More To Remember with PHP

I’ve been spending a lot of time with PHP lately thru my Drupal module work. Durpal modules are really an interesting way to learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly of PHP since there are a ton of techniques and varying qualities of code in the modules on drupal.org. I’ve updated my article on key things to remember about PHP based on some of these.

beren

CMS At It’s Best

I’ve seen two sites lately that really speak to the power of open-source CMS frameworks. One is based on Drupal and the other on Plone. Both are very nice and really show that these tools are serious power-houses for building sophisticated, modern, and very sexy websites. Enough drool, here they are:

• http://www.myplay.com
• http://nasascience.nasa.gov/

Lots of people don’t like these frameworks citing memory issues, scalability, etc., but I think these sites prove this isn’t the case.

Beren’s Top 10 Beers

Most of my friends know I enjoy two things at home:

1. A nice juicy piece of red meat grilled to perfection
2. A cold beer to go with it
3. Ok I guess I also code quite a bit too…so that’s three.

So after many promises and much delay here’s my top-10 favorite beers:

1. Long Trail Ale (served on draft at the Ye Olde Tavern, Manchester, VT USA): in my hunble opinion the best beer in America, but only here. In a bottle it wouldn’t make the list. At the brewery maybe, but at this specific place it is a magical experience.
2. Riverhorse Special Ale (served on draft at the Lambertville Station, Lambertville, NJ USA: nearly the same as above, but a couple of steps down.
3. Hacker-Pschorr (well conditioned and settled out): a fantastic beer when server correctly. Clean and crisp - it is everything Budweiser was meant to be and is not.
4. Guinness Extra Stout (only on draft): well what can I say? Its a great beer - try to get it in Europe.
5. Bass Ale (on draft at the Pig n’ Whistle, Manhattan NYC): The Bass at the PnW is fantastic - the hops are magnificent. I have no explanation for why the Bass is better here than anywhere else, but it is.
6. Kaizer Karel (preferably in Antwerp at De Pelgrom or De Grootte Ganz): a mid-alcohol Belgian classic. There are few better things than a few of these on the Groen Platz in Antwerp on a summer evening. If you’re in De Grootte Ganz make sure you say “arrrggghhh” a few times:-)
7. Samuel Adams Boston Lager (on draft in my house!): Ok - so I have a home kegging system. A cold Sam in the afternoon with a keg fresh from Boston. Mmmmm…
8. Anchor Steam (San Francisco - draft only): Another specialty beer best consumed on its native turf. Dark and malty, but also not too filling. Anchor is an American original for beer so get it and enjoy.
9. Fullers’ ESB (draft only, Inn of the Hawke, Lambertville NJ): A great deep and hoppy ale with a ton of character.
10. Pabst Blue Ribbon (in a can!): I can’t help it. On a hot summer day after mowing the lawn, the only thing to grab is a 32 degree PBR. As far as American lagers go - PBR is the true king these days.

This list is based on my own personal consumption. If you look at the lists of all the “experts” you’ll notice that I probably don’t have any of their top beers on my list. That’s because they are out of touch with reality. Samuel Smith? Come on - please…anyway this is my list. There are a few near misses like Newcastle Brown, Boddington’s, Sierra Nevada, and I guess I could go on and on.

I suppose the next question is: where’s the meat list? Well here it is - there’s only one: If you want meat it is Wegman’s and a Weber.

You’ll never do better than a nice rib eye steak from Wegman’s grilled to perfection on your own grill. No restaurant can do better. Combined with any of the beers above and certainly you will be in Elysium.

Firefox 3 Beta1

Sweet - Firefox 3 Beta 1 has been released! You can grab it here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

This is a pretty big update that includes a new concept for how to manage bookmarks, plus some pretty radical architecture changes under the covers. Lifehacker has a good overview of what’s in FF3. For me FF rocks over IE so this is really cool. I’ve been looking at the Grand Paradiso releases and other pre-releases so I’m very excited about this. I’ll post a review in the next couple of days so stay tuned.

Formatting…

Sorry if you’re using IE and my blog looks like crap…wordpress is having some kind of issue with their themes. Very sorry…the fonts in the gadgets on sidebar are messed up in IE. It looks fine in Firefox…not sure why they had to mess around, but since I’m using their free service I guess I get what I pay for.

Making Iterative Development Easy to Share

Everyone talks about agile, iterative, rapid, real time, or some other kind of development where a team of technical guys is churning away coding and then producing a build. this is great stuff since you get to see what the program looks like and can get some assurance that its meeting the requirements and that the users actually still agree that the things they asked for are what they still want now that they see it.