1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 2<rss 3 xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" 4 xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" 5 version="2.0"> 6<channel> 7<title>tech ramblings</title> 8<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/</link> 9<description>laura thomson's random thoughts and rants about tech, FOSS, and education</description> 10<language>en-AU</language> 11<lastBuildDate>Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:09:13 -0400</lastBuildDate> 12<generator>http://www.typepad.com/</generator> 13<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" href="http://www.laurathomson.com/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" /> 14<docs>http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification</docs> 15<item> 16<title>This blog has moved.</title> 17<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/04/this-blog-has-m.html</link> 18<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/04/this-blog-has-m.html</guid> 19<description>If you're seeing this, you should head on over to http://www.laurathomson.com.</description> 20<content:encoded><p>If you're seeing this, you should head on over to <a href="http://www.laurathomson.com">http://www.laurathomson.com</a>.</p></content:encoded> 21 22 23 24<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 25<pubDate>Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:09:13 -0400</pubDate> 26 27</item> 28<item> 29<title>Firefox 3 Beta 3 Add-ons Manager and Add-ons API</title> 30<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/02/firefox-3-beta.html</link> 31<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/02/firefox-3-beta.html</guid> 32<description>Yesterday the beta 3 of Firefox 3 was released to the world. This beta contains the new Add-ons Manager, and people seem to be liking it so far - ArsTechnica says One of the most promising and impressive new features...</description> 33<content:encoded><p>Yesterday the <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html">beta 3 of Firefox 3</a> was released to the world.&nbsp; This beta contains the new Add-ons Manager, and people seem to be liking it so far - <a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080212-first-look-firefox-3-beta-3.html">ArsTechnica says</a> </p><blockquote><p>One of the most promising and impressive new features in beta 3 is an 34integrated add-on installer system that allows users to search for and 35install add-ons from <a href="http://addons.mozilla.org">addons.mozilla.org</a> directly through the Add-ons 36Manager user interface. </p></blockquote><p>The new Add-ons Manager is the result of collaboration between a bunch of smart Mozilla people - <a href="http://madhava.com/egotism/">Madhava Enros</a> and <a href="http://www.oxymoronical.com/">Dave Townsend</a> to name two - and a small contribution from yours truly.&nbsp; </p> 37 38<p>The Add-ons Manager pulls data about Recommended addons and search results from the main addons.mozilla.org (AMO) website via the AMO API, which is my project.&nbsp; &nbsp; When you ask for a recommendation, the Add-ons manager pulls a RESTian URL like</p> 39 40<p><a href="https://services.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/api/list/recommended/all/1">https://services.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/api/list/recommended/all/</a></p> 41 42<p>checks for addons that you don't yet have installed from that list, and displays details of the remaining addons.</p> 43 44<p> 45 46The API will be (is) available to the community as well, and promoted once testing is complete.&nbsp; If you'd like to experiment with the API then draft documentation is available at 47<a href="http://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Remora_API_Docs">http://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Remora_API_Docs</a> 48(This will move to the Mozilla Developer Center once it's more fleshed out.)&nbsp; Please file any bugs you find. </p> 49 50<p> 51I'm still working on tweaks and bug fixes: I've already fixed a bunch of character encoding issues in different languages, and applied some performance tweaks. (Some still to go into production.)&nbsp; Right now, I'm working on speeding up search.&nbsp; Search is slow on the whole of AMO, and later this year I plan to implement a full text search.&nbsp; Right now it's just tweaking - it's slow because when you search all the possible translations are searched (think many left joins), and the plan is to rejig the database to only search your local translation plus English (since many add-ons are only available in English, and we wouldn't want you to miss out). </p> 52 53<p>Anyway, it's been great fun working on this project so far, and it's incredibly rewarding to think that something I wrote is incorporated into my favorite browser.&nbsp; </p></content:encoded> 54 55 56<category>Firefox</category> 57<category>Mozilla</category> 58<category>PHP</category> 59 60<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 61<pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:12:04 -0500</pubDate> 62 63</item> 64<item> 65<title>Frameworks, Addons, Firefox, busy busy busy.</title> 66<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/02/frameworks-addo.html</link> 67<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/02/frameworks-addo.html</guid> 68<description>I'm about to leave for Orlando where I will speak at CakeFest One tomorrow on the subject of building the addons.mozilla.org API using CakePHP. The whole of the addons.mozilla.org website is built with Cake, and we believe it to be...</description> 69<content:encoded><p>I'm about to leave for Orlando where I will speak at <a href="http://cakefest.org/">CakeFest One</a> tomorrow on the subject of building the <a href="http://addons.mozilla.org">addons.mozilla.org</a> API using <a href="http://cakephp.org/">CakePHP</a>.&nbsp; The whole of the addons.mozilla.org website is built with Cake, and <a href="http://blog.mozilla.com/webdev">we</a> believe it to be the biggest installation (in terms of traffic) in the world.&nbsp; I'll post slides after the presentation, and a bit more information about the numbers and so on.</p> 70 71<p>Building the API has consumed my thoughts for the last few months.&nbsp; It's used by the new Addons Manager in Firefox 3, which will be in beta 3.&nbsp; (You can read <a href="http://madhava.com/egotism/archive/005011.html">Madhava Enros' blog entry on the subject</a> for a preview).&nbsp; After beta 3 is out, I plan on blogging more about the API details.&nbsp; I'm still ironing out bugs and doing some peformance tuning.</p> 72 73<p>In addition to my involvement with Cake these days, I have recently been associated with two new framework books.&nbsp; I acted as a tech reviewer for Mike Naberezny and Derek DeVries' &quot;<a href="http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ndphpr">Rails for PHP Developers</a>&quot; (Pragmatic, 2008) and wrote the foreword for <a href="http://www.zfguide.com/">Cal Evans' &quot;Guide to Programming with Zend Framework&quot; </a>(php|architect, 2008).&nbsp; These books are now available, so please enjoy the fruits of the authors' labor.</p> 74 75<p>I can't help but find it amusing that something I'm <a href="http://devzone.zend.com/article/2384-OSCON-07-Wrapup">(in)famous</a> for <a href="http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/07/do-all-framewor.html">not being a fan of </a>has dominated my professional life for the last six or so months.&nbsp; I'll have to write more about my thoughts on these three frameworks soon...but right now I've got too much work to do :) and a plane to catch, besides.</p></content:encoded> 76 77 78<category>Conferences</category> 79<category>Mozilla</category> 80<category>PHP</category> 81 82<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 83<pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:04:05 -0500</pubDate> 84 85</item> 86<item> 87<title>Microsoft buys Yahoo! (or would like to) - now what?</title> 88<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/02/microsoft-buys.html</link> 89<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/02/microsoft-buys.html</guid> 90<description>Lots of stories this morning about Microsoft's $44.6 billion dollar bid for Yahoo! So on the Sun/MySQL theme, what are the implications? Huge, to me, absolutely huge, on so many fronts. The positive is that both Yahoo! and Microsoft are...</description> 91<content:encoded><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">L</span><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206101782">ots</a> <a href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD8UHGV1O2">of</a> <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/01/microsoft_bids_for_yahoo/">stories</a> this morning about Microsoft's $44.6 billion dollar bid for Yahoo!</p> 92 93<p>So on the Sun/MySQL theme, what are the implications?&nbsp; Huge, to me, absolutely huge, on so many fronts.&nbsp; The positive is that both Yahoo! and Microsoft are big companies that like to innovate.&nbsp; </p> 94 95<p>From the point of view of a PHP developer, it's particularly interesting.&nbsp; Microsoft has internally changed its view of Open Source a great deal over the last few years.&nbsp; In the PHP world we've seen this on a number of fronts, including the partnership with <a href="http://www.zend.com/">Zend</a> to make PHP run well on Windows, the various Web Developer summits at Redmond (due to <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/sanjoy/default.aspx">Sanjoy Sarkar</a>, a common fixture at PHP events, and all around nice guy <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/bgold/">Brian Goldfarb</a>, who was the first MS employee to come to a PHP conference, back in 2002 I think).&nbsp; This last week my friend <a href="http://netevil.org/">Wez Furlong</a> (of PDO fame) was at Redmond with, as he put it, a &quot;bunch of compiler geeks&quot;, speaking at the <a href="http://www.langnetsymposium.com/agenda.asp">2008 Lang.NET Symposium</a>.&nbsp; </p> 96 97<p>Yahoo! is of course the home of a lot of really big PHP, and some famous PHP developers, in particular <a href="http://lerdorf.com/bio.php">Rasmus Lerdorf</a>, &quot;the father of PHP&quot;, and <a href="http://blog.libssh2.org/">Sara Golemon</a>.&nbsp; (<a href="http://www.gravitonic.com/">Andrei Zmievski</a> left last year to join <a href="http://www.outspark.com/portal/">Outspark</a>.)&nbsp; One assumes that the architectures within Yahoo! would continue to be LAMP based, at least in part because the cost to switch would be amazing.</p> 98 99<p>These things come in bursts: I remember Sleepycat/InnoDB/etc in 2006.&nbsp; Now we just have to wait and see who is next. </p></content:encoded> 100 101 102<category>PHP</category> 103 104<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 105<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:13:19 -0500</pubDate> 106 107</item> 108<item> 109<title>Tenth anniversary: OSCON CFP is open</title> 110<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/01/tenth-anniversa.html</link> 111<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/01/tenth-anniversa.html</guid> 112<description>This year's OSCON will be held from July 21-25 2008 in sunny Portland, OR. This will be a very special OSCON as it's the tenth anniversary - we'd like to make it double plus good, so please, please submit your...</description> 113<content:encoded><p>This year's OSCON will be held from July 21-25 2008 in sunny Portland, OR.&nbsp; &nbsp; This will be a very special OSCON as it's the tenth anniversary - we'd like to make it double plus good, so please, please submit your best efforts, and we'll all party on down while opening our minds in July.</p> 114 115<p><a href="http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/cfp/13">OSCON 2008 Call for Papers</a> </p></content:encoded> 116 117 118<category>Conferences</category> 119<category>MySQL</category> 120<category>PHP</category> 121 122<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 123<pubDate>Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:55:34 -0500</pubDate> 124 125</item> 126<item> 127<title>Sun buys MySQL - now what?</title> 128<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/01/sun-buys-mysql.html</link> 129<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/01/sun-buys-mysql.html</guid> 130<description>Interesting news greets us this morning with Sun's acquisition of MySQL. (Congratulations are in order for both parties.) I think a lot of us are still at the "oh wow" stage. There are lots of implications. It seems like a...</description> 131<content:encoded><p>Interesting news greets us this morning with Sun's acquisition of MySQL.&nbsp; (Congratulations are in order for both parties.)</p> 132 133<p>I think a lot of us are still at the &quot;oh wow&quot; stage.&nbsp; There are lots of implications.&nbsp; It seems like a good fit because of Sun's deep involvement in the Open Source community.&nbsp; </p> 134 135<p>The partnership will certainly juxtapose some interesting personalities: now we have Josh Berkus (PostgreSQL) and Monty (MySQL) working for the same company.</p> 136 137<p>What will happen with licensing?&nbsp; Will MySQL still be available under a 138dual GPL/commercial license, or is it likely to end up under CDDL/SCSL or 139similar?&nbsp; Changing from one open source license to another can be an 140extraordinarily difficult challenge both logistically and ecologically.</p> 141 142<p>I note that I read in <a href="http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2008/01/16/sun-acquires-mysql/">Don MacAskill's blog</a> that </p><blockquote><p>&quot;Maybe MySQL will finally start fixing all the performance/concurrency 143issues with InnoDB (basically, InnoDB’s threading and concurrency 144aren’t working well with modern multi-core CPUs). <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-mysql-tools/">Google’s had some fabulous patches</a> for awhile, and the brilliant <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Yasufumi+Kinoshita%22+site%3Abugs.mysql.com">Yasufumi Kinoshita</a> does as well, but they don’t seem to be making their way into MySQL anytime soon.&quot;&nbsp; </p></blockquote><p>This is not going to happen as far as I know, because the patches were contributed under the GPL, and can't be incorporated into the commercially licensed version.&nbsp; In addition, Innobase Oy is owned by Oracle.&nbsp; I think we're more likely to see those performance and concurrency issues solved by using Falcon.</p> 145 146<p>It's also interesting from a Java perspective: traditionally Oracle has been the Database-of-Choice for Java devs, and MySQL for PHP devs.&nbsp; With Sun producing MySQL we can expect to see better support within the Java community, although the press releases all note that support for the PHP/Rails/etc communities will continue.</p> 147 148<p>It's going to be another interesting year in Open Source.&nbsp; I'm looking forward to it.</p></content:encoded> 149 150 151<category>MySQL</category> 152 153<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 154<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:25:30 -0500</pubDate> 155 156</item> 157<item> 158<title>Abysmal customer service</title> 159<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/12/abysmal-custome.html</link> 160<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/12/abysmal-custome.html</guid> 161<description>Recently I have been the recipient of a number of incidents of abysmal customer service and I really need to vent. The worst of all is Bank of America. They are as extraordinarily polite as they are incompetent. On a...</description> 162<content:encoded><p>Recently I have been the recipient of a number of incidents of abysmal customer service and I really need to vent.</p> 163 164<p>The worst of all is Bank of America.&nbsp; They are as extraordinarily polite as they are incompetent.</p> 165 166<p>On a number of occasions they have stopped my card.&nbsp; Reasons for this have included: <br />&nbsp; - You were spending a lot of money (it was Christmas Eve)<br />&nbsp; - Someone used your card in another state (I live in Maryland, 20 minutes drive from Virginia malls).<br />&nbsp; - You spent money in another country.</p> 167 168<p>The last seems reasonable in some sense, so I have now taken to calling them before travel and advising of travel.&nbsp; &nbsp;I have also on several occasions asked them to cease this practice as I travel a lot.&nbsp; They always agree that this is fine and that they have made a note on my record, but it has never had any noticeable effect.&nbsp; On my last trip home to Australia in September they stopped my card again.&nbsp; After calling them - at least half an hour on the phone, at international rates - they assured me it had been unblocked.&nbsp; I went out shopping and found it still blocked.&nbsp; I repeated this process AGAIN and it was still blocked.&nbsp; It was not until the third call that I managed to get the card unblocked.&nbsp; On each occasion they assured me the problem was solved.&nbsp; Overall I spent about three hours on the phone at international rates.&nbsp; </p> 169 170<p>I wrote an email to complain and was told they would send a physical letter to explain what had happened.&nbsp; Such a letter never arrived.</p> 171 172<p>Last Monday, 11/26, while en route to California, I misplaced my card.&nbsp; Believing I had lost it in the airport, I rang to report it lost.&nbsp; &nbsp;I spent 25 minutes on the phone and spoke to three different individuals.&nbsp; The final one told me she could not suspend the card for some reason that she didn't mention and that I would have to call back some other time.</p> 173 174<p>I did not call back, hoping the card would turn up.&nbsp; It did, on Friday 11/30, and then they promptly suspended it.&nbsp; I emailed them to ask if it could be unsuspended, and was told that a new card had been issued and that I would receive it by mail 12/3.&nbsp; Today 12/5 it had still not turned up, so I emailed again and they told me it was *mailed* 12/3.</p> 175 176<p>On some level it is my own fault for continuing to bank with them, a problem which I will shortly remedy.</p> 177 178<p>However, I am particularly grumpy with customer service assistants this week.</p> 179 180<p>Number 2 was the gate agent at United in SJC on Friday afternoon.&nbsp; After she twice stopped serving me to help someone else - and gave us each the wrong boarding passes - I politely asked if she could finish serving me before moving on.&nbsp; She threw the boarding pass at me and it hit me in the face.&nbsp; Charming.&nbsp; I said nothing but took my pass and walked away.</p> 181 182<p>Number 3, today I was on the phone to a doctor's secretary.&nbsp; She could not find me in the computer and then gave me a lecture on the fact that I was mispronouncing my own name.&nbsp; If I would only pronounce it the way she did, instead of the way my entire family does, then people would be better able to assist me!</p> 183 184<p>Vent over.&nbsp; Will resume normal programming shortly.<br /> </p></content:encoded> 185 186 187<category>Personal</category> 188<category>Ranting</category> 189 190<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 191<pubDate>Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:53:51 -0500</pubDate> 192 193</item> 194<item> 195<title>Losing my religion</title> 196<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/11/losing-my-relig.html</link> 197<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/11/losing-my-relig.html</guid> 198<description>You're over at a friend's house – let's call him Bob - and after opening a beer he invites you out to the garage to see something. On the wall hangs a reciprocating saw. You notice that there are no...</description> 199<content:encoded><p>You're over at a friend's house – let's call him Bob - and after opening a beer he invites you out to the garage to see something.&nbsp; On the wall hangs a reciprocating saw.&nbsp; You notice that there are no other tools visible, which seems kind of weird.&nbsp; Bob says “You like it?&nbsp; That reciprocating saw is the best tool ever.&nbsp; When I got it, I really liked it, and I joined the local reciprocating saw users' group.&nbsp; They showed me all the cool things I could do with it, and I realized I didn't need any other cutting tools.&nbsp; I even use it to slice my cheese!”</p> 200 201<p>What's wrong with us?&nbsp; </p> 202 203<p>I am frequently irritated with the mindset that there's One True Way of solving any kind of software problem, be it web platform, database choice, operating system, or methodological approach.&nbsp; It's been irritating me since I was an academic and I would present two different algorithms (let's call them A and B) to solve problem X.&nbsp; There would always be a student who wanted to know &quot;which is better?&quot;&nbsp; Typically I would respond &quot;In a situation such as [...] A is better, but if you are looking at something more like [...] B is better.&quot;&nbsp; Most people would be happy with that but there are always people who insist that one must just be The Best Way.</p> 204 205<p>So, reasons for choosing, or sticking with, a particular technology/methodology/whatever:<br />- It solves the problem you need to solve.<br />- You have a lot invested in it and there is not a sufficient business case to switch.<br />- It's easier to hire people with the appropriate skills / your staff have this set of skills and you can't just fire them all<br />- It matches your mindset, or, to go back to the hardware analogy, it fits your hand.<br />- It has good community / support .</p> 206 207<p>There are very very few absolutes in choosing tools, save that whatever tool you choose should be of basically decent quality.&nbsp; I have my biases like everybody else, but it's important to realize when you have a bias and acknowledge the effect that has on your decision making. </p> 208 209<p> In particular, telling another engineer that all their problems would be solved if they would just switch from technology A to technology B is often the worst kind of cultish thinking.&nbsp; I'm talking about the kind of discussion you see on mailing lists, on IRC, or from some people in person where you say &quot;I have this problem.&nbsp; I'm using technology A and...&quot; at which point someone butts in and says &quot;Switch to B.&quot; when they know nothing about your problem.</p> 210 211<p>(Having said this of course, there are some exceptions, in particular to do with upgrading versions and using basically dead technologies.&nbsp; So sue me ;) )</p></content:encoded> 212 213 214<category>Ranting</category> 215 216<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 217<pubDate>Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:07:10 -0500</pubDate> 218 219</item> 220<item> 221<title>ApacheCon slides: PHP Best Practices</title> 222<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/11/apachecon-slide.html</link> 223<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/11/apachecon-slide.html</guid> 224<description>You can now download the slides for my talk at ApacheCon US 2007 on PHP Best Practices.</description> 225<content:encoded><p>You can now download the slides for my talk at&nbsp; ApacheCon US 2007 on <a href="http://laurat.blogs.com/talks/best_practices_apachecon.pdf">PHP Best Practices</a>.</p></content:encoded> 226 227 228<category>Conferences</category> 229<category>PHP</category> 230 231<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 232<pubDate>Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:08:51 -0500</pubDate> 233 234</item> 235<item> 236<title>Slides for DCPHP Conference 2007</title> 237<link>http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/11/slides-for-dcph.html</link> 238<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.laurathomson.com/2007/11/slides-for-dcph.html</guid> 239<description>The slides for Write Beautiful Code are now online. (As I said before, basically the same as the Premium PHP slides, but I like this title better.) The DC PHP conference is bigger than last year and I really like...</description> 240<content:encoded><p>The slides for <a href="http://laurat.blogs.com/talks/write_beautiful_code.pdf">Write Beautiful Code</a> are now online.&nbsp; (As I said before, basically the same as the Premium PHP slides, but I like this title better.)&nbsp; The <a href="http://dcphpconference.com/">DC PHP conference</a> is bigger than last year and I really like the venue.&nbsp; I'm currently sitting in <a href="http://eliw.com/">Eli White</a>'s talk &quot;Help!&nbsp; My website has been hacked!&nbsp; Now What?&quot; which based on a great set of anecdotes about attacks on Digg.</p></content:encoded> 241 242 243<category>Conferences</category> 244<category>PHP</category> 245 246<dc:creator>Laura Thomson</dc:creator> 247<pubDate>Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:02:02 -0500</pubDate> 248 249</item> 250 251</channel> 252</rss> 253<!-- ph=1 --> 254<!-- nhm:dynamic-ssi --> 255