Planet eZ publish

From April 26th to 28th I will presenting at php|tek in Orlando. On this third "cruise" I will hold three sessions. In the first talk I will be talking about rapid application developing, using examples from the eZ components. On the second day I'm trying something new: "Derick's Ranting Hour". During this hour I will be listening to the ranting of users about all things they don't like in PHP. If there are not enough people complaining than I will give a shot at it myself :). On the third and last day I will be talking about PHP's improved date and time handling.
As this time the "cruise" is not in the Bahamas or in Cancún, you should have less problems convincing your boss to send you to this conference. Hope to see you there!
SCALE is a non-profit community run event in Los Angeles, CA. Presenters include Jim Winstead (MySQL), John Terpstra (Samba), Chris Dibona (Google) and more.
Andi Gutmans (Zend Founder and a creator of PHP) will be speaking at SCALE 4x, the 2006 Southern California Linux Expo on Feb 11-12. He will discuss new features in PHP5, as well as planned features for PHP6.
You can still sign up and get tickets, but the Early Bird price has passed. Tickets are only $65 USD regular price/$32.50 for students - so you can't go wrong for a few days full of talks from respresentatives of companies like Google, RealNetworks, AMD, Sun, Novell, and, of course, Zend...
The LinuxTag 2006 will have three focus topics, one of them is "Information Web", which comprises CMSs, Wikis, Weblogs, etc.
If you got something important to say about this topic in English or German: the Call for Papers will end this Sunday, January 15th - only 3 more days!
After organising last year's OscomTag subconference at LinuxTag 2005 together with Markus Nix, the LinuxTag organizers asked me whether I would like to lead the team preparing the Information Web track this year. After contacting some of the OscomTag 2005 speakers, we got together a great group of 10 people:
I am very much looking forward to enjoying this event from May 3-6!

As Vidyut pointed out, phpfreaks.com seems to automatically create a link everywhere on their website, where the word "PHP" appears. They do this even in user comments. Apparently this seems to be a nice service, if the link would direct you to php.net (or maybe some explaination page or something). But instead they link to some hosting provider which supports PHP (what also well known as a "sponsored link").
I have to admit that this is one of the largest brazennesses I every saw. Beside that, it's absolutely frowned upon in journalism circles (even the famous German "Bild-Zeitung" does not do advertisment in such a abject way, also they are wellknown for borderlining adverts) and in many states even completly illegal.
'You should really feel ashame, you strange PHPFreaks!
A funny from the Python crowd: phpfilter
This article covers various techniques and methods for representing these parameters in the URL in a clean and "friendly" manner, as well as then how to read the parameters.
One of the major reasons for using a server-side language such as PHP is for the ability to generate dynamic content. Often this will lead to single scripts that produce their content based on the input parameters (that is, the variables in the URL).
They start off with some examples of what they look like, and move right into how to use the Apache mod_rewrite functionality to take in the URL parameters and map them back to a PHP script. They also use the ForceType keyword in Apache to get the server to parse the URL string correctly. They then wrap it all up with the creation of a custom 404 page to handle the errors that might come up, and a summary of the whole project...
I started a project on the weekend that I wasn't sure was possible: creating a fully secure "ajax"-powered login system, ideal for blogs, forums, and other similar sites. I had a barebones secure case working within a few hours, and a few more hours gave the final result that I will share today.
They talk about how it's all structured, how the Ajax and PHP work together to make it happen, and what the end result looks like. They also link to a demo of the scripts where you can also download the pieces to get your own login working...

Its not that my life is absolute, unrestrained chaos anymore … it is just that I have gotten quite busy in the last few years (especially in the last six months.)
Using the tickler file concept from Getting Things Done has been massively helpful. I forget fewer tasks and procrastinate less. Additionally, the general level of chaos in my life has reduced – it is rare that bills are overdue or that I complete lose important bits of paper or email. (I even wrote a some AppleScript to automate the process for Mail.app on the Mac – get a copy here. Be warned: right now the software is for power users only.)
The planning process from the book is also very helpful – I find that I do much less “brute force” planning and think much more clearly about my projects in general.
Other ideas from GTD are also helpful, I just need to develop the the habit of applying them consistently.


