2006 March

Pro::PHP Podcast Follow-up

Just a quick post to follow-up on my enjoyable chat with Marcus Whitney last Friday on the php|architect Pro::PHP Podcast.

• The pops and occasional gaps in my responses were a result of my headset (I think). As a podcast and VoIP rookie, I'd just purchased the headset the day before the interview. Sorry about that; I think the issues were on my end, not php|a's.
• One more shout-out to Paul M. Jones for Savant3, as well as Solar. We use Savant3 for the Feedster templating engine, and it's truly a great templating package. Simple, elegant, easy. Highly recommended. While we didn't use Solar in Feedster's rewrite, several of the design decisions we made in the quickie frontend controller system we implemented were influenced by Paul's work on Solar.
• A huge shout-out to Greg Beaver for his work on PEAR 1.4 and PEAR channels. In the midst of our lively discussion about Pearified.com, I realized listening after the fact that Marcus and I failed to mention Greg. I don't think Greg can be thanked enough for his work on PEAR. He's certainly made my life easier, and the hundreds of people who've installed packages from Pearified.com owe Greg a "thank you" as well.

Finally, thanks again to Marcus Whitney and Sean Coates for their invitation to do the interview. I appreciate the opportunity to share my experiences with PHP 5 in a demanding production environment, and always enjoy spreading the word about Pearified.com.

Thanks, guys!

Web Developer Toolbar for Internet Exploder 6

Angels could be heard singing softly in the background as I discovered the Internet Exploder Developer Toolbar this morning, just in time to debug a bit of fresh insanity produced by IE6's rendering of CSS otherwise deemed perfectly OK by Firefox, Safari and Opera.

A boon to myself and others who frequently groan in irritation over getting pulled away from PHP development to while away hours dealing with IE6 CSS rendering issues. It's not nearly as good as the Firefox Web Dev extension, but it's far better than nothing. Enjoy.

No Sun-shine for Killersoft?

Like any other red-blooded, oxygen-breathing developer on Earth, I'd like a free Sun Fire T2000, please.

Yes, a roughly 9.6Ghz server would be just swell. Not just for grins, but to see how much performance I can squeeze out of my PHP5 applications. After all, like many PHP developers I shudder at the mere mention of the possibility of Java running better/faster/more than what I can get going with PHP5, and I'd like to see what kind of difference a server that is so fast it's classified as a munition by the US Government will make.

While some scary comments relating to installing PHP5 on Solaris give me pause, they do not fill me with dread.

I have also read about how Apache2 plus PHP5 with a threaded MPM is scary and ill-advised. This also doesn't scare me, as I've read that PHP5 in a FastCGI configuration is fine in a threaded environment. Plus, I hear that lighty plus PHP5 under FastCGI will smoke Apache2 any day, so I'm interested giving that a go as well.

Finally, I know squat about Solaris (any version), having done the last nine years of PHP development on BSD and Linux machines. I'd like to learn more about Solaris, and what better way than with a free Niagra? Perhaps Solaris 10 will make me a switcher from mixture of Mac OS X Server, Debian and Red Hat that I've been running my own sites and client sites on recently.

With these goals in mind, and the confidence that I fit the profile of someone eligible for the offer (I'm blogging this, right?), I filled out the application on the Sun website, which asks just a couple of questions. Here are the questions, and how I answered them in bold.

• Do you have a Solaris 10 application to run on the Sun Fire T2000? (Yes/No)
• Is your application multi-threaded with low floating-point content? (Yes/No)
• Have you read the Try and Buy Agreement? (Yes/No)
• Do you accept the Try and Buy Agreement? (Yes/No)
• May Sun contact you with general product and service information? (Yes/No)

All of this is true, of course--I don't have any Solaris 10-specific applications to run on the Sun Fire T2000. However, I've got a significant number of PHP applications that I've built up over the years that currently run on any system I've been able to get my hands on that run Apache and PHP. So ... I think "no" is the correct answer to the first question, as I have no applications that require Solaris 10 (thus making them "Solaris 10 applications") to run.

Unfortunately, this honest assessment of my situation resulted in this message:

Thank you for your interest in the Sun Fire T2000 Server. Your application is under consideration, but your 'no' responses to our qualification questions require us to review it further. A Sun sales representative will contact you to further discuss your requirements.

Ouch. Perhaps I should have fibbed? The questionnaire claims to be a three-parter, and I thought maybe I'd have a chance to explain myself in part two or three. But no, the swift boot came down instead.

I hope this doesn't squash by dreams of the fastest-running PHP applications on the planet, but we'll see. Stay tuned.