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Installing XHGui
07 March 2013
Read moreThere's a new version of XHGui (well, a few months old) and it's fabulous! It's got a few new dependencies though so I thought I'd write down how I set up my version, in case it's helpful to anyone else (and so I feel like a pro next time I have to do this!). If you're not familiar with XHGui it's a fabulously easy and friendly way to profile your application; to understand which method calls in a page take the time and how many times they are made, so you can improve the performance of your application. All these instructions are for my 32-bit Ubuntu 12.10 system, hopefully they will work for you or you'll be able to adapt them as appropriate.
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PHP and Gearman: Unable to connect after upgrade
28 February 2013
Read moreI upgraded PHP and related pecl modules on my development machine today, and ran into a problem with Gearman. Actually I ran into more than one! Firstly the challenge of getting the newest pecl version working with a gearman version. Then an error where my existing PHP application couldn't connect to gearman after upgrade.
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Talking about ZCE at PHPNW March
27 February 2013
Read moreIf you're interested in becoming a Zend Certified Engineer and are local enough to make it to the next PHP North West User Group meeting on Tuesday, 5th March in Manchester (UK), then come along! I'll be giving a talk and welcoming questions and discussion around becoming ZCE, why you …
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How To Write 800 Blog Posts
25 February 2013
Read moreThis is the 800th published post on lornajane.net. It's my personal blog and I started it in early 2006, when I moved to a new city with no job. I think I got the blogging bug just because I had nobody else to talk to at the time! Over the years the blog has recorded recipes, craft projects, the story of buying and refurbishing the house (a decision that a previous employer described as "brave") - and of course the vast swathes of technical snippets that are the regular content you see here.
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New Book: PHP Web Services
18 February 2013
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I'm delighted to announce that my new book "PHP Web Services" is now available as an early release! This is a project that I've been working hard on for the last few months, trying to put my extensive and hard-won experience of working with APIs into words and examples to make it easy for others to get up to speed in this area. -
Study Days: Keeping on Top of the New Shiny
14 February 2013
Read moreOne of the biggest dangers in this industry is getting left behind as the tools evolve very quickly. For me, working alone or as the most senior person on a project in most cases, this becomes doubly hard as there's nobody in my office to show me a new trick or share an idea that he or she learned in a previous job. So how do I deal with this?
I take "study days".
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Learning to Speak
11 February 2013
Read moreI don't mean learning to talk, I mean learning to address an audience, coherently and without dying of fright (actually I think I have clinically proven that it isn't possible to actually stop living as a result of fright). There are a couple of things that I'm involved with that may help you, if you're looking to improve your successes in this area.
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Endpoints for HTTP Testing
07 February 2013
Read moreWhile working on a book ("PHP Web Services" from O'Reilly, not out yet but soon!) recently, I was looking for some place I could make HTTP requests to, to show off how to make different kinds of requests with different tools. On my own machine, I have a couple of scripts that chatter back giving debug information about the requests that were made, but I wanted to get the tools examples going without any additional dependencies at all. I hadn't used anything like these tools before, but I found quite a few alternatives, so I thought I'd share what I came up with.
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Printing PDF Bookmarks List
30 January 2013
Read moreI work with PDF a lot, and it bothers me that I can see an outline view when I open the document, but I don't seem to be able to grab just that view. My presentations are mostly PDF and the titles and section headings show up nicely. Today I …
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Fabric Bags
28 January 2013
Read moreThis weekend I decided it would be good to spend some time away from the computer, but the weather wasn't really good enough to get out and do much, so I needed a "rainy day" project. I remembered that I'd signed up for a free introductory Craftsy class a few weeks ago, so I logged in to take a look at what was involved.
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Zend Webinar on PHP 5.4: 19th February
24 January 2013
Read moreI am pleased to announce that I'll be presenting one of Zend's webinars in February, on Tuesday 19th. The topic is "The PHP 5.4 Features You'll Actually Use", and the session is my opportunity to round up the best of the new features that came in with PHP 5 …
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Five Clues That Your API isn't RESTful
23 January 2013
Read moreI get a lot of emails asking me to get involved with API projects, and that means I see a lot of both implemented and planned "RESTful" APIs. Now, I absolutely love REST and for a data-driven application, it would be my first choice. A service of some other description may work better for other scenarios or skill sets, and non-RESTful services can be very, very useful. If you tell me that your service is RESTful, then I expect it to be. If you're not sure, look out for these clues: