» New Tech - the hip Buzzwords

This is an technology update (5/5/2010). This is a run down of the latest technologies I am using:

Zend / Yii PHP Frameworks -> It is no secret that PHP Frameworks are becoming more and more relevant as it relates to web application development. Zend and yii are 2 of the best and most popular ones out. Frameworks speed up your development life-cycle by doings a lot of the hard work for you. You can concentrate on logic and slick code.

Wordpress -> A couple of my most current projects involve manipulating wordpress templates and creating some.

Flash/Flex -> This is sort of on the back burner right now, but I stll have a good amount of actionscript know-how.

Web 2.0 design -> I am still trying to make my web work adher to web 2.0 standards and pratices in terms of both client/server praticalities and also design influence.

iPhone SDK and objective-C -> I am trying to carve out more time for this in my stacked development schedule. The sdk and the obj-c nomemclature is a tough hill to climb, but I'm getting there.

» Got It!

I finally got my iPhone 3g, But the process was painful. Apple sucks at product introductions, although they make some pimp technology. Actually groundbreaking. But it is very limited - for example with Bluetooth. No file exchange support. Also the battery life is an issue on the web. I think 3g is the culprit there. Obviously Apple and AT&T do not have a swell relationship, otherwise the iphone rollout would have gone smoother.

» It's time for a iphone 3g

Man i got to get one not only because its the most pimp phone out here; my treo 650 SUCK!

It reboots for no reason everyday. I hate the address book and contact list. Its old technology. I can't believe i went ga-ga for it when i did get it. You might say "hey fool you doing the same thing with the Iphone" NOT! The iphone is a mac, and every mac I've got is still cool. So I'm wating for July 11th like Xmas... more when I get it.

» NSLU2 - hacking the nas

Ok. The hottest new thing I've got is these 2 NAS (Network Attached Storage) boxes made by Linksys (now owned by Cisco). The N2LU2 is, out of the box, supposed to be like a file server for USB 2.0 hard drives with a minimal brain; Only good for copy to and from operations and also maybe a share on a network.

Well, that said, there are a group developers who have figured out that this device is just a small linux box.

So they have proceeded to 'hack' into the firmware of the device and compile a new 'firmware'. This new firmware will 'flash' the old one. (Essentially replace). The newly 'hacked' firmware provides for what is the trick here. It allows one to 'sling' their firmware OS onto the hard drive instead of the default 'ramdisk', which of course limits the number of things you can run. With everything runnning on the NAS box hard drive, you can now install a bunch of stuff.

And here's the kicker - the unit cost $99 bucks. (plus the cost of your chosen usb 2.0 hard drive.)

» Sybase and MS SQL Server

We have been working on implementing the Archive System Product by SCC (Software Construction Company). The Archival System uses MS SQL Server as its database. We have had to write several interface pieces that will allow data from the pagination system (Digital Technologies International) to interact with the Archive system. DT uses Sybase as its database technology and relatively recently has added cache database functionality.

More specifically, I wrote the Pagination to Archive PERL scripts. They facilitated the mass migration of data from the DT system into the new archive system. Then from those scripts come the trickle scripts which facilitate workflow moving from the DT system on a 24/7 scheme.

» XML

I have developed a Php parsing mechanism as well as a PERL parsing mechanism. The .php method utilizes RAX, the record-based API. I'm using the SAX implementation for PERL.

$xp->setHandlers (Start => \&start, End => \&end, Char => \&cdata)

I'm trying to solve the problem of manipulating the tree while keeping some type of state.

» php

...a cross between PERL and ASP it seems. It allows me to parameterize html objects very easily (like ASP). It has the pragmatism of PERL though. Check out the family photo gallery:
Man I got the original code from Webmonkey, but that guy was really slack on the code accuracy. I found several mistakes. I fixed them and added a couple of custom functionalities:

• I variabilize the picture list name and send it to the gallery page as a name/value pair. This way I can point to many different picture lists. $data_file = $pictlist; The URL sent to the gallery looks like:

  http://www.jlproductions.net/thefamily/photo.php?pictlist=family1.photos&start=0

• I wanted to allow for a cutline (small description or comment to be placed under the picture). So the list format needed to include this cutline per pict name. So the list entry would look like this:

  fc05.jpg*James chllin' techwise.

  Notice that '*' delimits the pict name and cutline. Therefore I wrote a segment of code to parse this:

  $pictnodes = file($data_file);
  $total_pictnodes = sizeof($pictnodes);
  for ($j=0; $j < $total_pictnodes; $j++){
  $fstr = $pictnodes[$j];
  $fflen = strlen($fstr);
  $firstpart = strtok($fstr, "*");
  $flen = strlen($firstpart);
  $secondpart = substr($fstr,$fle+1,$fflen-1);
  $photos[$j] = $firstpart;
  $cutline[$j] = $secondpart;
  }
  

Oh well... the gallery works pretty good. I might add some more features.

» PERL

update- 2/22/2005... My PERL code has made leaps and bounds since i've started working at the ajc. The type of stuff the cats here do is trippy system process stuff - mainly on solaris.

I've already written 4 to 5 scripts in projects , none of which had anything to do with web development. A lot of DB access PERL code. I've been using Sybperl and DBI to access Sybase.

Some months (years?) back...