Andrei Zmievski

I got the notice today that PHP Quebec 2006 committee has accepted two of my talk proposals: one about PHP 6 Unicode support and another about PHP-GTK 2. So, see you in Montreal in March!

I have not posted lately, mostly because I had been busy with the phonemic analysis paper for my phonology class. Having turned that in last Thursday, I have to say that, in retrospect, I should probably have picked a language that is phonetically simpler than Danish (like Hawaiian). In any case, thanks go to Rasmus for help with the paper. I think I can finally pronounce a basic word like rød without making Danes collapse in weeping paroxysms of laughter.
Having wished for a good illustration of RAID principles, I believe this one fits the bill rather nicely. 🙂
And finally, I’ll be turning 29 on Wednesday. Time to open the bubbly and celebrate.

Overheard while walking into the exhibit hall at the Zend PHP Conference:

A girl (dressed in company X attire, speaking to a guy next to her): I don’t do sex. I just practice a lot.

I am not a violent man. I’d much rather sip a latte in a café than engage in broken bottle bar fights. But exchanges like the following make me want to use the Chinese water torture (or vice grips) on the designers of said systems:

Andrei is calling Comcast to change some services. 1-800-COMCAST.
Phone Voice: Thank you for calling COMCAST. Please enter the telephone number including area code for where you have or want service.
Andrei: (enters the phone number)
Phone Voice: For English press 1, para español oprima el dos.
Andrei: (dutifully selects 1 as he doesn’t know Spanish)
The phone system waits for an inordinate amount of time all the making sounds like someone trying to quitely pass a kidney stone.
Phone Voice: (cheerfully) To continue this call in English press 1, para español oprima el dos.
Andrei: (jamming finger into 1 again)
The phone system passes another, but smaller, kidney stone.
Phone Voice: Please enter the phone number of your account.
Andrei: the hell ? (enters phone number again)
Phone Voice: I will connect you to the customer service representative now.
CSR comes on line.
CSR: How can I help you?
Andrei: I need to change some of my services. (but really wanting to say “by fixing your damn phone menu”)
CSR: Can I have your phone number please?
Andrei: (head explodes)

I gave a PHP and Unicode talk to the PHP Users group in Vancouver last week. The turn out was decent considering it was a holiday weekend, and I got to see more of the city than the last time I visited. Apparently, the bars and clubs on Granville street can now stay open and sell alcohol until 4 am. Now, take that and add the fact that the drinking age in Canada is 19 years. Got the picture yet? Walking up and down Granville sidewalks, you practically have to shove your way through the throngs of people waiting in lines for their turn at the “drink and hit on anything with a pulse” contest. Scene:

Peter, Shane, and I are weaving our way through the crowds on the way home. Turning onto a much less crowded Davie St:
Peter: It gets easier from here on.
Just as he says this, he runs into some girl.
The girl (indignant): Hell no, you’re not touching me!

Saw a headline today – Bush: Militants Seek to Establish Empire. I think the editorial process didn’t catch the mistake: the colon should have been a comma.

Face recognition technology is getting really good. Yesterday I saw a link to Intel’s OpenCV library float through the mailing list at work and a note that someone wrote a PHP extension for it. “Interesting”, I thought. I hacked up a simple PHP script that would take an image and process it slightly to make detected regions more obvious. Here’s an example of the output. Not bad, huh? Then Jeremy tried another image, with some spooky results. Note that aside from the person, there are a couple more regions that the library thought was a face. If you look closer, the larger rectangle on the carpet encloses something that does have vague face-like features. Nice job, Intel.

Today’s issue of Wall Street Journal has an article by David Bank, “PHP Language Wins Supporters As Tool for Making Web Software: Alternative to Sun’s Java Is Adopted by Companies, Developers Like Andreessen”. On the whole, it plays up PHP and its success over the years, but contains several things that I could not help but talk about here. I hope WSJ doesn’t mind if I quote a few sentences.

Back when the Web was young, Marc Andreessen, then the wunderkind co-founder of Netscape Communications Inc., gave his backing to a new software programming language from Sun Microsystems Inc. That blessing launched the Java language as a counterweight to Microsoft Corp.’s technology dominance. A decade later, Mr. Andreessen is endorsing another programming language called PHP as an alternative to Java for creating a new generation of Internet software.

I like Marc. He’s a bright guy who did a lot for the Web by driving the development of NCSA and Netscape browsers and trying to fight Microsoft. But “blessing” and “endorsement”? I would really hope we’re past the point where intelligent developers — and would you want any other kind — are swayed by a celebrity endorsement that tells them what programming language they should use. I think PHP’s record speaks for itself, and hardly needs any “blessing”. My guess is that this is a marketing maneuver designed to capitalize on the recent news of Marc joining Zend’s board of directors.

“When it comes to the Web and Web applications, Java is not the right language,” Mr. Andreessen says.

Indubitably so.

But he adds: “[..] PHP is to 2005 what Java was to 1995.”

If that means that all of a sudden there are hundreds of half-assed books written by people suffering from what can only be called delusions of self-grandeur and whose only skill is the ability to copy-and-paste text from the online manual, no, thank you. If that also heralds the day that I see thousands of job postings asking for overpaid and underqualified PHP consultants with “10 years of experience” who don’t know their 404 from 403 and whose highest qualification is building a personal guestbook, I can live without that too. Although, maybe it’s already happening..

Zend, originally based in Israel, includes two of the leaders of the open-source PHP effort, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, who took over the project from Rasmus Lerdorf, who released the first version in 1995.

That’s just plain wrong. Rasmus didn’t hand off the project to Zend, but to the open source community that Zend and Andi are part of. Keep your facts straight, WSJ.

IBM has assigned 20 engineers to PHP and is particularly focused on improving the technology’s security, considered a weak point.

These must be phenomenally stealthy engineers, sneaking onto our CVS server and planting in the bug fixes under the cover of the night. Because that’s the first that I have heard of 20 IBM engineers working on PHP, and the article makes it sound like they are engaged in it full-time. What are they producing exactly? Maybe I’m senile, but other PHP developers, such as Edin and Ilia, confirmed that there has not been a single official security patch from IBM. The only regular contributor from IBM that I know if is Dan Scott, and he himself acknowledges that he only spends about 10% of his time on PHP-related stuff. If I am incorrect, then I would invite IBM to share with the PHP community all the work that these engineers have been producing.
I don’t know who David Bank interviewed for this story exactly — aside from Zend folks, Marc, and Rod Smith — but next time he should include a couple more relevant people, like, oh, say, Rasmus. It’s only fair. Me, I’m going to listen to a song from 1995.

Yahoo! has an internal mailing list that started off as a way for employees to buy from and sell things to fellow coworkers. However, over the years it has evolved into a much more diverse tool used for recommendations, rides, advice, offers of services, and general venting and ranting. People even try to sell their houses on it.
Being in a mischievous mood on a slow Friday, I decided to see exactly what one could get away with:

My goal was to make it just plausible enough for people to wonder whether I had a real bulldozer or was simply looking for laughs. Apparently, I made it too authentic, because in about 15 minutes I got a reply from someone (let’s call them Bob):

By this time other replies were rolling in: commenting on the hilarity and absurdity of the ad, offering submarines and space stations for sale in paltry imitation, and complaining about list pollution (losers). I noticed that Bob posted his own ad for a tricked-out RV, which coincidentally was priced at $22,000 as well.

And soon:

Just to mess with their minds a little more, that afternoon I sent another email to the list:

One of the replies:

Indeed.

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying:
– “Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed.”
– “OH NO!” the president exclaims. “That’s terrible!”
His staff is stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the president sits, head in hands. Finally, the president looks up and asks,
– “How many is a brazillion?”