Sputnik and SpaceShipOne
On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union started the space race among national governments. On this same day, today, in 2004, SpaceShipOne won $10 million X Prize and started the space race among private...
View Article“The Mission” by Dana Priest
Dana Priest is (was?) a reporter for the Washington Post; I understand that she was the military and intelligence reporter for that paper. In “The Mission” she details several recent military missions...
View ArticleHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
The reputation of the Harry Potter series is well deserved. I picked up the first one yesterday and finished it today; the style is easy to follow, and the story engaging. But above all, it has...
View ArticleHarry Potter III: The Prisoner of Azkaban
What a wonderful series. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: if this is what kids are clamoring to read, then I have hope for the future. Not only are the morals good, but the storylines are...
View ArticleKeith Casey on “Joining a Startup”
Keith Casey has a great series of points about joining a startup here, especially the part about founders who “believe in themselves”. To this, I must also add a recommendation to read Gerber’s The...
View ArticleNashville PHP User Group
I was lucky enough to be in town for the inaugural Nashville PHP User Group as resurrected by Ben Ramsey last week. The presentation by Josh Holmes was interesting though over-long. My favorite part of...
View ArticleThe Real Hero of “The Princess Bride” Is Inigo, Not Westley
Almost everyone who knows me has had to suffer through me talking about Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. The short version: all hero stories share common elements, character types, and...
View ArticleWhy I Like Dick
Consider the reality we’re living in today. Schoolchildren kept in line by use of drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall. Technology that is as exasperating as it is necessary. Criminal syndicates...
View ArticleD. H. Lawrence on Edgar Allan Poe
This is just genius: POE has no truck with Indians or Nature. He makes no bones about Red Brothers and Wigwams. He is absolutely concerned with the disintegration-processes of his own psyche. As we...
View ArticleBook Announcement: Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP
There you are, working late for the second night this week. Everyone else in the office has gone home. Most of the lights are out. Yesterday it was trying to copy a feature over to a different section...
View ArticleBack On The Market!
After a year spent writing my book, working on Aura, speaking at conferences and user groups, advising startups, and proposing new design patterns, I am back on the market. I’ve been writing PHP code...
View ArticleA New Book About The N+1 Problem, and an Update to MLAPHP
I’ll have a new book finished and ready for you soon: Solving the N+1 Problem in PHP. Although I have written and spoken about the N+1 problem several times over the past few years, this book is an...
View Article50% Off “Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP”
For Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and the rest of this week, my books Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP and Solving the N+1 Problem in PHP are 50% off. If you’ve been waiting for a sale to get these...
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