Monthly Archive for January, 2006

Wordpress as a Development Platform

Published
by
Chris Meller
on January 9, 2006
in Beta Testing, Commentary, Incoherent Code, Random and Techno-Babble
. 1 Comment

I’ve been considering it for quite some time now as I’ve slowly learned my way around while developing plugins, and with the recent 2.0 launch (and the impending 2.0.1 or 2.1 launch we all know is coming) I’m thinking it may be time…

Has anyone used Wordpress as an actual development platform yet? I mean, it’s got such a kick-ass plugin architecture and everything you need to establish a base infrastructure right out of the box. With a combination of WP’s “pages” and static custom-written files, wouldn’t it be possible to instantly create a site totally unrelated to a blog (which would, oh by the way, happen to have a blog built in already) with very little work and the possibility for infinite expansion and flexibility?

Has anyone out there actually used Wordpress as a fully-fledged development platform yet? Do you know of any sites doing something similar (non-blog-oriented and non-page-based Wordpress installs)?

McAfee Wireless Home Network Security Suite

Published
by
Chris Meller
on January 8, 2006
in Links, Random and Techno-Babble
. 1 Comment

Update: Alright, I’m an idiot, but also a perfectionist. I typo’d “Wireless” in the original title and didn’t notice it until just now when I went to write another post. Since I hate leaving it typo’d as “Wirless”, I just had to go and update it… Forgive me oh loyal readers…

Ordinarily I avoid McAfee products like the plague, but just now I stumbled upon their Wireless Home Network Security product (and optional ‘Suite’ version, which packages it with AntiVirus and Spyware to suck maximum change out of you).

Honestly, this looks like a pretty cool idea, and one that I’ve thought was needed for several years now. With so many unprotected WAPs around these days (I’ve got 2 in range of me here at home and another business’ in range at work), it’s obvious that something needs to be done about this problem, if not to protect those of us running web-based services and servers from being hammered by SPAM and DDoS attacks, then simply to protect people from their own stupidity and ignorance.

Furthermore, I’m pretty much shocked that McAfee would be the ones to come out and publish a product that sounds this good. I’d counted them out for the game long ago, even more so since they were fined $50 million for claiming inflated revenues (131% so in 1998 alone). Still, if this product is anything like it sounds, it could be that last desperate attempt to hang on that McAfee needs to make a comeback.

For a long time now, security has been a complicated and expensive business. With Cisco dominating the VPN market with prices so insanely high as to eliminate everyone but large corporations, consumers have been forced to take a backseat. Now picture for a moment a product for the average home idiot. Install it on your PC, it probes for wireless access points, asks you for your password, and instantly upgrades the firmware on your WAP to the latest version, implements the strongest grade of encryption (WPA or WPA2) possible, and instantly creates a “local VPN” between you and the other machines on your network.

Not only is everything encrypted by the native encryption of the wireless signal (the WPA), but communication between your machines is also instantly (and without any interaction on your part) encrypted between all the other machines running this client software on your network.

No longer would security be the sole domain of multimillion dollar corporations. Now it would be available to Joe Moron. Not only would it help cut down on the overall number of unsecured WAPs in every community, but it would also help improve the overall quality of life of everyone (and not just by keping Joe’s neighbor from browsing his 2005 tax returns).

I’m not sure that this particular McAfee product would do anything even remotely similar to my vision, but it looks like it’s a no-hassel start that any idiot with a computer can buy, install and use.

I, for one, intend to try it out sometime this week (particularly since I can get it at an educational discount), just to see what kind of a start we are off to. I’ll be sure to let everyone know how it goes, but I’d also like to hear any opinions if anyone out there has any previous experience with it. Anybody?

Windows PHP Editing

Published
by
Chris Meller
on January 6, 2006
in Commentary, Follow Up, Incoherent Code, Links, Reviews and Techno-Babble
. 5 Comments

This actually started as a follow-up comment to Abdul’s comment on my The PowerBook Showdown post, where I went through a list of the PHP editors I’d tried on Mac OS X. Since I’d done a post about the Mac-based prospects, and since my comment was getting quite lengthy, I decided I should also do a PC-based post, so here it is:

Programs

Zend is the defacto standard in PHP IDEs. They’re the guys who are buddy-buddy with the PHP team and they write the Zend Optimizer for PHP. Needless to say, they know… well, PHP. Zend is Java based, so it runs anywhere you want. Unfortunately that also means it’s slow as Christmas at times. I couldn’t use Zend and iTunes at the same time on my Windows box. Every time Zend would try to do any kind of code completion, iTunes would skip. It’s also pretty expensive (unless you can con your way into an Educational discount, then it’s pretty cheap).

NuSphere PhpED is my new favorite for Windows PHP-ing. I soooo wish they had a version for OS X. It’s like a light-weight Zend. No problems with it and iTunes, and the interface is more attractive (is Java not capable of anything other than the dull dark Windows 3.1 gray?). Unfortunately, it’s even more expensive than Zend…

TextPad isn’t exactly a PHP IDE, it’s just a text editor. Still, it’s got syntax highlighting packs available for PHP, which make it far preferred (at least over Notepad)… and it’s dirt cheap. I never use a Windows machine without installing TextPad.

UltraEdit is one I’ve never used, but which I see recommended by lots of people over and over again. It looks (from their site) to be more programmer-oriented than TextPad (which is more geared towards plain old text editing - albeit more efficiently).

I’m not really familiar with any others, nor have I heard good or bad things about them. However, there’s a pretty good list of reviews available. They cover all platforms (although Windows is, obviously, the most covered), and include simple numeric rankings. That list is where I found (and fell in love with) NuSphere PhpEd, so I’d recommend taking a look and reading what others have to say before you make any decisions.

Closing Notes

Needless to say, you may want to get your feet wet with one of the free / cheap utilities, just to see if PHP is something you want to stick with, before you go out and blow a paycheck on a more expensive (and fully-fledged) IDE. I also don’t have anything much to say about the actual IDE-ish aspects of any of the programs here, since I’ve never used them. Call me old-school, but I’d rather do my own debugging in my own environment. The only reason I tend to favor an IDE over a simple editor is the code-completion and function prompting (start typing a function and Zend will list all the ones in the PHP manual and your code that match the string, as well as their parameters and any descriptions).

If you make any decisions on a PHP editor or know of any others I should certainly investigate, please let me know. At this point I’m mostly interested in an OS X-based one, but I’ve still got multiple Windows boxen around to try stuff out on as well.

Good luck, hope you find something that meets your needs. Remember to check out this post if you’re looking for reviews of PHP editors for Mac OS X.

The PowerBook Showdown…

Published
by
Chris Meller
on January 5, 2006
in Commentary and Reviews
. 1 Comment

It’s been just over a week now that I’ve been using my beloved PowerBook. Just today I received my 2gb of RAM from NewEgg and got it installed while at work. This thing was kick ass with the stock 512mb, but now that it’s got more than my main / gaming desktop at home (1gb) I’m insanely happy.

One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed about the Mac community as a whole is the software. No no, not the design aspects, the pricing aspects. On the PC, there are generally a few large (and expensive) packages that most people use for their daily tasks (Outlook for email, Zend and NuSphere for PHP development, Visual Studio for programming, etc.). OS X, on the other hand, has hundreds of little (and cheap) applications that suit various different styles of use and personal preference.

For example, I tried 4 different applications before I decided which one I wanted to use for my web development.

BBEdit
BBEdit was a default. I’ve heard so many great things about it and was so sorely disappointed… Anyone mind telling me what BBEdit offers me that a command line editor wouldn’t? It just seemed so Windows 3.1…

skEdit
skEdit was a very promising app. In fact, for a while it was my choice. Unfortunately, I find it’s “Sites” concept to be a little clunky. It’s a poor implementation of the seperate “Projects” idea most similar programs operate under. The friendly, familiar code completion implementation apparently also doesn’t support PHP, so it was negated in my testing.

PHP Studio
PHP Studio claimed to be exactly what I was looking for: a kickass PHP editor with that Mac OS X design goodness. Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be any way to create a “Project”, even a poorly implemented way. Since that’s one of the biggest pieces for me (self-contained groups of files that are handled and managed as a group), it was cut out rather quickly. The toolbar also seemed sparce and poorly pouplated. Why would I want to compile a PHP script? That really doesn’t make any sense to me, but we’ll move along…

TextMate
I have to say, TextMate has been my favorite. It’s got Projects, looks great, is simple to use, and has some fairly good syntax highlighting. One of the more unique features in my experience was the menu that allowed quick navigation between functions. Since I’ve been testing applications while developing WordPress plugins (which are entirely function-based), this has been a godsend for my sanity.

I’ve still got about 20 days left on my TextMate trial, but as of now I’m planning on spending the $45-ish (after the conversion to USD) for a registration. If anyone has a better solution, I’d be more than happy to try out some other programs, but there’s not a whole lot more I could ask for (other than code completion).

There will, of course, be more commentary to come in the future, as I continue to get settled in… As expected, I’ve got my own gripes about the functionality of several apps.

Sometimes I Amaze Even Myself…

Published
by
Chris Meller
on January 2, 2006
in Random and Work
. 4 Comments

I was on my way out, standing up, telling the guy who sits across from me goodnight, when suddenly my phone rang…

It’s one of those moments I’m sure we’ll all have at one point or another (some of us seem more so cursed than others, but that’s life…). For a split second you wonder “Do I really have to answer that?” and “What could possibly be so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow?” and you whine “But I was just one my way oouutttt!”

So I ended up answering (did you really have any doubt?). It was my boss with a couple of questions about our servers and network. He was trying to put together some fancy-sounding marketing bullshit to impress a prospective client that we’ll never get for 100 other reasons, and wanted to know what the specs on several of our servers were.

I amazed even myself as I rattled off the number of servers we currently have in operation for production purposes (13, btw) and what their specs were. One server after another, and in the order they’re mounted in the racks in the server room, I was able to tell him not only the number of processors and their type and speed, but the type and amount of RAM, the OS in use, their model numbers, and even several of their storage capacities, as well as whether they were 100mb or gigabit connections.

I can’t even tell you the exact specs of my computers here at home (my virtual server box is 3.x ghz… 3, maybe 3.06, could be 3.2, but I don’t remember), but I can tell you half the specs of most of the computers in the building at work, all instantly, straight from memory…

Am I good or what?