Alan, our new programmer asked me to explain the history behind our name “Ancient Wisdom Productions”. The following illustration is what happened on the piece of paper in front of me as I talked. I think it basically explains it all! Hope I’m not giving away any company secrets here!

Last week we finished up quite a bit of work for one particular project that is exciting to us for a lot of reasons. Our Ithaca friend, client and professional photographer Shai Eynav has invented a very cool photo/camera accessory! It is called the Spider Camera Holster and was made as an alternative camera carrying method (notice there isn’t a strap on the camera, or the model in the photo above). I don’t need to say more than that because the video on the Spider website that we made really does explain everything (not that it needs explaining, you’ll get it when you see it).

As psyched as I was to develop the brand and put the video and microsite together with Shai and the AWP team I’m even more anxious and excited to actually own this product. No joke, I had it on for 5 seconds and that’s all it took for me to want one. We’ll be expanding the website in the future when the product becomes available (and adding a ton of videos).

Production side-note: we shot the hi-def video with Shai’s gorgeous Canon 5d mkII, which was wonderful to work with in Final Cut Studio. We’re serving the video up on Facebook (?!) because it looks/sounds/responds better than Vimeo and YouTube (we were shocked to realize that Facebook knows video)! Become a fan and watch this beauty unfold…

http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

¡ǝldɯıs ʇɐɥʇ s,ʇı
It’s that simple!

Follow us on Twitter: @AWPNY

<?php
//set timezone
putenv ('TZ=America/New_York');
mktime(0,0,0,1,1,1970);
?>

Just replace America/New_York with whatever your local time zone is. Check this page for valid entries: http://us.php.net/manual/en/timezones.america.php

For PHP5.1 or newer use date_default_time(’America/New_York’).

Also check this page in the Simplepie docs for reference.

Cheers!

The fix to get Cake working in the subdirectory was to add a single line to the .htaccess file in the Cake root directory ( the “/tw” folder in my case). The .htaccess file should look something like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule    ^$ app/webroot/    [L]
RewriteRule    (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]

Add this line after “RewriteEngine on”:

RewriteRule /YOURCAKESUBDIR$ /YOURCAKESUBDIR/ [L]

Obviously, replace “YOURCAKESUBDIR” with the subdirectory your Cake app in running in. So my .htaccess file now looks like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /tw/
RewriteRule /tw$ /tw/ [L]
RewriteRule    ^$ app/webroot/    [L]
RewriteRule    (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]

(The third line, “RewriteBase /tw/”, is necessary to get CakePHP working in the Mosso hosting environment. If your Cake installation is at the server web root (the Mosso “content” directory) then it should read simply “RewriteBase /”. If your site is not hosted at Mosso just eliminate this line.)

Thanks to Jeff Loiselle for the quick fix: http://jeff.loiselles.com/wordpress/?p=22

Speaking of Express, we’re on the hunt for web-savvy sales professionals to represent AWP while working with clients through our Express development process. Design or coding experience is not required, although a familiarity with web design in general is necessary. If you or anyone you know are interested in learning more about this exciting new opportunity please contact us.

Just for fun, here are some of the things we’re talking about this week (follow us on twitter to keep up with the latest). Every link is amazing, so you won’t be disappointed!

• From Tyler: Deep sidewalk art, Oregon Trail
• From Bryan: Calling All Fans of Near Disaster
• From Katy: I LEGO N.Y.
• From Chip: Coding Standards for CakePHP (amazing if you’re a developer)
  
• From Molly: Tilt-shifted photo from Molly’s trip Barcelona – Oh, and on a dare Molly devoured 15 consecutive cloves of garlic in a single sitting last week, and then proceeded to play drums with the AWP band. Woah!

We were all blown away after seeing a “best of” over at Smashing Magazine. Since I had the chance to try this analog style with a Calumet large format camera (during my IC days)  I thought I’d try to re-create the effect in Photoshop, which proved tricky at first.

But, I re-creating it in photoshop is the easy part: getting a decent source photo is what will make a tilt shift beautiful. I’d recommend you:

1) get some altitude
2) zoom in as far as your lens will allow or
3) pop a wide-angle lens on (nothing in between)

If any other tilt shift fans out there have advice, we’d love to read about it: just leave a comment below.

• Versions – Mac Subversion Client (SVN) – discovered by Tyler
• Apple’s New Keyboardless Laptop
  – for real?
• TwitBin – twitter your browser – Molly loves it.
• IMDb | Watch Full-Length Movies, TV Shows, and More — Free! – some great old TV shows up there!
• Katy is checking out Dropbox while Bryan is checking out ZumoDrive.
• Bryan enlightened us to: Biggest rock wusses of all time, Best Photoshop tutorials for beginners, Most beautiful icon sets of 2008, Worst places to get caught having sex, and the Best Christmas light shows.
• Something I never knew.
• One of our favorite local restaurants opened in Milwaukee.
• I’ve started a company Twitter account.
• And Tyler’s Sursly.com has been getting a lot of traffic!

1. NYTimes – This app courtesy of the New York Times makes it super easy to browse through the paper. I especially like the browse by photos section. Articles cache for easy offline (airplane) viewing.

2. Locly – Awesome for finding out what’s nearby when you travel. I’ve tried a few other apps of this sort, but Locly is the best. The current version allows you to search for: Flicker Images*, Local Twitters*, Wikipedia Articles*, Local Events, News from outside.in, Restaurants, Pubs, Cafes, Shops and Supermarkets, Taxi Firms, Films and Movies, Museums*, Hotels, Banks and ATMs, and Gas Stations. I starred (*) the ones I use Locly for the most.

3. Wikipanion – I like to reference the Wiki a lot, and this app makes it a much more plesant experience than going to Wiki via Safari. It’s a must have.

4. Sol Free – Every iPhone needs a good solitare game, and this one is the best free app available. There’s a paid version of this app, but the free one comes with a few styles of solitare including the classic “Klondike Deal 3″, which is really all you need to pass the time.

5. Shazam – I had this app for awhile before I actually used it, but when I did I was amazed! It listens to the music that’s playing around you, and then tells you the name of the song, artist and album. Shazam easily picked out “Bad Up Your Betterness” by the Presets in a sushi restaurant in Austin, and B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” from radio in the car.

6. MiniPiano – A one-octive mini piano, plain and simple. Sounds great and plays easy. Unlike other piano apps, you can slide your finger down the keyboard to produce a glissando effect without having to press each key individually. Fun for kids!

7. TwitterFon – Everyone (including me) uses Twitterific, but here’s a shout out to another app I use called TwitterFon. It’s easily just as good as Twitterific PLUS it lets you Search for tweets (even based on your current location), so it’s easy to see who’s tweeting around you.

8. Chess – This app lets you have a game of chess with another iPhone-based player. Play someone sitting right next to you, or someone around the world. I had been looking for a free chess app for awhile, and this one takes the cake.

9. Pandora – Pandora is totally awesome. Enter a musician or band name and Pandora will create and endless stream of music from that artist as well as music by other artists that share the same genres. It’s completely commercial free (except for a small on-screen ad), and the music plays uninterrupted. Vote each song Pandora plays thumbs-up or thumbs-down and Pandora will customize the music it plays. It’s a great way to find new music. And it even sounds great over a 3G connection.

10. Showtimes – The mission of this app is to show you what’s playing at nearby movie theaters. Showtimes’ interface is super easy to navigate and includes results from multiple theaters, movie ratings, summaries, and trailers. Great when traveling and when at home.

Honorable mentions:

Video Poker – simple and fun!

Tangrams – 70 puzzles in this holiday edition.

Mobile News – AP newswire, includes local search.

Hanoi – the deceivingly difficult game I love to hate.

Blanks – fun word definition game.

FlyCast – streaming radio of all sorts (how I get WEFUNK on the road).

We’re looking for a programmer fluent in OO PHP to assist and lead projects for client-specific web application development.

Skills should include familiarity with the MVC code structure, comfort working with Object-Oriented PHP code, the ability to jump in and start using other people’s code, and past experience with some of the major open-source PHP software (WordPress, Vanilla, Drupal, CakePHP, etc).

The applicant needs to demonstrate their ability as an independent problem-solver, and their ability to work well with others. We put a high value on curiosity and inquisitiveness, and past experience demonstrating those is great to see.

We work almost exclusively with MySQL, so a basic familiarity with that is important as well.

Specific tasks for this position include:

- customizing pre-existing code bases for specific client needs
- leading development of custom web applications
- working with other programmers on longer term, internal development projects
- optimizing pre-existing code
- server customization and management
- ability to quickly learn and develop proficiency in new coding languages and frameworks.

Bonus Points for:

- Experience with CakePHP or Rails
- JQuery or similar OO Javascript Framework
- Any design or UI experience
- Degree in C.S. or related field (i.e. physics, math, biology, etc.)
- Fondness for cookies, coffee, and/or beer

This position is full-time or part-time and your physical presence in the office will be expected. Freelancers need not apply.

Please use our website contact form or reply to this posting on craigslist with your resume and portfolio.

Learn more about us at www.awpny.com.