Maugrim The Reaper's Blog - Irishisms

MIA from Planet PHP

nospam@example.com (Pádraic Brady) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:44:57 +0000

A few people curiously asked about my absence from Planet PHP recently which I noted over on Twitter.

What happened is that I recently emailed the Planet PHP team, and filled out a new submit form, to get my RSS feed back in circulation. I've been aggregated there for almost two years, but my recent downtime probably caused the Planet software to boot me (or maybe even a real human to boot my inactive/unacceptably slow feed). With the move to a VPS, I figured it was a straightforward "let them know I am back live" and we'd all be happy campers.

Unfortunately I may have stabbed myself. Planet PHP has a current policy which includes as a condition:

It's a personal blog and not a project blog.

After a few days I got back a refusal. Apparently, already listed for two years or not, my blog has been deemed to be a project blog all about the Zend Framework. The tail has finally started to wag the dog it appears .

As a result the gentleman processing my renewal politely refused to relist me and suggested I create a new RSS feed containing non-project related posts about PHP in general. After deducting the various projects I tend to write about or around, I ended up with not a lot. Truth be told, I write about topics which I have a personal interest or involvement in. Sometimes I'll write good stuff, sometimes boring crap that reads like I was asleep at the wheel while typing. But outside my interests I don't feel any driving need to blog. My blog is a personal outlet and reflects my personal attitudes and enthusiasm.

It's a bit pointless aggregating only those posts bearing no relation to any project. My general PHP non-project related posts are few and far between and I have little need to aggregate them for publicity. If I required publicity I'd be smart and add Google Adsense to my blog to make some cash for Guinness.

So, for the time being, I am removed from Planet PHP. It was a surprise, but they have a policy to maintain and if my posts are oriented too far towards the projects I'm involved in so be it.

ZFBlog: The road to HTML and PDF editions

nospam@example.com (Pádraic Brady) — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:48:12 +0000

One of the more popular requests for the Zend Framework Blog Application Tutorial series has been to make the whole series available as HTML and PDF independent of the admittedly limited blog format. Little did you know I was planning for just that .

I intend offering the entire series, in an updated form, in a full book format. Obviously blog != book, so there will be changes to content. The main change will be to increase the level of detail covered by each blog post so there is some general introduction to various components (still in the context of a blog application, but not to the limited extent where you would need to persistently refer to the manual to understand everything), and more room for tips and advice. This will be an ongoing process, and totally in addition to regular blogged articles which will continue unabated at lengths exceeding 3000 words.

To put some of the continuing questions to bed, there is an expectation that I will make money from the series. It's by no means a certainty or even a probability and it would be foolish in the extreme to think so. If enough money turns up to cover server costs and a few pints each week in the local I will be ecstatic. In the past I've considered writing an actual book but after a bit of recent debating I'm electing to go to self-publishing route for at least this one. The problem with dealing with a second party is that eventually your expectations and theirs begin to conflict and you may even start debating whether you are writing something you enjoy or whether you are becoming a paid hand catering to the marketing research and goals of a publisher.

On the otherhand, with self publishing you get to do whatever the hell you want. I can sit down, assume everyone can RTFM, churn out pages of using the Zend Framework to create a real world application, and skip spending most of a book's length explaining every potential use-case for the insane amounts of flexibility the ZF offers. You can throw chapters into a blog, produce your own PDF, use a donation model, and largely have a little fun with a highly enjoyable hobby. And I seriously love writing - I can write a whole article in a few hours, illuminate ideas, learn something myself along the way, take pride in a job well done, and bask in the sunny adoration of my worshippers...er...readers. For me, writing is never a boring task. I'm the guy whose eyes light up when asked to write documentation.

Fortunately producing an actual book on a shoestring budget is actually very easy. The only hard part is writing the damn thing .

It's a common misconception, but don't believe that the average programming book publisher will offer you any special can't-survive-without tool. Setting up a process for churning out hundreds of pages in HTML, PDF, CHM or even RTF is covered in excruciating detail and depth by none other than the global open source community. And it's all free!

My current approach revolves around Docbook 5. If you're not familiar with Docbook, yet still reading this entry, then it's the same source XML syntax the Zend Framework Manual is written in, only they use Docbook 4.4 (at last glance) as their consistent cross-language standard. I've since updated towards the more recent official release of 5.0 which is, honestly, not a huge leap in migration.

Docbook XML is extremely easy to learn. It has a multitude of WYSIWYG editors like XMLmind XML Editor or you can just fire up your preferred XML editor and have at it (though it will get mind numbingly boring after typing the first hundred para element tags!). Using XSL, you can transform the source Docbook XML into lots of formats from HTML to CHM to PDF. And more besides. All you need is the right toolchain and within it, the core of the whole operation - a good XSLT processor like xsltproc or Java's Saxon.

Personally, I have found the best XSLT processor is something closer to home. They call it PHP5.

My own toolchain starts and ends with PHP5. Mix it with Phing (to automate repetitive tasks like XSLT processing and post-processing of output formats), some decent XSL customisations, and Apache FOP and you have one mean and lean documentation generator. Add a sprinkling of custom post-processors (for example, adding PHP syntax highlighting for HTML and PDF output) and it closes in on a level that is professional.

Shoestring budget? You don't need a budget! Only time, patience, and open source technologies.

My current, and complete, toolset for Docbook to HTML or PDF output? PHP 5.2.6, Phing 2.3.1RC, PEAR, Apache FOP 0.95beta, Docbook 5.0, Docbook XSL 1.73.2 and a handful of custom post-processing scripts added as custom Phing tasks. The rest is styling using some customised XSL (overlaying Docbook XSL), and CSS for the HTML output options. Simple, effective, OS independent, and scriptable.

All I need now is a printing press...Muahahaha!

Unexpected Downtime Recovery!

nospam@example.com (Pádraic Brady) — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:46:00 +0000

Guy writes blog post about Zend Framework Tutorial. Many people visit. Then many more people visit. Then many many many ... many ... many more people visit. Then blog explodes .

I had to offline the blog during the past week due to some extreme load on my host. I apologise for the inconvenience that has caused, but as usual I was unable to take time off to fix a personal website when there are clients to serve. I have now migrated the blog painlessly to Slicehost.com where it is sitting on a 256MB Slice of VPS. I expect to expand that upwards shortly since I am also migrating some other applications here which is a long overdue task. As a result, it is expected (nay certain) that I will be running into swap space as my VPS RAM is used up which may create some minor (fingers crossed for High-Traffic Monday) performance issues for today and tomorrow. Bear with me .

While the RAM holds out you should see a noticeable boost in loading times over the blog's previous incarnation.

I have since removed Part 8 of the ZF Blog Application Tutorial series from the blog entries. It will be republished this coming Monday when things have settled down.

As for the migration. The Slicehost VPS was built on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 LTS. I use Ubuntu a lot, and have done for a long time, and it was, as usual, a pleasure to setup. The only quirk of sorts is that Ubuntu insists on offering XCache as it's sole opcode caching option on Aptitude - a state I find more than unbelievable given APC's future inclusion in PHP6 and its obvious popularity. Even then a simple "sudo pecl install apc" solved that and I now have APC with a generous cache size helping out.

Thank you for your patience! The emails showing support and offers of free hosting are all appreciated.

Update: DNS record propagation is still causing some access issues for some nationalities. Unfortunately while most people were able to find the blog hours after the change in name servers, some servers are lagging far behind.

He creepeth back into PHP

nospam@example.com (Pádraic Brady) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:34:02 +0000

A number of folk have displayed some concern over my absence from all things PHP for the last month or more, something excacerbated by my lax attention to incoming emails.

To fill in the why, I recently lost a close friend to cancer after he endured a four year battle with the disease. Following this loss I haven't had much in the way of enthusiasm for open source or writing hobbies and the path to renewed vigour for plaguing you all with articles, critical posts, and my usual rambling on random topics has been a long one. I've continued to work away on Eve Online which has been one of the few sources of distracting fun these days...and not much else online outside the 9-5 job.

C'est la vie.

My friend always had a few things going for him. He was incredibly courageous in facing the inevitable. He remained intensely faithful to God, an all too rare display for young people these days when I count myself as one of the few under-thirties to attend local church in my community, and one of the fewer who consider it not just another boring pointless practice. And I have never once witnessed him act out of anger or unkindness.

He was one of those bright lights in a person's life that leaves a horribly empty void behind when they are no longer with you.

Rest in peace my friend.

In my absence I've turned away from a few opportunities in PHP I would ordinarily have been overjoyed to have. Chances are I'll look into how salvagable some of those are but I'm not too anxious about them to be honest. I'm looking towards the blank slate of the next few months if they're not retrievable and wondering what to fill them with. PHPSpec/PHPMock and the mailing list (I'll catch up on the last few emails soon) goes without saying. The book I was considering is more than likely a lost cause unless the author position remains unfilled - no recent emails there so that appears possible. Well, more time to freelance a few articles . Maybe I'll poke around the ZF mailing list to see if I missed anything interesting and get some of those Microformat proposals moving.

For now I'm going to nip into Eve and figure out whether I really want to train Heavy Missiles V. Once that's done I'm going to hit my usual PHP train of activity and pick up the pieces from the last month. All the usual haunts will once again see Maugrim The Reaper putting in an appearance and finding someone to argue over something with .