tech ramblings

I’m just waiting for my ride to the airport for the MySQL Users’ Conference.  I’m really looking forward to it.    My tutorial (Secure Your MySQL and PHP Web Applications) is first thing tomorrow morning.  I understand from O’Reilly that they intend to record parts of the tutorials, so hopefully even if you can’t make it to the conference you might be able to catch up on some of the materials.

I’ll blog from the conference over the next couple of days.  I’m especially looking forward to catching up with some fellow Aussies over a few refreshing beverages. 

If you haven’t met me please come and introduce yourself.  I shall be easy to spot  - on crutches - wearing a black OmniTI shirt.

Mark Taber prompted this post by saying, "If you didn’t blog it, did it really happen?"

So I popped my knee two and a bit weeks ago walking down the stairs.  Looks like I have torn the meniscus and may require surgery.  If you see me at MySQL UC next week, I’ll be the one on crutches!  (Although I’m trying to wean myself off them.)

Can I just reiterate once again what nice people the folks at OmniTI are?  It’s not
until you have your colleagues/friends driving you to the ER, carrying you around,
and tying your shoes for you, that you realize what good and generous people they
really are.  Thanks guys, you rock.

We are looking to hire a Junior Web Developer to come work for us at OmniTI here in Columbia MD.

We are a growing internet consulting company and need a smart junior web
developer to work on large scale, robust web applications.

The ideal candidate will have:

-
Good working knowledge of Perl (mod_perl preferred), SQL (preferably Oracle),
UNIX, and the usual HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

-  Knowledge of database design,
PHP, Ajax, and
general programming skills will be strongly regarded. 

- A bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline.

- Intelligence, intellectual curiosity, problem solving
abilities, sense of responsibility, and drive to learn and self improve.

We offer an unparalleled work environment for smart people with
a sense of humor; challenging projects; and the opportunity to work with and be
mentored by some of the sharpest minds in the business. 

Please include code samples with your application.  Applicants must be eligible to work in the United States.

You can send applications to jobs@omniti.com or directly to me.

There is a senior position coming up as well, details to follow shortly.

The Zend Conference 2006 has just announced their CFP.  I didn’t go to this last year, since it unfortunately clashed with AUUG (CFP) (and also EuroOSCON) but by all accounts it was great.  I’m happy to report they are all on at different times this year, so the truly keen can attend all three.

Sadly, Aaron Wormus reports to us English speakers that the International PHP Conference in Amsterdam is cancelled due to the World Cup.

Finally, the MySQL User Conference is on the last week in April.  I will be presenting a tutorial called Secure Your PHP and MySQL Web Applications and a talk on Upgrading From PHP4 to PHP5.  Wez will talk about PDO, and George has an interesting talk on embedded MySQL.  Hope to see you there.

I have some news.  I’ll be staying on at OmniTI on site in Maryland, and taking on the role of Director of Web Development, which involves working across all OmniTI’s web related projects.  I’m really excited about this new role, and I’d like to thank George and Theo for giving me this opportunity.

This is coming up again.  I’ll be giving two talks: a tutorial with Luke Welling called "Building an asynchronous multiuser web app for fun … and maybe profit" which is a PHP/Web 2.0  tutorial, and a talk on Writing Maintainable PHP, which is a personal bugbear of mine.

The final grid is yet to be made public, but I can tell you (being on the program committee) that there are some awesome new developments in the PHP track.  Watch this space for details.

So, sometimes working here is like working at an author collective.  The people I work with are really enjoyably smart and verbal, which makes it a great place to work.    There is of course George Schlossnagle’s awesome book, Advanced PHP.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  However today I want to draw your attention to two of my other co-workers’ magnum opuses (or is that opii?).

Amy Hoy is writing a couple different books for a couple different places on Rails and JavaScript.  To give you a sample of the cool stuff you can expect, you can read her great new article on Help Vampires.  If you read any software related mailing lists you will know this story. 

Theo Schlossnagle has been writing his book on Scalable Internet Architecture[s] for a good time now,  but apparently it’s almost finished, and you can read part of it online.  I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy.  Guess you can’t rush a good thing.

And yes, Mark, I promise to do some work on my own book this weekend. 

…for putting my book on your recommended PHP reading list.  I am fortunate to appear in privileged company with a number of good friends - my boss George Schlossnagle, Chris Shiflett, David Sklar, Adam Trachtenberg, and Dan Scott.

I only found out about it through Slashdot.  Thanks guys. 

I crawled out from under my rock, since we finished work on the new version of Ecelerity.  There have been late nights and plenty of hard work, but it’s a great crew to work with.

My co-worker Amy Hoy has an especially amusing graph in her blog describing life in the land of cross browser hell.  The "confluence event" occurred rather recently.

Oracle today announced their acquisition of Sleepycat Software, the makers of Berkeley DB.  This follows their purchase of Innobase Oy, makers of InnoDB, last year.  It is rumoured that JBoss and Zend are next in their sights.  Along with their launch of Oracle Express Edition, this must be interesting news for the guys over at MySQL AB, which uses InnoDB and BDB as its two transactional engines.