One of the many great components provided by the Zend Framework is Zend_Config. In a nutshell, this component allows you to access configuration data (from a file, array, etc) through a nested object property based interface.
Letting the masses decide...
Posted by paul on January 8, 2008.
Sho Kuwamoto has been doing some excellent work on implementing improved pluralization support for PHP, Ruby on Rails and AppleScript. When I put together a quick solution for this in PHP, I couldn't help but think that there might be some missing special cases or what have you. Well, Sho has now put together a feeder app for the pluralizer. What a neat experiment in collaborative web production! Go on and give it a try.
The Journey Back to Linux
Posted by paul on January 4, 2008.
As part of starting my new job I've had to decide what kind of workstation to order. I'm fortunate in that my manager has given me the choice between a generic PC and an Apple machine. There was a time when I used Linux exclusively for all of my desktop and development needs, but about 4 years ago I purchased my first Powerbook and I really haven't touched anything other than Mac OS X on Apple hardware since.
Naturally my first instinct was simple: Get a Mac. I do all of my work on a MacBook Pro and I've grown to appreciate many things about Mac OS X. I fired up my browser and went over to the Apple Store Online to look at my options. What I'd forgotten was that the cost of even the lowest-spec Mac Pro is pretty prohibitive, so I'd have to choose between an iMac and a Mac Mini. Display size is pretty important to me, and the specs on a maxed-out Mini seem so piss-poor, so my best option was a 24" iMac. I've never been a fan of the iMacs (for a variety of reasons) so the fact that this was my best and only option was a bit disappointing to me. Why the hell is it not possible to purchase a Mac Pro for less than $2500 sans-display?
Perspectives on SCM
Posted by paul on June 20, 2007.
So I know this is old news by now, but Linus Torvalds gave a talk last month on git, the version management system he wrote. He spends quite a lot of time bashing other SCM systems, particularly Perforce and Subversion. He writes off CVS entirely, which is perhaps warranted, but I thought his views on the other two products were way off. He doesn't really explain why he thinks that Perforce "should just go away", so I can't really comment on that, but curiously he does go on to complain about things that Perforce actually does rather well (like branching and merging). He also says clearly that he "is not an SCM person", so I guess that explains it.
