Sean Coates: PHP, Web (+Beer)

I've got a bunch of stuff that I haven't found/made time to blog about, so just dropping some quick notes here:

• I've been invited to speak at PHP Quebec 2009. I've been to this conference a few times (but not for a couple years, now), and I'm really looking forward to getting back into the conference circuit (as a speaker, not an organizer... think of all the free time I'll have! (-; Anyway, I'll be giving a talk entitled "Stupid Browser Tricks" in which I'll talk (at a high level) about Firebug, and Selenium IDE, and possibly a few other things like granular browser security, komodo macros/extensions (like a browser!) and maybe greasemonkey.
• This year, I was once again invited back to the Microsoft Web Developers Summit (couldn't think of a better URL). This is a yearly event where Microsoft selects members of the PHP community to Redmond to have a discussion on PHP and Microsoft's offerings. This year was definitely the best one yet, as it was better organized, and it felt much less like they were trying to sell us things. Their candor was especially appreciated this year, as I think many of the attendees felt like Microsoft was asking us for our opinions instead of trying to give them to us. I wrote about this last year, and I think what I wrote still rings true, today. Thanks to the organizers... we got some great information, made our opinions clear, and had a LOT of fun (great people!).
• I tweeted about this, but never posted it on my blog. My colleague Luke Welling is a funny guy.
• My nifty pastebin script: http://is.gd/9obe Pipe a file to it; outputs URL of pastebin. Even puts URL on pasteboard if you're on a Mac.

  seancoates
• Over the holiday weekend (I got days off, but in Canadia, we celebrate Thanksgiving in October), I found some time to work on a bunch of pet projects, including fale.ca, which is nothing special, but kind of fun. See?
• Today, I was extended an invitation to join the Habari Cabal, which I quickly accepted. So, if you use Habari and your blog breaks in the future, it's probably my fault.
• ... and last, but not least, Chris and I—with the help of many other people—managed to almost get the 2008 PHP Advent calendar launched in time. Word on the street is that Jon Tan is going to show the design some love, and we have a feed. The 2007 edition was a success, but was a lot of work, so I offered to pitch in this year. Thanks to everyone who's already submitted... and the rest of you slackers: get to it! (-;
S

Many of you noticed that my blog was "hacked" last night.

To everyone who mentioned my blog problem: thanks. It looks like it was human error on my part (deleted the DB), so lucky guy got installer.

Sean Coates

I looked into it, with the help of my friends in #habari, and it turns out that it was just me being an idiot, and deleting the SQLite database for my blog before going to bed.

There was absolutely no evidence of other hacking, and I'm sure it wasn't Habari's fault, after reviewing all of the forensic data I could gather up.

Sorry about that. (-:

(not a fun way to start Monday morning, by the way)

Update:

Also, I know I've been having feed problems. This is a known issue in Habari (updated posts getting moved to the top of the feed), and we're working on it. In the meantime, I think I've got it sorted out.

Hi all.

Quick note to say that I've moved my blog from blog.phpdoc.info to seancoates.com, mostly because I want to shift toward a wider focus than phpdoc.info infers.

I've also changed my blogging software from the horribly slow (it became that way, I suspect partially due to database problems) Serendipity to the shiny and new Habari 0.5-dev.

I've been tinkering with Habari for a couple months now, and I'm really liking both the code and the community.

As you may or may not have already heard (and may or may not care), I've left php|architect and have started a new work-life at OmniTI. So far, I'm really liking it, especially the team of great people over here.

Anyway, I've been putting off blogging for months for various reasons. Hopefully now that one of those reasons (dying blog platform) is out of the way, I'll be able to get back on the wagon.

(BTW, I've taken care to redirect all of my old links to my new blog, but if you happen to find one that doesn't work as expected, please do let me know. Thanks!)