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mapsedgeFamily and Health
Whatever it was Jami had last week and is now mostly over, Katie and Michelle picked up. A simple cold, I think, with some body aches thrown in for Katie's benefit. I am, so far, unscathed, and hope to remain so: I have a performance this coming Saturday night, 2/6.
Saturday evening Michelle and I played for services at CUMC. When the pastor saw me walk in with my guitar he drafted me for some additional music. His latest sermon series has been on the idea of shalom1 and this week's message was about "balance". He spent a few minutes having the congregation meditate using breathing phrases (very New Age, our pastor), and had me quietly noodle on the guitar. It's not like I know a bunch of hymns, but I did find out that "Maid Behind the Bar", played slow enough, works handily.
Through the service, Katie sniffled and snorted and half-choked a few times. Sunday morning she woke up - sort of - full-blow sick.
Technology: PHP, MySQL
I mentioned a little over a week ago that I installed MySQL on our database server. It's been working, serving up content for BillMorrisMusic.net for a week now with no hiccups. If it continues error free, I'll introduce my partners to it later this week. DataGuy is sort-of in the know, but is unaware of the full extent of my open source treachery. He's excited to try it, but I have to have a firm grasp of how it all works before that. He sucks at reading documentation - even worse than me - and will come to me for help first.
I've been thinking for a while now that I needed to learn another programming language. As I've seen more and more major sites written in PHP (see logos on the right), I figured I'd give it another go.
My first attempt, several months ago, was unsuccessful, just because, being in a hurry, I didn't have time to read all the documentation.
This weekend, I had a particular goal in mind, and time to do it. My second attempt was much better than the first. The process of creating a set list for performances is a long one, involving a lot of shuffling papers, printing out new copies of songs when the pages wear out, cursing, rearranging, cursing some more. Using PHP and MySQL, I wrote a music database app that stores the title, notes, lyrics, tempo, and playing style. This week, I'll work on creating "sets". Someday, I might even have an algorithm that arranges music randomly, selecting songs for a mix of tempos and playing styles, or themes...yeah, that'd be cool.
The MySQL "enum" datatype is the best thing ever. No lookup table for static values, and a simple regular expression parses it. Love love love that.
Why It Matters
MoneyGuy has been talking for a long time about moving what we do to .NET, and I've been fighting vehemently against that. The cost of converting is just too high when you factor in training, licensing, etc. Problem is he has friends who have businesses that use software written in .NET of one flavor or another, and they all rave about it, and when it comes to technology he can be a bit of a seat cushion, bearing the impression of the last ass that applied any pressure. (There's an additional thread that I'm passing by about not trusting my judgement in my field - he may suspect I'm not unbiased, which is true.)
I've tried .NET. I had a Microsoft person tell me once, "Just change all the file extensions to .aspx - you can add new functionality as you go." I tried it and it was, to be charitable, wildly unsuccessful.
Even "Hello World" apps don't work that easily in .NET, it seems, unless you own and are willing to work in Visual Studio. I've seen plenty of discussion on .NET without VS, but have never been able to make a success out of any of them. Worst of all, the documentation provided by Microsoft is piss poor.
PHP. No licensing fees. No server upgrades. The functionality built-in to the language is amazing: pop3 and smtp, pdf generation, image manipulation is all available, each a set of functions for which we'd have to buy 3rd party tools to accomplish in ASP (which, indeed, we have). There are even rumors of a new, compiled PHP being developed by - or at least on the pocketbook of - Facebook, that would compete with .NET on its own turf.
I'm pushing that way.
Hating on Microsoft Today
Last Thursday, I rebuilt my work PC, slamming the hard drive and reinstalling all of my applications. When I got to the office on Friday, I logged in, connected the PC to the domain here and went to work. I thought I was done.
Apparently not.
Apparently, if you're not connected to the domain when you install your software, and then connect to the domain at log-in later, say, on Monday morning, you have to re-install everything because me on the domain is not the same as me on the domain when I first log in.
Really? REALLY? This is how you work it? Fuck, Redmond, well done.
Into the Work Week
So, having some issues today, obviously.
Things at work are looking hopeful, though. Ford Motor Company has noticed one of our product offerings, and their ad company is already working on ads featuring the technology. This March, if you see a television commercial or magazine ad that mentions texting X phrase to Y number for special deals, that's us, folks. How much we'll actually benefit from that, or if we'll even be able to handle the throughput, is up in the air, but it's a positive step.
1 I'm not sure how it all works and ties together. Like many sermon series topics, analogies end up stretched to the breaking point sometimes, although I am enjoying this series.
Whatever it was Jami had last week and is now mostly over, Katie and Michelle picked up. A simple cold, I think, with some body aches thrown in for Katie's benefit. I am, so far, unscathed, and hope to remain so: I have a performance this coming Saturday night, 2/6.
Saturday evening Michelle and I played for services at CUMC. When the pastor saw me walk in with my guitar he drafted me for some additional music. His latest sermon series has been on the idea of shalom1 and this week's message was about "balance". He spent a few minutes having the congregation meditate using breathing phrases (very New Age, our pastor), and had me quietly noodle on the guitar. It's not like I know a bunch of hymns, but I did find out that "Maid Behind the Bar", played slow enough, works handily.
Through the service, Katie sniffled and snorted and half-choked a few times. Sunday morning she woke up - sort of - full-blow sick.
Technology: PHP, MySQL
I mentioned a little over a week ago that I installed MySQL on our database server. It's been working, serving up content for BillMorrisMusic.net for a week now with no hiccups. If it continues error free, I'll introduce my partners to it later this week. DataGuy is sort-of in the know, but is unaware of the full extent of my open source treachery. He's excited to try it, but I have to have a firm grasp of how it all works before that. He sucks at reading documentation - even worse than me - and will come to me for help first.I've been thinking for a while now that I needed to learn another programming language. As I've seen more and more major sites written in PHP (see logos on the right), I figured I'd give it another go.
My first attempt, several months ago, was unsuccessful, just because, being in a hurry, I didn't have time to read all the documentation.
This weekend, I had a particular goal in mind, and time to do it. My second attempt was much better than the first. The process of creating a set list for performances is a long one, involving a lot of shuffling papers, printing out new copies of songs when the pages wear out, cursing, rearranging, cursing some more. Using PHP and MySQL, I wrote a music database app that stores the title, notes, lyrics, tempo, and playing style. This week, I'll work on creating "sets". Someday, I might even have an algorithm that arranges music randomly, selecting songs for a mix of tempos and playing styles, or themes...yeah, that'd be cool.
The MySQL "enum" datatype is the best thing ever. No lookup table for static values, and a simple regular expression parses it. Love love love that.
Why It Matters
MoneyGuy has been talking for a long time about moving what we do to .NET, and I've been fighting vehemently against that. The cost of converting is just too high when you factor in training, licensing, etc. Problem is he has friends who have businesses that use software written in .NET of one flavor or another, and they all rave about it, and when it comes to technology he can be a bit of a seat cushion, bearing the impression of the last ass that applied any pressure. (There's an additional thread that I'm passing by about not trusting my judgement in my field - he may suspect I'm not unbiased, which is true.)I've tried .NET. I had a Microsoft person tell me once, "Just change all the file extensions to .aspx - you can add new functionality as you go." I tried it and it was, to be charitable, wildly unsuccessful.
Even "Hello World" apps don't work that easily in .NET, it seems, unless you own and are willing to work in Visual Studio. I've seen plenty of discussion on .NET without VS, but have never been able to make a success out of any of them. Worst of all, the documentation provided by Microsoft is piss poor.
PHP. No licensing fees. No server upgrades. The functionality built-in to the language is amazing: pop3 and smtp, pdf generation, image manipulation is all available, each a set of functions for which we'd have to buy 3rd party tools to accomplish in ASP (which, indeed, we have). There are even rumors of a new, compiled PHP being developed by - or at least on the pocketbook of - Facebook, that would compete with .NET on its own turf.
I'm pushing that way.
Hating on Microsoft Today
Last Thursday, I rebuilt my work PC, slamming the hard drive and reinstalling all of my applications. When I got to the office on Friday, I logged in, connected the PC to the domain here and went to work. I thought I was done.
Apparently not.
Apparently, if you're not connected to the domain when you install your software, and then connect to the domain at log-in later, say, on Monday morning, you have to re-install everything because me on the domain is not the same as me on the domain when I first log in.
Really? REALLY? This is how you work it? Fuck, Redmond, well done.
Into the Work Week
So, having some issues today, obviously.
Things at work are looking hopeful, though. Ford Motor Company has noticed one of our product offerings, and their ad company is already working on ads featuring the technology. This March, if you see a television commercial or magazine ad that mentions texting X phrase to Y number for special deals, that's us, folks. How much we'll actually benefit from that, or if we'll even be able to handle the throughput, is up in the air, but it's a positive step.
1 I'm not sure how it all works and ties together. Like many sermon series topics, analogies end up stretched to the breaking point sometimes, although I am enjoying this series.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 18:12 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 18:22 (UTC)http://www.billMorrisMusic.net
http://www.theRoadLessOrdinary.net
http://www.lezlieRevelle.com
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 20:27 (UTC)I'm a big fan of open source and use a lot in my home-life. Sadly, it doesn't work for me in the big-E enterprise. We don't have a lot of tolerance for quirks and what quirks we've found in Microsoft-land haven't been showstoppers. And, there's probably no dearth of people who'd love to do PHP for big name, sexy companies but I have trouble finding anybody, much less open-source developers, when it comes to basic grunt, business support and integration. So, when I plan out the technology landscape across all my integration points for the next 3-5 years, how easy it is to care for and feed it comes into play.
I've been actively moving the E here towards .NET, specifically a C# .NET-based SOA implementation for abstraction purposes. Typically, the dev groups here work in a larger teams and leverage a lot of functionality out of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. Really good stuff - I even downloaded VS 2010 and started munging around in it. I couldn't see advocating for it in your environment though.
- J
no subject
Date: 2010-02-02 21:41 (UTC)What sort of quirks are there that cause issues, so that I might avoid them myself? Most of what you find on the net is positive - some might say mildly obscene - gushing. (See above)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-02 22:31 (UTC)Done well, they're both as good as anything else in the space(s). Done poorly, they're not. If you're starting something from scratch or porting something small-ish, it's a lot easier to make technology decisions that favor them. The bigger the E in your enterprise and the longer it's been around, the less likely that you have that luxury.