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Setting Up A Design and Development Environment

Lynn Wallenstein — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:54:34 +0000

Having recently had to go through the pains of resetting up a new development environment for my design and web dev work, I documented the process for beginner linux users to get LAMP + Rails setup using Ubuntu 9.04 over on my blog.

Will in Print

Lynn Wallenstein — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:03:34 +0000

Congrats to fellow PBG “member” Will Harris for the publication of Head First’s PHP & MySQL in which he was a technical editor.

If you’re ready to create web pages more complex than those you can build with HTML and CSS, Head First PHP & MySQL is the ultimate learning guide to building dynamic, database-driven websites using PHP and MySQL. Packed with real-world examples, this book teaches you all the essentials of server-side programming, from the fundamentals of PHP and MySQL coding to advanced topics such as form validation, session IDs, cookies, database queries and joins, file I/O operations, content management, and more.

Head First PHP & MySQL offers the same visually rich format that’s turned every title in the Head First series into a bestseller, with plenty of exercises, quizzes, puzzles, and other interactive features to help you retain what you’ve learned.

Great job Will! There is even a PBG name drop!

Playericious on ReadWriteWeb

Lynn Wallenstein — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:19:31 +0000

Player.icio.us got reviewed on ReadWriteWeb today. While we weren’t really ready for the traffic, the server seems to be holding its own… wish we could say the same for Delicious who seems to be randomly blocking some of our requests.

If you haven’t yet checked out Player.icio.us, you should swing on by! Feedback is, as always, welcomed.

Wordpress Theme for Designers

Lynn Wallenstein — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:38:28 +0000

I have released the Designers Default wordpress theme over on my blog.

“So here is Designers Default. It is a modification of Kubrick, designed to look and function just like Kubrick but “updated” in concepts and code. If you aren’t a designer, you aren’t going to appreciate this, because beyond some small visual changes, it will look just like Kubrick from the outside.

From a coder perspective, that is a whole other story.”

New Site

Lynn Wallenstein — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:16:02 +0000

As you can see we have a new site. We are trying to focus more on making content and giving back to the community then making some site that just talks about how great we are and try to convince you to send us your money.

The site still needs a little work, but we figured it is a work in progress so better to get it out then hold back as it has been way to long since we did anything with our last site.

Bad at Updating

Lynn Wallenstein — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:49:13 +0000

We are really bad about updating this blog :(

Unfortunately I don’t see this process changing anytime soon, but do know that we all blog regularly on our own blogs:

Lynn Wallenstein - http://www.maverickconceptions.com
Dan Ahern - http://www.danahern.com
Will Harris - http://www.dbawill.org
Michael Harper - http://www.redjac.net

and have been busy busy busy releasing a lot of new software:

I Heart Games - http://www.iheartgamesapp.com
Playericious - http://www.playericious.com
LockURL - http://www.lockurl.com
Environs - http://apps.facebook.com/environs
Truth - http://apps.facebook.com/truth

and some open source as well

Embark - http://github.com/lwallenstein/embark/tree/master
Start Me Up - http://github.com/lwallenstein/start-me-up/tree/master

We will be rolling out a new PBG site soon that is more blog focused so look forward to some exciting things including a reincarnation of iStalkr and a bunch more web apps and open source!

Dan on Rails: Part Three

Lynn Wallenstein — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:33:50 +0000

Ok, now he is really showing us up:

Beginner mistake number 3:
Associations. If you’ve worked with relational databases at all you probably know the concepts one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many, and you’ve probably cried your self to sleep on a numerous occasions writing join statements that probably are longer than some children’s books. Every Rails developers learns the basics of Rail’s model associations.

Click here for the full article.

Dan on Rails: Part Two

Lynn Wallenstein — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:30:55 +0000

In Dan’s successful attempt to outshine all the other PBG bloggers, may we present “Trial By Fire - Part 2” Dan’s latest installment on moving to rails.

Click here for the full article

Dan on Rails

Lynn Wallenstein — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 07:48:35 +0000

In an attempt to keep up with Will, Dan has started a series of articles outlining the things he “wish he knew when he was starting with rails”. Good read for anyone making the jump:

Starting off as a Rails developer I ran into some problems coming from a Java/C++ background. Until Rails I more learned the languages for fun and something to play with in my free time, however by doing this I picked up some bad habits. I’ve worked with one of the top Ruby developers out there and learned to mimic his style and question his choices in code. I’ve learned a lot in the last year and a half I’ve been coding and now am even leading up a development team and teaching them the ins and the outs of Ruby.

Click Here for the full article.

More MySQL: Full Text Indexing and RSS Feeds

Lynn Wallenstein — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 07:43:43 +0000

Will posted a new article over on his blog in his continuing effort to outshine us all:

Full text indexing is an amazing feature. Instead of incredibly costly LIKE comparisons, an index can be created by the RDBMS which contains the full text of the column, or table, in question. For things like e-mail message bodies, biographies or other lengthy descriptions, or any other unstructured text, full text indexing is the only solution that makes sense.

For the full article, click here.