2007 DC PHP Conference Slides

I attended the 2007 DC PHP Conference few weeks ago. Still working on my notes to present what I learned to others at my company, but at least I can post links to all the presentations I found so far:

Share

SphinxSearch Extension for MediaWiki

While helping maintain the New World Encyclopedia, I tried to install the LuceneSearch extension to replace the default MySQL-full-text-based search used by MediaWiki. Since our server did not come with any pre-requisites necessary for compiling and running Java applications, I spent quite some time on it, and still did not get it to work.

All of sudden (hint, hint,) a message came to the mediawiki developers list about a new search extension that uses Sphinx search engine. Installing Sphinx was a breeze! The extension was an initial "request-for-comments" version, so I started working with the author to spruce it up. You can see the results at NWE, MediaWiki.org, and SourceForge.

Share

Joe's Goals

Just found a site very similar to what I wanted to make for a very long time. Signup at Joe's Goals and start tracking your daily goals in a simple, fun, and efficient manner. Plus you can make yourself accountable to the world by publishing a little graph on your website.

Share

Definition of a snack

A snack is something you eat for no reason.

(Nina, 4)
Share

How we increased the national talk-time average

Yesterday, our pastor mentioned that an average couple talks only 4 minutes per day. I tried to find that statistic on the Internet and found even worse numbers - some studies apparently indicate that married couples spend only 6 minutes per week in a serious discussion. I decided to put a stop to that and spent at least an our talking to my wife last night. You do the math - or even better - spend that time talking to your loved ones. Be above average!

Share

Mozy - Free Online Backup

If you need a convenientonline backup, checkout Mozy. It lets you fine-tune when and what to backup. It even has some nice presets so you do not have to hunt for your email folders etc. Once you set it, you can forget about it. Beats uploading files to your own web server or gmail account. Best of all - you get your first two gigabytes free. Actually, if you follow this referral link you will get an extra 256 Mb right away (and I will get an extra Gb for every four people that do that :-) )

Share

Just got Joost!

Joost™ the best of tv and the internet

Thanks to Elaine Vigneault, I got a Joost invite. I will share any extra invites after I make sure my friends are covered. If you would like to be considered, leave a comment here (you will have to provide your name and email address, but the address will not be public.)

Share

Last.fm at last

Signed up for last.fm few days ago. Their programmers contributed some code to memcached, one thing led to another, and now the whole world can know what I am listening. As I listen, tag, love or ban my music, last.fm's software keeps track and after a while starts offering recommendations. Neat!

Share

Run both PHP4 and PHP5 as Apache Modules

Switching PHP explains how to run both PHP4 and PHP5 as Apache modules on the same Windows machine, host, etc. You will also learn some neat things about configuring Apache in general...

Share

Kensington Notebook Dock

Just got a Kensington Notebook Dock for my new laptop at work. It works very well so far, but it comes in this crazy shiny silver finish which may make your eyes hurt if you have a light over your head.

Share