My Science Is Better

After a talk on #zftalk I'm thinking to start witting a site that would allow the Zend Framework community to submit learning material.

The site is going to be called Zend Framework Tips

I have a few ideas of my own, but i want to hear more from you.

Here is what i have in mind:
1. should allow people to submit zf snippets (registred or not... in the end we're interested in getting the code outthere.. not in the username)
2. people should be able to edit any code on the site and make notes on the changes
3. people should be able to go to any revision of a snippet
4. the site should have a screencasts section (similar to the one on aptana.tv or nettuts)


more to come

Please comment and add your ideas! What else would you like to see on a tutorial site?

Counting Crows is joining Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails in the initiative to release music outside of the normal music industry (label/distributor).

Lead Singer Adam Duritz announces on the bands website:

The internet opens a world of limitless possibility, where the only boundaries are the boundaries of your own imagination. We want a chance to push those boundaries back as far as we can. Unfortunately, the directions we want to go and the opportunities we want to pursue are often things that our label is simply not allowed to do. We've been friends for a long time and we've worked together for a long time so they understand the direction we need to go in and we understand why they can't always go there with us. We all want what's best for everyone which is why we've decided to part ways.

Jono Bacon started the severed fifth project a while ago, which aim is to prove that a band can make it on it's own and i'm sure he will succeed.

This still brings back bad memories...

Thanks to Andrei for helping me with the text :P You are free to use this in any way you want.

I had the following sequence of code:

<ul id="parent">
	<li>test 1</li>
	<li>test 2</li>
	<li>test 3</li>
	<li>test 4</li>
	<li>test 5</li>
</ul>

What i wanted to achieve was to add the class "selected" to the childrens of #parent one at a time, having some delay in between. When then next element is selected, then the element before it should lose the selected class.

Based on the great work of cmarshall at http://www.webmasterworld.com/javascript/3449722.htm and adding a bit of jQuery i was able to build a page using jQuery that does that.

I didn't bother to put the all the code here, you can just view source in the demo. The code is pretty much commented so you shouldn't have any problem understanding it.

You can click here to see it in action.

I've been working for more than 6 years in "software" development doing php programming as a freelancer and for my own company. After all these years i find that most time on developing a project is spent understanding what you have to do and letting other know what they have to do. In other words, getting things done.

The application to let u better organize should:
1. let you add tasks fast, without getting your hands off the keyboard
2. allow you to collaborate with others (ie: assign tasks to them and get tassk from them)
3. track time you spend on a task
4. invoice clients based on the time spent on their tasks
5. not get in your way
6. have a desktop and a web version

Each task should support:
- comments
- file attachments
- subtasks

More to come. Feel free to sugest what would you like to see in such an application.

Yesterday i ran into Lionel Dricot's post on Planet Ubuntu regarding the newly launched app: Getting Things Gnome!

The first official release of Getting Things Gnome!, GTG "Just 5 minutes more" 0.1, is out! Grab it and test it!

GTG is a personal organizer for the GNOME desktop environment, it focuses on ease of use and flexibility, while keeping things simple.

What i like best about GTG is that it doesn't get in your way. You can easily add new tasks whitout having to get your hands away from the keyboard.

The next thing i would like implemented in GTG is colaboration. It would be great for multiple ppl to assign tasks to eachother and get reports when the tasks they have assigned to someone are completed.

To get involved in this project please visit it's launchapd page: https://launchpad.net/gtg/

After a few hours of setting up the colors, i have managed to port the darkmate skin for gEdit to Eclipse. The settings work for PHP, JS and CSS editors, although i will need some feedback on the JS and CSS implementations.

Here are a few screenshots:




Here are some of the colors i have user:
background: #232323
text color: #FFFFFF
comments: #BB66FF
keywords: #FF9900
numbers: #00C99B
strings: #96FF00
variables: #009CFF

You can download the darkmate-eclipse.epf, but before importing make sure you make a full backup of your preferences.

During the following days i will show you how to create and customize paypal forms to enable your site to accept payments.

PayPal offers great functionality for small vendors and the best news is that it is also quite easy to code it. You can either sell one item in various quatities or multiple items, setup supscription systems, allow your users to donate to your site or even integrate your own shopping cart with paypal.

My tutorials will show you how to:
1. create and customize of the paypal button
2. create and customize of the add to cart buttons
3. create and customize recurring payments with paypal
4. create and customize paypal donate buttons
5. integrate your shopping cart with paypal

Tutorials starting to flow soon :)

- With your linux box i mean... What's up with it?
- Not much... here goes:

  User:		mimir (uid:1000)
  Groups:	mimir adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare vboxusers
  Working dir:	/home/mimir
  Home dir:	/home/mimir
  Hostname:	orion
  IP (lo):	127.0.0.1/8
  IP (eth1):	192.168.1.102/24
  Gateway:	192.168.1.1
  Name Server:	208.67.222.222
  Name Server:	208.67.220.220
  Date:		Wed Jan 21 19:43:43 EET 2009
  Uptime:	19:43:43 up  9:44,  3 users,  load average: 0.56, 0.42, 0.25
  Kernel:	Linux orion 2.6.28-4-generic #11-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 16 21:50:52 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux
  Memory:	Total: 3895Mb	Used: 3071Mb	Free: 823Mb
  Swap:		Total: 1953Mb	Used: 7Mb	Free: 1945Mb
  Architecture:	
  Processor:	0 : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz
  Processor:	1 : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz

All that info is found just by invoking Scott Morris's 'sup script. Cool script!

On another Eclipse related news, i have noticed today the GSOC 2009 ideas for eclipse. Although all the ideas are interesting, what catched my view was "Write Eclipse plug-ins in PHP " through e4.

e4 is the community effort for building the next generation of the Eclipse Platform. The project has three principle aims:

• Simplify the Eclipse programming model: This will reduce development and maintenance costs and enable a larger developer community to leverage the platform in their own Eclipse-based applications.
• Enable the platform for use on emerging web-based runtime technologies: This will ensure the platform remains a compelling and viable application framework in a rapidly changing web technology landscape, and it will allow e4-based applications to leverage web technologies, while remaining insulated from specific technology choices that may quickly become obsolete.
• Broaden participation in development of the platform: This reduces the risks associated with building on a platform largely funded from a single source. Having a large and diverse group of commercial backers, will ensure the platform remains vibrant and viable over the long term.

Please refer to the project proposal for more information, including the initial list of committers. The e4 project summary page is here.

I'm really interested to see what comes out of that.