Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Philly Pleasantry
April 12, 2008

I’ve been doing a lot of things lately. Getting out of the house is becoming more common for me. And as I look forward to presentations at the PHP meetup at the end of April and PodCamp Ohio at the end of June, I’ve been attending little gatherings here and there as time allows. There are a couple trips in particular that require more elucidation than what effort I want to put into this seating, but I did want to write about something simple that strikes me every time I venture into the city for an event or meeting or whatever.

As I’ve observed in the past, you always take something with you when you visit somewhere like a major city, even if you’re mostly retracing your steps. I’ve gotten in the habit of taking the R5 from Malvern to Market East on the instructions of folks whose company I enjoy but much less frequently these days than I like. On that route, I manage to walk through a good chunk of the Gallery, a kind of “train station meets three story mall”. It is in this place that I’ve encountered one of my favorite Philly oddities.

Tool Exchange
April 07, 2008

I’ve registered for PodCamp Ohio on June 28th, which takes place in Columbus. Podcamp is all about podcasting - having some kind of beyond-written blog with syndication. I think PodCamps aren’t going to be my best venue – I’d like to try more of a barcamp. It would be ideal if there was another BlogPhiladelphia, alas I’ve heard nothing and the people who I might have expected to be involved aren’t talking about it. Oh, well.

I’ve been thinking about presenting something at the PodCamp to accumulate more for item 30 on my 43things. I’ll be adding to this count shortly with another Philly PHP meetup presentation at the end of April, this time on PHP testing. For the PodCamp presentation (which is really more of a group-leading, since it’s an “unconference”), I was thinking about talking about software tools for podcasters.

Of Things Found in My Yard
April 01, 2008

With kids in the house, there’s no shortage of odd things being left out in the yard. I’m always finding some toy or other out there, a stray toy golf club, a toy truck, etc. A recent thing that’s been bothering me is this inflatable, red plastic ring that’s part of this “waterpark” playset, looking like one of those hemorrhoid rings – Only slightly embarrassing. But this morning, I found something quite unusual in my front yard.

The rules of our homeowner’s association forbid making changes to the “openness” of the development. That means no new trees and no fences. As a result, our development is basically just a big open patch of land with houses in it. Our house sits at the bottom of one of the two hills in the development, and it seems like the unfettered wind is always ripping past our neighbors’ houses and blowing things into our yard. The winter covers for the grill and the table never seem to stay on.

Implementing the Front Controller Pattern in Lighttpd
March 29, 2008

One of the more common design patterns in installable web applications today is the Front Controller pattern. Unlike other web applications that have separate files to respond to specific requests, the front controller pattern funnels all requests through a single file, and that file processes the requested URL to respond as appropriate.

In typical scenarios, you’ll accomplish this with Apache using a set of mod_rewrite directives. These directives first check to see if the requested file or directory exists. If it does not exist, then the request is passed on to the front controller. This allows requests for existing files - like images, stylesheets, and client-side scripts - to be requested directly rather than passing through the URL rewriting mechanism.

What Was?
March 25, 2008

I’m sure I’m not the only person who has had this question, especially in this age of Tivos and DVRs: Where can I get a schedule of things that have happened?

It’s interesting. I’ve completely given up on the printed TVGuide. Why pay money for a weekly throwaway schedule of TV shows that doesn’t even cover well all 100+ channels of programming that I receive? I wouldn’t, especially because I can get that information directly via my TV tuner or, if I’m desperate, through the internet. But the printed TV Guide has one advantage over these digital mediums - it keeps near-term historical information.