April 2008
Monthly Archive
Tue 29 Apr 2008
I personally had never heard of oDesk until I stumbled upon it in some offbeat manner, but it looks like a service suited for people in my field of work. oDesk is a service that brings together businesses and I.T. Consultants, Programmers and Designers and if I had actually taken some time to read computing magazines or tech news sites in the past year or two, I would have already known about the service.
On the provider end, the people who service the businesses i.e. me, there are tests you can take to help you offset yourself from the norm, as well as intricate profile options to give yourself, or your business an edge. There are also many businesses utilizing the system, so there is a good amount of work available, and that is usually the pitfall of most services like these, not enough work to suit even half of the qualified users.
I am hoping I can get some extra work off oDesk, and I will keep you updated as I move along.
Wed 16 Apr 2008
I know I have written about it before, but new projects bring me new love for why I am still in love with Smarty.
Smarty, a PHP based templating system, is the greatest development tool I have encountered to date. All the recent projects I have been working on, I have migrated them over to Smarty based templates. This helps me to do a few things…
- Keeps my code clean!
- Allows for easy template changes by my clients or me without worrying about breaking page functionality.
- It caches, and when used right, so definitely worth it, why be dynamic all the time, especially when you do not need it!
It really makes my job more efficient, I can make huge back-end functionality optimizations and changes, upload the said changes to the live site, and still get the same results without having to touch the templates! On top of that, my clients love it. I have a few that are savvy enough to change HTML and CSS, but when they see dreaded <?php tags throughout their HTML, they hate it. So using this software helps me reach another goal, and that is portability.
I am so pleased with the functionality in fact; I am changing all my websites to rely on the Smarty Template system, where possible of course!
P.S. I made it back home from my trip last weekend, and early as well. Cindy and I had a great time, and I should be getting my pictures up soon. I will be going on another short trip March 2nd through March 4th, to Las Vegas with my brother, Mychael, and two aunts, Ann & Nette, to celebrate Nette’s award celebration for South-West Manager or Employee of the year at Macy’s. (When I find out what exactly it is, I will correct the post.)
Thu 10 Apr 2008
Tomorrow Cindy and I will be going on a short, but much needed vacation. It is just a little Friday though Sunday, “get out of town” experience, but it is my first vacation in about 3 to 4 years, and I think longer than that for her. Oh, and it is to celebrate Cindy’s 20th birthday! We will be driving up to Santa Barbara to take pictures, visit the zoo, and whatever else we can fit in the short time period.
This vacation will be a nice break from all the non-stop working I have been committed to the past few months. When we get back I will update, and hopefully get some pictures up.
Wed 2 Apr 2008
Business has been decent the past month, although in the last week, it has slowed down, but I have kept myself busy with projects I have been meaning to finish. Namely, the project I have wanted to finish but never had enough time to do so is phpZIPdir. I am certain there are quite a few interested parties as I have gotten emails from users who are anxiously waiting to use the software.
I have taken phpZIPdir from a sort of proprietary script that I wrote originally for myself and it will be easily installable on most any system. A little more about phpZIPdir, it is much more than just a simple radial search. I am building a full-fledged system, with user logins, the ability to control quantity of listings per user, eventually a built in billing and reporting system and much more on top of that.
At the same time, I am building my own open-ended licensing server for phpZIPdir and future products, which may use the same system. I have a lot to finish up but I will start working on all of it now instead of writing!
Until next time!