A Day in Paradise

Posted by mobile phone:
If you listen to the radio at all in palm beach county you will have heard the story of Shawn Anderson vs. Roxys Pub.

The reported story is that Shawn Anderson was kicked out of Roxys for having Grillz. He accused Roxys of discriminating against people of color. John (owner) stated that grillz are against the dress code and people not complying with the dress code are asked to leave.

John then proceeded to put up the “Shawn Anderson Quiz” as well as copies of Shawn’s lengthy criminal record on the roxys pub website.

The website has seen a massive spike in traffic since then. Like they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

This blog entry is an extension of an IRC discussion and email conversation that took place regarding the #phpc channel on Freenode.

Back in “the day” #phpc consisted of between 5 and 10 people, and as IRC channels go it was only us in there for about 2 years. This resulted in everyone getting to know each other well. As time passed the community grew organically, we had the regulars and then people who drifted in and out either asking PHP questions or just coming in to chat for a bit.

In April 2005 Davey set up the #php.thinktank channel, and the additional attention add more regulars to #phpc. By the end of 2006 #phpc participants hovered around 50.

The interaction between #php.thinktank and #phpc was good and many of the same people lurked in both groups. #php.thinktank was designed for more technical discussion, and several organized discussions took place on various technical topics. #phpc on the other hand was simply a place to hang out amongst friends.

Sometime in the beginning of 2007 the community size started to grow quickly, however the number of active participants remained roughly the same. Basically the lurkers were growing, the channel is currently about to break 100 users.

This situation brings up some special concerns.

1. is it reasonable to expect that a public IRC channel can afford you any privacy.
2. does a community that was built around “just farting around” have the right to be exclusive when they think that too many people are involved?
3. is there any reasonable way to limit the number of lurkers?

Note that when I say lurkers, I just mean people who park themselves in an IRC channel and don’t contribute to the channel. People who contribute and then go dormant for weeks/months are a different story.

Tonight the frankfurt PHP User Group is celebrating their 5th anniversary! It was lots of fun knowing you all – I suddenly got a craving for Persian food – and I wish you many prosperous years.

Check out the website for meeting details. Wish I could be there.

6 hours till our plane lifts off and I’m still waiting for the gravity of the step we are taking to kick in.

While the physical journey is about to start, the journey started one year ago to the day when I flew up to West Palm Beach to meet with HedgeCo for the first time. At that time I had been working with HedgeCo for over a year as a consultant on various projects, and I went to FL to try and iron out some issues with a massive internal project which we had been working on for quite a while.

As anyone who has worked remotely knows, there is nothing like working in the same office with people who you have only communicated via Skype/phone/email. I really enjoyed my initial 2 week stay, and we were able to bang out a lot of projects as well as lay the foundation for future work.

HedgeCo also offered me a full time position at the company. The position would be as the project manager of a spin-off technology branch of the company.

The standard freelance-consultant joke is “Why spend 8 hours a day working for someone else when you can spend 14 hours a day working for yourself.” Working from Germany for companies in Germany as well as on the East and West coast of the US is physically exhausting. I was working till midnight every night, and both my family life, community interaction, and social life was severely suffering. On a personal basis, I couldn’t keep it up any longer.

So, I accepted the job, and Stella and I began the long process of closing up shop, working out all our paperwork, packing our stuff and moving over to the US.

As with everything, the process of moving was far more complex and expensive then we imagined. From having to deal with mobile phone providers who refused to end your contract (eplus sucks by the way), to changing magazine subscription options, to getting Stella a greencard (which was a grueling process on its own), finding a place/car in FL, etc. All of this while trying to wrap up projects and stay on top of the projects that you are working on.

But now we finally come to the end of the German phase of this move, and I wanted to thank Stella more then anyone else for all the effort that she put into this move. She put her life on hold for the entire year, and put in most of the effort organizing and preparing everything for the move. Thank you, we couldn’t have done it without you!

So this will be my last blog entry as a resident of Germany, being in the US I probably won’t be able to hit as many of the European-based PHP conferences as I have in the past, but hopefully I will have more time to get back into the community and hope to catch as many US based conferences as I can.

See you on the other side of the pond!

It’s time to bumrush Amazon, and push Ancestor to the #1 place! Before I bought my copy it was in the 4000s then it jumped to 1076, then 138, and is currently at 93 and fourth place in the New Releases section, and 1st place in New SciFi.

As an aspiring author, I value Scott Sigler’s success not only as the personal success of a friend, but much more important as a sign that independently published books and new media can be just as popular as books published through traditional publishing houses.

So get out there and buy the book now!!!

Gearing up for the Amazon.com release of the Ancestor Novel, Scott has convinced Jian and Rhumkorrf to start blogging!

This is a part of a larger guerrilla marketing campaign which focuses on making Ancestor an Amazon.com best seller on April 1st. So if you have a minute, throw a couple links on your blog, and make sure you’re in the virtual line to grab Ancestor as soon as it hits the virtual shelves!

A friend of mine is looking for someone to help him with a personal project of his

I’m finding it a frustration that whilst we refer to Australians and News Zealanders as ‘westerners’ our printed maps always show both countries in the far south-east.

I’ve tried using Photoshop to move both countries to the west of the map however this is very much a short-term and localized fix.

I’d ideally like to find somebody able to physically move both countries a few thousand miles towards Hawaii.

I appreciate that this would not be a suitable project for an individual but would require a team effort so please be aware of this when bidding.

I also would prefer that you read the project specs entirely before bidding as I get a little peeved when people just bid without really understanding the nature of the work.

A sample of similar completed projects will be greatly appreciated and will increase the chances of your bid being accepted.

As Scriptlance is somewhat limited in it’s project categories I’ve listed it under graphic design work, rather than in a unique “geographical relocation of continental mass” category.

I look forward to your bidding.

Best wishes,

Martin

He already has 2 people bidding at $100 for the job… excellent opportunity for anyone looking to change the world (literally instead of figuratively)

In the footsteps of a couple good friends I’ve decided to make the first blog entry of the new year yet another year in review round-up for the year 2006.

It’s hard to believe that we’re already done with 2006, this one went by fast. A lot happened, and due to the overflow of work, I missed a lot of what I did last year (specifically LinuxWorld Expo and LinuxTag).

One of the big work-related events is a new venture that I’ve been working on this year. <project-pimping>HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website Creation was officially launched on December 1st, however about 18 months worth of work had gone into the product and building a client list before the site launch. The sprang out of my work with HedgeCo Networks which involved a the development of a high-end statistics/graphing package which generated quantitative statistics for Hedge Funds. After deploying the product on their flagship product, they started receiving request to license the package on various other website platforms, so the package was reworked into a slimmed down edition which can be deployed in smaller sites.

As we started deploying the product we realized the potential, and reallocated some of the design talent that we had been working on other project into creating entire websites and Hedge Fund start-up consulting/compliance packages. Since our Dec. 1 launch we have had a fantastically profitable month (to keep up-to-date with what we’re doing check out the Hedge Fund Websites blog)</project-pimping>

All of the above required me to reallocate my own time away from other projects, until the point that for the last year I have done little else. So as of Jan 1, 2007 I am officially working full time for HedgeCo Hedge Fund Websites… Freelancer no longer! This year I’m also moving my family up to West Palm Beach, Florida and will be working in the brand new HedgeCo offices (will post pics of when we move in later this month).

OK, so now that I’ve spent all my time pimping my current project I’ll skim through the news.

January: Slow month, Sid officially joined our family as “brother”. I weighed in on the PHP Security debate du jour wondering when good security verges on paranoia and the side effects.

February: Traveled to UK for PHPLondon conference. This was a fantastic event (looking forward to next year), as far as I remembered there were about 250 geeks attending the 1-day event. Got a cool new LCD. In defense of PHPNuke (and other applications of low repute whose name starts with PHP*) I responded to Marco’s post reminiscing about how great PHPNuke was back in the day.

March: Slow month… google releases finance portal, barra stops reporting S&P numbers and screws up my webservice. Tom Fox is Executed.

April: Gearing up for the world cup 32Cards PHP-based card game is released. I start using backpackit to organize my life (note to reader, I stop using it in a couple months, when it stops scaling with my needs). I spent 10 days in Florida, unfortunately missing PHPTek by 10 days.

May: I question open-source for highly specific niche applications (more specifically my statistic package). I enjoy Scott Sigler’s “Infection” which is in full swing. I start watching theshow with ze frank.

June: DSL CRASH!!! I try to “upgrade” my connection by switching providers which turns into 3 weeks on dial-up. During this time I camp at friends houses during all night product launches, and drive everyone around me insane. I finally return. World cup is in full swing, and Germany is World Cup CRAZY! I take pictures.
I travel to Norway for the eZpublish conference & PHPVikinger. Ammar Ibrahim comes to Frankfurt, we watch some football!

July: A slow month… I try Fedora Core, only to get frustrated when I can’t mount my ntfs external drive with the correct permissions (worked fine in root, was able to find no usable explanation). Infection ends. Put out a notice for css code monkeys get more response than I can handle. Macs Rock? During one of the hottest months on record the kids have chickenpox and we are confined indoors.

August: I subscribe to Gail Orenstein’s Flickr feed during her trip to Israel. cool pictures (quite possibly NSFW) with political commentary. Two talks are accepted for ZendCon. I manage to squeeze into the PHPConference schedule at the last minute. We take the kids on a mini-vacation to Legoland and then visit some friends in Switzerland.

September: Catch Mark Nemcoff on in a 5-minute-review. I deploy a site using eZpublish, blog about lessons learned. RIP Lilo. Do some myspace defending.

October: The Pear book is out!. I speculate about google world domination, and yahoo opens up the login api. Spend a week in WPB Florida, then fly to LA and drive down to San Jose for Zendcon.

November: Conference season. Meet Scott Sigler!!! Give talks at Zendcon, fly back home and give tutorial at IPC2k6. After seeing that the Zend Framework is more than hype I take a look at it and start my Zend Framework Hidden Gems article series. I dump backpackit for google docs (which I am still happily using). When is it a good time to rewrite your platform?

December: HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website launch. Fantastic month on the work front, however not a whole lot of time for anything else. David (CPUNerd) on the other hand has way too much time on his hands, and immortalizes me in kilt.

And that’s about it… probably the longest blog entry ever! I’m looking forward to this year as being the craziest yet. I’ll be flying to WPB next week, and for this first quarter will probably spend more time on that side of the pond.

A big THANK YOU to my readers (let’s make that anyone who made it this far into the blog entry). And most of all thanks to Stella, Annie and Mia for putting up with me during this hectic time.

Finally I got around to posting some of my old pictures from IPC2k4. A lot of the regulars, some faces who we haven’t seen in a while. Enjoy.

A couple blogs from back then:
http://www.wormus.com/aaron/stories/2004/11/07/php-conference-day-1.html
http://schlitt.info/applications/blog/index.php?/archives/274-PEAR-Powerworkshop-Part-II.html

Unfortunately a lot of the blogging was done on the phpconf blog which seems to be down

… and wearing a kilt

English movies in Frankfurt

My sister is visiting for the week, so last night I decided to take her into frankfurt to watch the Pirates of the Caribbean.

There is only one Cinema in frankfurt that shows English movies, it’s called Turm Palast, and it is impossible to find on the internet. It seems like there has been a huge influx of spam which buried the website under a pile of domains with names like “kino-turmpalast-frankfurt.gaysm.augustow.pl”. After searching for a while (and having my browser crash after clicking on exceptionally hostile links) I found the yahoo movies page, which showed me what was on. I’m linking to it now so I don’t have to search google again for this.

So anyway, we make it into frankfurt have an ice-cream work our way to the cinema, sit down and wait. The movie started about 15 minutes late, then showed about 20 minutes of commercials and then 10 minutes of trailers and then stops. We wait for a while, a couple people run in and out, and then the light comes on in the projection room and the technicial fixes the problem and we continue with the trailers. By the time we start the movie over an hour has passed.

The movie starts out alright, of course I can’t remember what the first part was about so Angie gave a quick run down. Just when the movie is getting going (after about 20 minutes) it stops again. We wait for another 15 minutes before a guy comes in and tells us that they can’t fix the problem and everyone can come downstairs and get their money back. This is EXACTLY why I watch my movies at home!

The technician had already gone home, and bringing him back would have taken over an hour. So much for german efficiency.

Anyway the good part of the evening that we bumped into Thorsten (from our UG) and his business partner and had a couple beers before the movie started. I promised I’d send him a URL, but I’ve forgotten to what site

I wake up this morning, and like all mornings read my utterlyboring newsletter.

I click on the link to the story about The Bored Leg Cult (click 1). I follow the link to the Bored Leg Cult Photo Pool (click 2). I click on the Pool Members Link (click 3). I view the profile of Barry Price, which was on the first page of group members (click 4). Scroll down a bit to look at his Thailand 2005 Group (click 5). Then scroll down a bit more to find a picture of my good friend martin playing with some lizards (click 6).

Martin is selling a 130kg c-3PO on ebay, c-3PO was played by Anthony Daniels who acted in Star Wars with Garrick Hagon who was a voice actor in Balto with Kevin Bacon.

Now I’ve forgotten what this blog entry was initially about… oh well, it’s a small interweb!