Today I picked up the parcel that Royal Mail tried to deliver last week – and it was a box of goodies from the good Cal Evans at Zend!! A while ago Cal ran a competition and then announced that this post had been one of the winners.

Well, I’ve got the prize in question, Scalable Internet Architectures by Theo Schlossnagle, which actually looks really good. Its a book that has come at a good time for me – I’m at a point where I can write a website in my sleep, but understand where the weak points are that might cause it to crumble under load is a whole new chapter.

Also included in the package were a set of trading cards from Zend Con ’07 (here’s the flickr set), with Cal’s one autographed! Finally, and possibly most excitingly, I got an elePHPant! Here he is meeting tux:

Have a look at the other photos tagged with elephpant on flickr too!