Made of Everything You're Not

A couple weeks ago I received an email from a client of mine about a bug one of their clients was having using the Mailpress WordPress plugin and wanting to know if I could help. They’re an agency and I always want to make them happy so, even though I didn’t write Mailpress, I decided to dive in a see what was up. Plus, it’s always fun to contribute to open source projects and to get paid to do it is always a win-win.

Mailpress Email Validation Bug

Before getting into the bug I just want to say that I didn’t want to post it in this way; ideally there would be channels available to submit issues but Mailpress doesn’t exactly make that easy. Their site, while having links to the expected destinations like Community and Submitting a patch, doesn’t appear to be finished and those sections are essentially empty at the moment.  The information to put this information out there very well might be in the site but, frankly, the thought of writing this post was less painful than digging through the site looking for info. Plus, this isn’t a security issue at all so there’s that. Ass == Covered.

The issue was that the email validation was returning false even when an email was valid, specifically if the email wasn’t entirely lowercase. The problem with that, in case it’s not clear, is that an email address doesn’t have to be lower case (at least in the name portion). For example the below two emails are valid and, in fact, different:

eric@example.com
Eric@example.com

They look similar and it’s not really advisable to do email addresses in that format but people do it that way and, technically, it is allowed so not sure why Mailpress doesn’t.

Mailpress would throw an error on the second email which was pissing of my client’s client and my client (sigh…). The fix is pretty stratightford and easy; just replace the regular expression in Mailpress with the working one I cribbed from Zaheer.

File: “/wp-content/plugins/mailpress/mp-admin/js/write.js”

219

is_email : function(m) { var pattern = /^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,4})$/; return pattern.test(m); },

With:

219

is_email : function(m) { var pattern = /^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$/; return pattern.test(m); },

Hopefully, the issue doesn’t go deeper than the javascript validation but the above does allow for a working email validation script. Now we just need Mailpress to update their wonderful plugin with the fix…

Avactis is another in a long line of e-commerce web applications written in php (similar to OpenCart and PrestaCart), this one a little different in that Avactis has different versions, each with different features, depending on how much you’re willing to spend. Avactis is a full featured product with all the bells and whistles any ambitious store would need (and then some more features stacked on top for good measure) combined with a very php like integration methodology. Unfortunately, the dated administration interface combined with a lack of a plugin architecture and theme community really holds it back from the awesome bar.

Avactis

For the uninitiated, Avactis is created and maintained by Pentasoft Corp; oddly, there’s no website for the parent company so take that for what you will. As mentioned, Avactis is based on a pay model though it’s way more upfront about it than PrestaCart and, while the free version is missing some features, the source is available for modifications. Not too bad in my opinion; at least the more cash strapped shops can still play if they want to.

The different versions of Avactis are Free, Owned ($199), Monthly Leased ($19.95 a month) and White Label ($299) each with their own features and options. Most notably the Free version doesn’t include any (useful) payment modules (Authorize.net anyone?), coupon module, data export and import, quantity discounts or search engine friendly URLs out of the box. They do offer discounts for web developers though (at least 50% and they say up to 100%), and the complete source is available without obfuscation, so at least those functions that are needed can be added which can really ease the pain of paying for the thing in my opinion.

As expected, Avactis has the ability for custom themes though I’m disappointed to see that there doesn’t appear to be any theme community in existence (compared to other cart software packages). The reasoning behind this is probably because Avactis bills itself as being “easy integration with an existing website thanks to unique Avactis tag technology”. And by unique they mean including a php file and calling php function snippets. I’m all for marketing hype but wtf is that?!? Here’s an example:

<?php include('init.php'); ?>
<?php NavigationBar(); ?>
<?php Breadcrumb(); ?>
<?php ProductList(); ?>

It’s called php and EVERY php site does this Avactis not just you. Essentially though, this isn’t a bad strategy and, in fact, is definitely a strength especially without all the hyperbole. Obviously, Avactis can stand alone and doesn’t need to be integrated into a separate site but it’s a good idea to allow easy integration into existing sites.

Avactis PHP shopping cart software

Avactis is packed with all the features any online store would want; content management system, coupon and discount mechanisms, order and customer management, packing slip builder to name a few. Each feature is also highly customizable and usually includes a plethora of options and settings; nice if you build complex product build outs or specific functionality. On the other hand though, this amount of features and customization comes at a cost in terms of ease of use, work flow and a lacking user friendly experience.

The administration interface for Avactis is a nightmare mess of pop-up windows, tabs and accordion widgets. Slick is not a word I would use to describe the experience. Functional or crappy or painful or eyebleedingworstinterfaceeverpleasekillmefortheloveofgod!; those are better words to describe it.

There’s inconsistencies all over the place; for example while editing a product the help widgets will open another pop-up window (sigh…) yet in the main menu hovering over a link will display a tool tip and in the installation process the help widgets are all inline divs.

Avactis Admin Popups

Going through the code yields such codesod qualifiers as the below:

<?php
    /**
     * Defines the possibility of uploading images by file type.
     *
     * @param $file The array consists of the $_FILES variable, for
     * the current file.
     * @return boolean
     */
    function isAllowedImageType($file)
    {
/*        $type = _ml_strtolower($file['type']);
        switch ($type)
        {
            case 'image/gif':
            case 'image/jpeg':
            case 'image/jpg':
            case 'image/jpe':
            case 'image/jfif':
            case 'image/pjpeg':
            case 'image/pjp':
            case 'image/png':
            case 'image/x-png':
                return true;
            default:
                return false;
        }
*/
        return true;
    }
?>

If that doesn’t make any sense to you suffice it to say that the above function is supposed to verify that an image’s mime type matches the list; unfortunately though, the function is, what we call “commented out” and will not be executed. All files sent to the function will validate as true so, essentially, any file type can be uploaded. While it’s entirely possible this is an old function that was replaced with something useful, and it should be noted that I never found any calls to that function (but I really didn’t look too hard), the fact that it’s still in the code-base speaks volumes, to me, about the project maintenance at the very least.

On top of that Avactis has one of the most wasteful and useless installation processes I’ve ever seen. Initially, Avactis ships with a very minimal file set that includes a 15 mega byte (MB) file whose sole purpose is to contain all additional files in a gzipped and base64 encoded string. The sole purpose of this is to allow Avactis to programmatically write all source files to the file system during installation. For the life of me I can’t imagine what functional requirement precipitated this design decision. Considering the complexity added to the development cycle this would cause it makes no sense to me; I’m at a loss. I could be missing something though; you never know it may have a really sick benefit that I’m just not privy to.

Are any of those “issues” at all relevant? Not the function and not the installation process. Those are subjective issues that may only matter to me; it’s armchair quarterbacking at it’s finest (if I do say so myself). For everything else, well, that obviously depends on the specific needs of the project. For my needs it’s a pass simply because my clients care about the interface and Avactis looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2002 (at least).

So, while Avactis is a nice program with all of the features any store would ever need I personally feel that it’s not ready for my project.

In my pursuit for financial independence I’ve been taking on random freelancing gigs from some really smart and interesting clients. One of the more respected clients I work with has been using Expression Engine for their main platform for years, and while I was initially skeptical, I’m beginning to believe there is potential for Expression Engine to be a useful tool too. There’s just one little thing; it’s possible to create a debugging nightmare pretty easily.

Expression Engine Escaping Madness

Expression Engine is built by the same company who put together pMachine, one of my favorite blogging software from back in the day, so I had some pretty high hopes for it. Then I started reading some off the cuff comments about Expression Engine, especially in comparison to my mortal enemy Dolphin CMS, and I started getting a little nervous. Then, when I started seeing how the flow worked, my head almost exploded.

See, all the style and creative stuff is stored in the database. Because Expression Engine has it’s own meta templating language (similar to Smarty in syntax and style; to me anyway) all the templates are available and ready for anyone to make modifications to. On top of that, Expression Engine allows for the inclusion of custom php inside of the stored template files which gets executed with the dreaded and evil “eval()” tag.

Confused? Me too. To help clear things up here’s a snippet of Expression Engine templating code:

{assign_variable:my_weblog="default_site"}
{assign_variable:my_template_group="site"}
{embed="global/header"}
Page Content Here.

It should be pretty obvious what the code above is doing, but because I get a lot of shit for not being verbose (I’m looking at you Reddit), here’s what’s happening:

1. A variable called “my_weblog” is being created with the variable “default_site”.
2. A variable called “my_template_group” is being created with the variable “site”.
3. The header template file is being included.

Not so bad right? I didn’t think so either but there’s also the inclusion of raw php. The below is perfectly valid to do in Expression Engine (assuming the “Allow PHP in Tempaltes” setting is enabled):

<?php
$my_weblog = 'default_site';
$my_template_group = 'site';
include 'global/header.php';
?>

The above is a translation of the Expression Engine code by the way (if you hadn’t picked up on that). This, too, isn’t bad per se, but it does break a few very important rules which I’ll get into in a moment. Annoying and sort of dangerous? Absolutely. But I can see where the appeal lies in allowing this sort of functionality (and, yes, even if you have to use eval() to do so).

That being said, my head almost exploded when I saw how the logic was laid out when mixing both the Expression Engine template tags with php functionality. Keep in mind that Expression Engine has a setting that allows you to set when in the processing flow you want the php to be executed. If that sounds confusing just know that in the below example the Expression Engine stuff is executed before the php code.

Here’s what I mean:

{exp:query sql="SELECT name FROM exp_freeform_entries WHERE entry_id = '1'"}
<?php 
$name = '{name}';
?>

The above simply grabs the name from the table and then sets it up for use by php. Once again, perfectly valid usage it would seem, though the more astute people will immediately see the issue.

Since Expression Engine executes the template tags first this is kind of a snap. The thing is though there’s no escaping going on there. The above will work great when the value of name is something like Eric or John but what if the value is “Eric O’Reily”?

Yeah; it’s gonna break with a parse error. But worst of all when it does break the error message you’re going to get is going to reference the call to eval() and not the actual template file. This is going to make debugging a bit of a bitch. On top of that, there’s no native method to escape anything within Expression Engine itself. So adding the usual call to addslashes() isn’t possible.

So, while Expression Engine is pretty snazzy and nice it isn’t without it’s pitfalls. Mind you, the escaping issue isn’t impossible to avoid; it’s more a question of design than anything. It is something that needs to be watched out for because, yeah, doesn’t seem there’s going to be a change anytime soon.

With the release of Google Buzz last week a lot of people have been screaming bloody murder over some privacy concerns they have and Google’s perceived lack of forethought on the matter.

Google Didn't Fuck You; You Did

First, Google Buzz appears to be a FriendFeed clone that Google just launched about a week (or 2) ago. Initially, it was enabled inside of all gmail accounts by default without any authorization to the contrary. I haven’t had the opportunity to try it though. Not because I don’t use gmail (I do; sorta) but because I use Google Apps gmail which wasn’t a part of the rollout.

From what I can glean; Google Buzz works by parsing your contact list and then making connections between everyone in it and displaying their social network activity info publicly for all to see (seriously, just like FriendFeed). Make sense? No? Here’s the Crunchgear explanation of Google Buzz:

Google Buzz is a social network and sharing product built by Google. Based within Google Profiles, Buzz offers a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. Updates from Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter can also be automatically imported into a Buzz stream. Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.

So, apparently, one of the “features” of Google Buzz is that when it was initially released it displayed your contact list publicly which raised all sorts of hell from people who can’t afford for this to happen (think lawyers, journalists, etc).

This smacks of a high level of naivete on most of the users. Under what delusion are people living in to think that they have any expectation of privacy from a publicly traded company. Yes, I know they claim to care about your privacy, and I’m sure on a personal level the people working for Google do, in fact, care about your privacy. But the organization itself? Not a fucking chance.

Let’s get serious here; as stated above, Google is a publicly traded company which means their priorities start and end with cash ($$$). Frankly, it’s naive to think otherwise. Ask any corporate officer and they’ll tell you they have a responsibility to their shareholders. This is a notorious lose for consumers but it’s the reality nonetheless. Cry all you want but Google fucking their users in this way did ensure they launched a new social network with millions of users. From a fiscal standpoint, this was a HUGE win even with all the bitching and moaning. Even taking into account any users who would leave Google (along with any ill will this may have created) this was still a winning strategy for launch.

If privacy is an issue then, it seems to me, that you really should have taken greater measures to protect yourself. Relying on Google to protect something like this screams of escapism and finger pointing. Guess what? It’s your fault. Deal with that instead of crying that a publicly traded company that provides a service you use for free does something in a way that you don’t like.

Do I think that Google was right in any way for doing what they did? Not for a second. That said, people need to take responsibility for their own needs instead of blindly trusting a for profit company to do it for them. Yes, even when that company claims to “do no evil”.

It’s interesting how life can throw you a little too much coincidence. For example, I was having a nice conversation (with a pretty smart dude) where it was mentioned how much more painful development on large projects used to be back in the confused days of early PHP. Then life decided to highlight this little message with a project using Dolphin 6.1 from Boonex.

Your Soul is the Fish

The work came from a client that had a straight-forward install of Dolphin. She wanted to customize it a bit to make it a little more user friendly; nothing too difficult. Before the project came to me the client had gone the usual route of hiring someone on the cheap who ended up not being up to the task and was, subsequently, left high and dry. This left me with a project that had some of the work started, but not finished, which added to the pain a little but Dolphin sure has it’s own ways of ruining a mood.

In case anyone else has the misfortune of having to work on a Dolphin CMS project I thought I’d highlight just what you’re in for.

The Good

To be fair, for as bad of a nightmare Dolphin CMS is as a project (compared to coding standards in today’s landscape), it does have one or two(ish) redeeming qualities.

For one thing Dolphin CMS has a pretty logical directory structure. Looking for the language file? Why it’s in the “lang” directory of course. Looking for a class? Just check out the “inc/classes” directory. Admittedly, this is a small thing if you’re using a modern IDE but I still appreciate it (so many programs I’ve ran into lately don’t even include this level of logic).

Dolphin CMS also has what can only be called an advanced admin panel. This thing allows you to customize all sorts of areas including the content of pages as well as the layout of the pages. I had a lot of fun playing with that thing. This is double edged though because it serves no practical purpose if you want something unique and cool. For newbies though I think this is a nice feature to learn about the possibilities for a website.

The Bad

Right off, Dolphin CMS is PHP 4 compatible. This is just silly; it’s fucking 2009 already and Dolphin CMS using PHP 4 as a baseline is probably more to blame for the rest of this list than anything else. If you’re going to use old technology why not use old coding standards? In that situation I imagine complacency and laziness would come naturally.

Then there’s the use of short tags in Dolphin CMS. I admit to having a problem myself with maintaining this standard (it’s still natural for me in a template file) but it’s irritating if you have short tags disabled in your ini file.

Another offense: inline HTML and PHP together ALL OVER THE PLACE. You can’t hardly open any file, seriously, any file, without wanting to tear your eyes out of your skull from the cluster fuck in front of you. Add to that the confusion in that the system has a template system (see below) Dolphin CMS just doesn’t use it for the parts you’d actually want to change. Gave me a headache when I would think about it.

As mentioned above there is a template system (of sorts) but it doesn’t actually templatize anything. I guess it’s more of a layout system but considering the majority of templates only had header, footer and content references it’s a poorly utilized one. To make it even worse though Dolphin CMS uses a hard-coded, numerically indexed, naming convention. Want to know what template file you’re file is using? Just open up that file and look for a variable called “$_page['name_index']” and use the value as a reference. Seriously, why would you use a number instead of something meaningful like the name of the file (or similar)?

Back Pedaling

I just got done working with Dolphin CMS so, yes, I’m a little raw. Wah; I know. Still, the fact remains that Dolphin CMS is one of the biggest pains in the ass to work with that I’ve run into in quite some time. It’s not too complicated to work on, it’s structure should be familiar to anyone who’s worked with PHP ten years ago, which is it’s biggest issue. You have to dumb yourself down to work with. And for the love of god don’t try and abstract anything.

The most heinous thing though is that Boonex actually charges for this filth. Real money too. Crap can be excused if it’s free but there’s nothing worse than paying for a box full of horse shit.

When I was a kid I remember McDonald’s as having some of the best food and providing the best experience ever. Just the thought of going there was exciting. Breakfast, lunch and dinner; it didn’t matter what meal it was. They went out of their way to, at least try, to make the experience fun for the kids. Yes, this was part of a plan to get the kids hooked to bring in the family (which it did in spades) but it was one of those rare strategies that was win-win for both the customer and company.

Welcome to The McDonaldification of Web Development

Fast forward 20 years (sigh…) and McDonalds and it’s ilk are the lowest of the low when it comes to quality of service and product. It’s been years since any fast food restaurant has provided me with an experience worthy of my money; the food is always horrible processed shit, and the service (even at the most basic of basic levels) is completely nonexistent. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I was given ketchup with fries without having to ask for it…

Having worked in web development professionally for the last eight years I’m starting to notice a similar pattern in this industry. What was once an industry ruled by high profits for a job performed by professionals (mostly anyway) has quickly become an industry full of amateurs and scammers (mostly) trying to make as much money with as little thought to quality as quickly as possible. I’ve spoken before about the lack of quality I find in a lot of programmers I work with, and while I’m not saying it’s the complete cause, I do think there’s a link.

Oddly, I’m in the minority here. In my, limited, exposure to other programmers I can say definitively that the majority just plain suck; mostly because they refuse to grow and learn.

I’ve heard all the arguments before, “My weekends are mine”, “I work hard enough; I don’t have the energy”, and the best ever, “My employer should pay for this like Google does. Whah!!”. (I know Google doesn’t, in fact, do this but people still say it.) All just pure crap excuses for maintaining a level of competence just high enough to not get fired.

Bottom line: working 8 hours a day is just not enough to matter. If you think you’re a programmer and you don’t spend time improving your skills you’ll quickly, really quickly, become obsolete. It just doesn’t matter if .Net is going to be around forever and your employer won’t ever upgrade from 1.1; you’re a hack (and not in a good way).

Now that I’m an active freelancer I’m really, really, starting to see the differences. Time and time again I end up taking a meeting with someone who has just been worked over by others in this field. The stories some of these companies and people have are just appalling and I’ve heard some doozies. Worst of all, behavior like this tends to skew their perspective and they view all freelancers as suspect.  Too much of my time is spent building confidence in me as a professional it’s really starting to become laughable.

It was all really quite the mystery until I recently reached out on craigslist to find a designer for a WordPress theme (I need to update this site BAD). I was pretty explicit that all I was looking for was a PSD file that I would personally turn into a WordPress theme but 4 out of 5 responses to the ad indicated that the respondent hadn’t even read the post. Frankly, it was irritating wading through the crap and, obviously, automated responses.

This is troubling for a couple reasons. For one thing it basically indicates, to me anyways, that the person (company, freelancer, whatever) had very little regard for what I wanted, instead opting for a fastest gun approach. The number of emails I received immediately after posting my ad was around 20 and after reviewing each one it was obvious they were automated. I pity the individual or company who entertains these people.

The long term harm this can cause for other programmers (much less themselves) is completely short sighted. Crappy work begets a crappy experience for the client. Simple.

One of my bigger pet peeves when dealing with other programmers is this belief in absolutes and how unbending some programmers can be in dealing with them. We all fall prey to it, even me and, probably, you too, but some of us (especially the young) can be so blinded by interpretation as to lose all credibility. Now, to be clear when I say “absolutes” I’m talking about the home spun wisdom either given to us through experience or, more than likely, through someone else’s experience.

goto

Absolutes are but one example of how dealing with programmers can be difficult. Another of my personal favorites is the religious fanaticism we have towards our tools (and against those tools and users of the tools we don’t use). Arrogance is key here.

Still, it’s not like it’s a good thing to be so problematic. There’s a wonderful thread laid out on Reddit which goes into a lot of detail on how I’m not alone with this:

I am a programmer and electrical engineer. I get along well with most people, but most programmers irritate me. They are always trying to one up each other and prove how smart they are. They commonly engage in petty infighting and ruthless backstabbing.

They want to feel like artists and desire to spend all of their time refining their beautiful, unique creations. But unlike actual free-thinkers, they constantly seek refuge in argument by authority, blindly quoting their favorite gurus to support their positions.

Their arrogance and narcissism are beyond belief. In what other industry do recent college graduates show up at their first job absolutely, religiously, convinced of the infallibility of their favorite fad, arguing their point to the extent of damaging their own prospects?

One thing common to most programmers seems to be the desperate need to believe in absolutes. “You must never use goto”. “Only one entry and one exit from any function”. “All objects MUST have a copy constructor”. “Singletons are evil”. “Do not use global variables, ever”.

I’ve been a consultant for the last 19 years. I’ve seen the insides of about 20 or more different companies, so I know these attitudes are pervasive in programmers across many industries. More so when the programming is business-centric, less so when the programming is industrial, scientific or embedded.

I guess what it really comes down to is that programmers, especially young ones, need to be right and need to be seen as super smart. They crave rules, discipline and order while at the same time regarding themselves as creative and ingenious beings. They seem to need these things as if their entire self-image depends on it, cognitive dissonance be damned.

What is it about the profession or the training that so commonly leads to this outcome?

Of course none of this applies to fine folks who frequent this website. I see a much higher level of maturity here than I see in most development teams. And I myself would NEVER be guilty of any of these tendencies .

Any ideas?

Working in IT requires balls; you have to make some really tough choices with very real consequences. It’s not really a problem for programmers; very few of us work on projects that has the potential to destroy lives or break companies apart. On the other hand, in IT, you’re dealing with the backbone of an organization. Make a mistake here and: You. Are. In. Trouble.

Don’t Be A Pussy

Not to worry though; try as hard as you want to not fuck up and it’s just going to happen that much sooner.

I can say with absolute certainty that there’s going to come a time in your career when you fuck up. Big. Like really BIG. The type of mistake that has the potential to sink the company or client you’re working for/with. When it happens it’s going to be bad. So bad that you’ll have the fear of Dad in you. You remember that right? When Dad was coming home and you knew he knew what you did and you knew your life was over. If you didn’t have a Dad; think shear panic mixed with absolute paranoia and terror. Yeah, that’s the stuff.

What you did/will do isn’t important. What is important is how you deal with it. You’re going to have options when it  comes to dealing with the issue(s) and how you act is going to determine how your colleagues and peers look at you for the next few months. Make the wrong call and you’re in for some real uncomfortable silences and some really awkward sidelong glances.

If this has already happened to you; congratulations. Just know it probably won’t be the last. On the other hand if it hasn’t happened yet get ready; it will. You’re going to make some stupid mistakes in your career; mistakes so idiotic and so demoralizing your confidence will shatter and you’ll have a hard time getting back on the horse.

Like I said above, I have absolutely no idea what you do or what you can do to fuck it up so, as anecdotal examples only, I’m going to rely on my personal experience. I can honestly say, with absolute pride, that I have done the following:

• Deleted a database and couldn’t restore the data
• Deleted all the rows in a table and didn’t have a backup
• Deleted a user account and all the email and files associated with it.
• Changed every users password to “password” in a database
• Sent an internal cost analysis report for a client project to the client

And that’s only what was off the top of my head; I’m sure I’ve blocked out some of the worse things. The one constant between the above list (aside from the stupidity involved) was that I owned the mistake. You have to immediately handle the situation whatever that means (it’ll depend on the situation).

After that though a funny thing will happen; it’s very likely your confidence will be shot. This is important because you need confidence (read: balls) to work in IT. There are too many things, that you just don’t know how to do, that you’re going to have to do, and that requires the confidence to know you can do these things. It’s why we make the big bucks.

In my experience the only thing you can do in these situations is get back on the horse ASAP. The sooner you do something, anything, that has consequences the better. You can’t wallow in the past and getting hung up isn’t the answer.

BTW: After reviewing the above I have to say:

Thank fucking God I don’t work in IT anymore.

Truth: I’m a whore when it comes to books. I Just love ‘em. I love the way the feel in my hands, I love the way they smell and I love how I can just lie down with a good one and, somehow, miraculously, that makes a good day. We’ve been hearing for a while how books were going to die and be replaced by the Internet but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. You can’t hold it (no a Kindle isn’t the same), there’s no smell (except warm plastic I guess) and there’s no satisfaction reading a computer all day (in fact, it’s bad for your eyes).

Reading is Good.

I have a special leaning towards hard c0ver books though. Paperback books are good for a trip, I guess (for example a long flight or train ride). But if you want to keep that book, which I always do, then a hard cover book is the way to go. The great thing about hard cover books is that they can be purchased online through Amazon for a fraction of the cover price. There’s a reason Amazon is on top of the online book selling market and it’s not because they rape their customers (are you listening RIAA?)

It used to be that all I had to worry about when buying a book was ensuring it was the hard cover edition. I never cared about edition versions (first, second, yada-yada-yada) or anything but now I have to worry about Large Print Editions (LPE). LPE books are irritating.

Obviously, the print is HUGE. I’m sure they’re made specifically for sight challenged (blind) people but to us who can see it’s a little disconcerting reading text so big. Each page can only contain around 2.5 paragraphs of text. This makes the books big. Like really BIG. It’s irritating holding a normal novel and having so many pages to thumb through.

Apparently, I’ve been living under a  rock all my life because I hadn’t been exposed to LPE books before .

Recently, I bought a book on Amazon which I thought was going to be a nice little addition to my library. Just a guilty pleasure book but one I wanted. I was a good little consumer, making sure it was hard cover, it was being sent from a reputable seller, and that it was in English (don’t ask).

Then it arrives and I’m just bummed. Not because of the book, per se, but because now I have to worry about the format of the text when I’m buying a book.

So as I said, buying a book just got harder. A little, sure, but it’s now one more thing.

Fuck.

Since I had to setup a whole new computer I decided to move away from the IIS experiment I’ve been working on for the last year and try something a little different. I’d heard about Zend Server CE before but after a failed attempt to get it working a few months ago, because of IIS ironically enough, I hadn’t really given it the attention I thought it deserved. After having played with it for about a week I have to say I’m completely… underwhelmed.

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Zend Server is supposed to be a complete Web Application Server that is purpose built for php development. It includes application monitoring, problem root cause analysis and and extended caching capabilities. Pretty enticing really.

Unfortunately, Zend Server CE doesn’t include any of the above bells and whistles. Instead, it’s a stripped down version that appears to just match the features and functionality of XAMP or WAMP (Apache, php and mysql wrapped in a nice little installer for Windows).

I’ve used both used both XAMP and WAMP and, with little exception, I’ve always wished I’d gone with a manual installation instead. It’s not that they’re bad programs, it’s nice that they’re available for newbies, but my needs aren’t easy to package up in a “one size fits all” package. I like to try new things and experiment and sometimes what I want to do isn’t easy without breaking something. Admittedly, I haven’t tried to use any one size package for a few years so this may not be the case anymore.

Either way though, I know I have a bias; I might even be a bit of a snob about the issue. Totally possible.

That being said, after installing Zend Server CE, which went very smoothly actually, I was confronted with what appeared to be an incomplete installation of php; php-win just didn’t work. It did nothing in fact; I couldn’t get it to do a damn thing. Since I do a little maintenance scripting with php-cli (and php-win.exe is essential on Windows) this was a pretty big issue.

On top of that, I just couldn’t figure out how to modify the –configure options so changing the setup was obviously going to be an issue. I don’t know if I’m an idiot but I just couldn’t figure it out.

Then the let down happened; I was under the impression that there were going to be some cool profiling toys to play with. Instead, there’s a web GUI for configuring PHP, which is pretty nice I guess, but for me, it’s just easier to edit php.ini directly than navigate through a web interface. Kind of useless. What with the integration with Zend Debugger I was really expecting more.

Ultimately, it seems that if you’re a complete newbie to php Zend Server CE is a worthwhile fit but if you actually know what you’re doing you’re still better off setting up a development environment manually.

This is pretty disappointing. A product from Zend, that’s supposed to ease the pain of php development being released to the community, offering nothing more than you could already get from a dozen other programs kind of seems like posturing. I understand the desire to have a demo of a paid product but it should, you know, be different.

A good change I’d like to see would be to include some of the more advanced features like the Application problem diagnostics and the Application monitoring (alerting) functionality in the CE version. It would benefit the community far better than the current version.