Sean Coates: PHP, Web (+Beer)

I'm currently in Vancouver. It's rainy today, but yesterday, it was beautifully sunny and >10°C—a sharp contrast to the -20°C we've been feeling in Montreal, lately.

The 2007 Vancouver PHP Conference starts tomorrow morning, and it's looking like it will be an excellent event. If you're in the area and your work can spare you for the 2 days, I highly recommend that you show up tomorrow morning. Even with at-the-door signup, it's only $150—a great value!

As of 2 days ago, I'll be giving a talk on PHP & Asterisk, based on my article in the December 2006 issue of php|architect. I'll be taking over one of my colleague Paul Reinheimer's talk slots—he was really sick last week, and we weren't sure he'd make it (but he did, and he'll still be giving his Certification talk).

Anyway, if you can make it... do. If not, I've got a video of the same talk I gave at the Feb. PHP Quebec meeting on Thursday night that I'll link a little later (or you can find it on nexen.net).

See you here, I hope.

S

Congrats to fellow PHPer, Ben Ramsey and his wife (whom I've never met (-: ) on the birth of their baby boy.

Ben: it was so nice of you to name him after me. I feel so honoured.
(-;

S

I'm currently in the middle of backwoods-nowhere. There's no wired broadband of any sort, here, so I'm using my wife's parents' satellite internet, which is pretty good from a raw bandwidth standpoint, but really bad on the latency front. Ping times to our phone server are in the 600ms+ range (normally, this is 30ms).. so, anything that requires any sort of realtime interaction is hardly usable.

Here's their place. The roads don't even have names, according to my GPS software.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop a note wishing the community a Merry Christmas--and happy 2007!

S

Today, the December issue of php|architect was released.

As you know, I don't normally pimp my own magazine, but I'm certainly not above pimping my own article (-:

This month, our cover piece, PHP Phone Home (written by me, if that's not obvious), is on using PHP to harness your telephone system (by way of Asterisk). I've been playing with * for over a year now, and it's really amazing stuff. I'm really keen on Asterisk-type-stuff, especially in relation to PHP and this article gives what I think is a good overview/introduction.

If you haven't checked out *, or haven't even started riding the VOIP wave (yet!), check it out.
</pimp>

S

flame bait

n. [common] A posting intended to trigger a flamewar, or one that invites flames in reply. See also troll.

'nuff said.

S