Is web development boring?
I read an article a month or two ago in php|architect magazine that got me thinking. The article is entitled Slot Machines and it’s an editorial by Steph Fox. In the article, Steph talks about electrical engineering before the age of the microchip and how it was an exciting and creative career path. However, after the microchip hit the market it became a “…boring: slot this here, slot that there” profession. Basically the creativity had been replaced with interchangable parts. The article draws the similarity between electrical engineering after the advent of the microchip and web development. It argues that there is little ‘real’ development that needs to be done anymore with all the COTS applications and programming frameworks on the market and it begged the question: is web development boring?
Protagonize: Interactive Fiction Community
Image by via CrunchBase
I stumbled across an online community for writers last week called Protagonize. I don’t really notice communities anymore, just because there are so many now a days. But I found Protagonize and was drawn in by one of the stores featured on it’s homepage and now I’m hooked.
Never Buy Another Tech Book Again!
Tech books are expensive! Averaging between $30 and $50 bucks a piece, they are equivalent to a month or two of quality shared web hosting. And if the price wasn’t bad enough, they have a limited shelf life. You only have a certain amount of time to read and digest them before they become door stops. New techniques are discovered and new versions are released which make all your current or old books out dated and potentially irrelevant.
I have discovered a better way to gain access to the latest tech books for a fraction of the cost. In this post I will introduce you to Safari Books Online and what it has to offer.
CI 1.7.0 Released
The folks over at EllisLab have released CodeIgniter 1.7.0. The highlight of this release appears to be a brand new validation library as well as a number of other enhancements and bug fixes. Check out the change log for more information then download the latest.
On another note, I know it’s been quiet here for the last month or so. I have been trying to get BadgeTracker 4.0 in shape for an early November release so I’ve been heads down coding. More soon…
Google’s Building a Boat!
I just read an interesting post from the NY Times Freakonomics blog about Goggles potential plans to set some of their data centers afloat. I’ve read discussions about floating data centers before, just not related to Google.
Carsonified Giveaway
The folks over at Carsonified are holding a contest where the prize is free admission to ALL of their 2009 events. All you have to is write a blog post, get people to leave comments and you will entered for the drawing. If interested, check out the post for more details.
Customizing Domains With Wildcard DNS
It seems to be the “in” feature of most modern web apps today. Giving your users the ability to create a custom URL that they can use to access their account like http://chickenbbq.sign-up-sheet.com. From a feature stand point its nice because it’s another way users can customize your app to their specifications. From a developers perspective however it can be a bit challenging to implement if you don’t know what your doing.
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Behind the scenes at Digg
The folks over at Digg recently started a blog and today posted about the Digg architecture and how things work from a physical hardware standpoint. If your curious, check it out.
How to use reCAPTCHA with CI
Image by mathowie via Flickr SPAM… a nasty little four letter word. Could mean tasty meat in a can or could mean junk e-mails and form submissions clogging your server and taking up space in your inbox. We are all familiar with it and are engaged in a constant battle to stop it. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to implement a popular 3rd party CAPTCHA service with your CodeIgniter application.
New Microsoft Add
I saw the new Microsoft TV add this morning with Jerry Seinfield and I think it’s great. Funny and entertaining yes, but I’m not really all that sure what it’s trying to sell or explain.
