03/24/2008 07:25:23

Phiz Pebble

In my dictionary a pebble is defined as a small round rock polished by wind, water and sand. Phiz Pebble is core that has evolved out of the Phiz Framework since 2004. It is small enough to quickly grasp, use and integrate into other projects besides Phiz. I’ve done some cleanup of the code (more is needed) and packaged it in a Zip file for distribution if others are interested. It is deliberately simple but does provide a nice light weight Model, View, Controller framework for web development. I’m releasing it under the new and simplified BSD license listed at the OSI. …

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12/12/2007 14:00:00

Keeping it cheerful

Bad news for me from the BBC. Mr. Pratchett, one of my favorite authors, was diagnosed with an early onset version of Alzheimer’s disease. As he put it, “I am not dead”, and that is true. He asked that people try to keep it cheerful so I shall. I have some practice at this so its something I know I can do. One way of looking at this unfortunate event is that it is a reminder – we all die eventually, as Pratchett points out. If we can remember not to take things for granted or at least resist that temptation to do so then things are good for the limited time we have. Knowing the pint I am drinking will be empty doesn’t prevent me from enjoying it. Best of luck and best of life Mr. Pratchett, you’ve made it fun and I look forward to the remainder of your work as I look forward to the remainder of my pint. …

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11/13/2007 01:32:12 PM

I have recently upgraded to Leopard for my laptop. So far so good. Apache2/PHP5 is installed by default which is very nice. The only change I had to make was to update /private/etc/apache2/http.conf to load the PHP5 module (i.e. remove the comment mark) and make sure that my /privates/etc/apache2/users/MYUSERID.conf was set to allow PHP to work the way I expected. I installed PEAR since I use a few modules and wanted a PHPUnit (from phpunit.de). All in all it’s a nice environment to work in and while I am a big fan of Darwin Ports, the current Mac OS allows me to skip that which saves allot of space on my small hard drive (laptop is a couple years old). Sqlite3 works fine on MacIntel but has a bus error for a G4 I tested on. Overall the OS seems zippier. Some of the eye candy is more then I want but I’m sure to get used it. Two applications are a bit cranky — Last.fm and Finale 2007. Since Last.fm is regularly updated I am happy that will resolve itself. I was planning on trying switch from Finale to Sibelius so might do that sooner rather then later. To be fair, what’s not working in Finale 2007 is the fonts which might have been stepped on by a buggy Adobe CS3 Master Suite install. I did have to track down a Lynx on the apple site after dumping Ports. But other then that everything was where I expected. I might miss Gnu’s awk/sed but we’ll have to see. …

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