1. has made a framework choice, and developed numerous projects on that framework (CakePHP) and,
2. is always poking around with other frameworks

I am often asked about the tough choice of picking among all the great framework choices (both in and out of the PHP world).]]> Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:07:02 -0800 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1083809 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1079754 I enjoy hearing about the paths people have taken on the journey to their current job.]]> Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:46:41 -0800 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1079754 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1072729 This is my last semester of graduate school. In May I will be graduating with a MSCS degree. This semester I am taking an Operating Systems course as well as an independent study. So far the subject matter for the OS course has been good, but what I'm really excited about is my independent study. Last week I submitted my study proposal and on the same day found out that it had been accepted. I am thankful that I have professors who are open-minded (and not stuck in the theoretical muck).]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:42:40 -0800 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1072729 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1069114 Today, with the support of Blue Atlas Interactive, I am releasing version 0.90 of Simple Managed Content (SimpleMC). SimpleMC, which requires PHP/MySQL, aims to provide an easy way for content editors to manage blocks of content. The following links and screencast should give you a good picture of the project:

• GitHub Project Home
• Lighthouse Project Home
• Google Group
• Project Demo
• A project of Blue Atlas Interactive

SimpleMC Screencast (.swf)

Features

• FCK Editor
• ExtJS for interface components
• Minify for CSS/JS minification
• HTMLPurifier for content purification
• A simple caching solution
• Debug/Production modes
• Backend user/content administrator

Thoughts

This project started as most projects do, with the needs of a client. ]]> Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:44:01 -0800 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1069114 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1050414 I was recently contacted by PACKT Publishing and asked to provide a review for Lighttpd. Following is the review.

This plugin does not attempt to solve the issue of syncing your application with punbb. Rather, it attempts to solve the issue of single sign on when a user logs into your application.

Gotchas

As the plugin uses XHR to communicate with PunBB, it's usage is of course limited to the XHR same origin policy.

Download

Source code, as well as downloads, can be found for this plugin on github: http://github.com/leveille/punbbauth/tree/master

Examples

BIND TO LOGIN FORM

ex. 1

//assumes a username fieldname of username
//assumes a password fieldname of password
//also assumes form class structure: <form class="punbb login">
$('.punbb').punbbauth();

ex. 2

//app_uname_field: <input name="uname_fieldname" />
//app_pword_field: <input name="pword_fieldname" />
//assumes form class structure: <form class="punbb login">
$('.punbb').punbbauth({
    app_uname_field : 'uname_fieldname',
    app_pword_field : 'pword_fieldname'
});

BIND TO LOGOUT LINK

ex. 1

//assumes link class structure: <a class="punbb logout">...</a>
$('.punbb').punbbauth();

BIND TO ACCESS LINK

NOTE: This will likely not see very much use, as it requires access to a plain text password. See notes below

ex. 1

//assumes link class structure: <a class="punbb access">...</a>
$('.punbb').punbbauth({
    punbb_username : 'username',
    punbb_password : 'password'
});

One extremely useful piece of management kung-fu to remember, if you find yourself up against an "early adopter" is to rely on your peers. Several years ago I had a client who was preparing to spend a ton of money on a technology without testing it operationally. I suggested offhandedly to the senior IT manager in charge that he should send one of his team to a relevant conference (in this case, LISA) where it was likely that someone with hands-on experience with the technology would be in attendance. I proposed that the manager have his employee put a message on the "meet and greet" bulletin board that read: "Do you have hands-on experience with xyz from pdq.com? If so, I'm authorized to take you to dinner at Ruth's Chris if you promise to give me the low-down on the product off the record. Contact, etc..." The IT manager later told me that a $200 dinner expense saved them over $400,000 worth of hellish technological trauma.

And another:

"Let's go production with it now and we can secure it later" - no, you won't. A better question to ask yourself is "If we don't have time to do it correctly now, will we have time to do it over once it's broken?" Sometimes, building a system that is in constant need of repair means you will spend years investing in turd polish because you were unwilling to spend days getting the job done right in the first place.

And another:

Why is "Enumerating Badness" a dumb idea? It's a dumb idea because sometime around 1992 the amount of Badness in the Internet began to vastly outweigh the amount of Goodness. For every harmless, legitimate, application, there are dozens or hundreds of pieces of malware, worm tests, exploits, or viral code. Examine a typical antivirus package and you'll see it knows about 75,000+ viruses that might infect your machine. Compare that to the legitimate 30 or so apps that I've installed on my machine, and you can see it's rather dumb to try to track 75,000 pieces of Badness when even a simpleton could track 30 pieces of Goodness. In fact, if I were to simply track the 30 pieces of Goodness on my machine, and allow nothing else to run, I would have simultaneously solved the following problems:

• Spyware
• Viruses
• Remote Control Trojans
• Exploits that involve executing pre-installed code that you don't use regularly

And finally:

Let me put it to you in different terms: if "Penetrate and Patch" was effective, we would have run out of security bugs in Internet Explorer by now. What has it been? 2 or 3 a month for 10 years?

There are 10 others that I could have quoted here. Although it looks like Marcus hasn't written anything on his blog in over a year, I'm still adding his feed to my reader.

After opening a VI session, often you'll want to delete "things" from your file:

• CTRL+h or Backspace - Delete previous character
• CTRL+w - Delete previous word
• CTRL+x - Delete to start of inserted text
• nx - Delete n characters beginning with current; omitting n deletes current character
• nX - Delete previous n characters; omitting n deletes previous characters
• ndw - Delete next n words beginning with current; omitting n deletes current word
• ndb - Delete previous n words; omitting n deletes previous word
• ndd - Delete n lines beginning with current; omitting n deletes current line
• :n, md - Delete lines n through m
• D or d$ - Delete from cursor to end of current line
• dcursor_cmd - Delete text to cursor_cmd (e.g. dG deletes from current line to end of file)

Placed here for easy reference.]]> Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:38:18 -0800 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1027794 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1027793 There really isn't a whole lot that bothers me.]]> Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:38:18 -0800 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1027793 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1008214 Moving Your Cursor

After opening a VI session, often you'll want to move your cursor around:

• k - Up
• j - Down
• h - Left
• l or Space - Right
• w or W - Start of next word; W ignores punctuation
• b or B - Start of previous word; B ignores punctuation
• e or E - End of next word; E ignores punctuation
• $ - Last character in current line
• + or Return - First character in next line
• 1G - First line in file
• G - Last line in file
• G$ - Last character in file
• ( - Beginning of sentence
• ) - Beginning of next sentence
• { - Beginning of paragraph
• } - Beginning of next paragraph

Placed here for easy reference.]]> Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:21:29 -0800 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1008214 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1007393 I was recently contacted by PACKT Publishing and asked to provide a review for CakePHP Application Development. Following is the review.

After opening a VI session, often you'll want to start editing or adding text.

• a - Append after cursor
• A - Append after end of current line
• i - Insert before cursor
• I - Insert before beginning of current line
• o - Open new line below current line and insert
• O - Open new line above current line and insert
• :r file - Read file specified by file,and insert contents after current line
• :nr file - Read file specified by file, and insert contents after line n

Placed here for easy reference.]]> Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:56:54 -0800 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/1007392 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/996517 test

Expression Engine (EE)

I have never built an EE site.]]> Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:10:14 -0700 http://virb.com/jleveille/posts/text/840140