloperZone+(Zend+Developer+Zone+-+front+page)

Google CEO: Web TV Service to Be Offered Worldwide in 2011

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:40:00 +0000

Google Inc. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said the company
plans to extend its Web television service from U.S. viewers to global
consumers in 2011.

Google has an agreement with Sony Corp. to launch Web TV in the U.S.
this fall, while Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest
television manufacturer, said today it may make sets run by Google's
software to compete with Sony and Apple Inc. in the market for TVs
that access movies, shows and games online. Schmidt declined to say
which other manufacturers will integrate Google Web TV into their
televisions.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-07/google-ceo-says-web-tv-service-to-be-offered-worldwide-starting-next-year.html

The Social Web Goes Open Source On Sept. 15!

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:28:00 +0000

Diaspora has already made waves on the Internet when it was unveiled
for the first time on the Internet. But at that time, the Diaspora
team only had philosophies about the Social Web. Born out of the ashes
of the privacy debates on Facebook, Diaspora is your privacy aware,
personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network. The
Diaspora team recently announced that, they are releasing Diaspora on
September 15, 2010!

http://digitizor.com/2010/08/27/the-social-web-goes-open-source-on-sept-15-diaspora/trackback/

Some lesser-known truths about programming

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:15:00 +0000

A programmer spends about 10-20% of his time writing code, and most
programmers write about 10-12 lines of code per day that goes into the
final product, regardless of their skill level. Good programmers spend
much of the other 90% thinking, researching, and experimenting to find
the best design. Bad programmers spend much of that 90% debugging code
by randomly making changes and seeing if they work.

http://dotmac.rationalmind.net/2010/08/some-lesser-known-truths-about-programming/trackback/

Superfast Tutorial for setting up PostgreSQL on Ubuntu

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:17:00 +0000

Installing stuff:

$sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-client postgresql-contrib phppgadmin

Adding a new user:
$adduser postgres

Changing the password for this user
$ sudo su postgres psql postgres
postgres=# ALTER USER postgres WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'password';

Setting up the FILES:
/etc/postgresql/8.4/main/postgresql.conf
...
listen_addresses = "localhost"
...
password_encryption = on

/etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf
...
# Database administrative login by UNIX sockets
local all postgres md5
...

/etc/phppgadmin/config.inc.php
...
$conf['extra_login_security'] = false;
...

Restartin the SQL server:
$/etc/init.d/postgresql-8.4 restart

Using it:
http://localhost/phppgadmin

ENJOY!

More HELP:
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/C/postgresql.html
http://www.molecularsciences.org/book/export/html/498
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/phpPgAdmin

Why Free Plans Don’t Work

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:32:00 +0000

"Not too long ago it seemed like every product I knew was offering
some sort of free plan. The strategy was brilliant: get loads of
people using your product and eventually turn them into paying
customers. Everywhere I looked there were stories of people making
money hand over fist with this approach."

http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-work/