Justin Carmony » UPHPU

Teaching PHP This Year

Justin Carmony — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:34:41 +0000

I will be giving short presentations on PHP for beginners at the monthly Utah PHP Usergroup. Here is the annoucement:

Greets all,

Being in my seat, I’ve heard from many people over the course of this past
year who have lost / changed employment. I know there is concern by many
who are employed as to what will happen long term. The reality of the matter
is this, though. Recession or no, change happens and the best way to be
ready for it is to have a great skill set. To that end, we are
restructuring the way our meetings will be.

New Meeting Structure
We will be splitting our PHP meetings into 2 parts. First part is basic
skills / best practices training. This is for you new guys who want to
learn, but don’t know where to start. This section is called PHP
fundamentals and will be hosted by Justin Carmony. He and I are working on
some printed materials and are ramping this up as we speak. We also have
several very senior and tenured members who are VERY friendly to questions.
The second portion of our meeting will be a more advanced topic that will be
of benefit to intermediate / advanced members, but will still be of great
benefit to those who are new.

Still Social!
For those interested in the social aspect of our meeting, we still have the
famous UPHPU Afterhours party.

Resources
As far as learning resources, Ray Hunter and I are working on having books
available at our meetings. While we will have some fun / zany way of
handing out the books, there is an understood condition of receiving the
book. You MUST write a review of the book and post it online. If you don’t
want to write a review, don’t take the book. I will be breaking arms on
this!

Online Resources
I know that our recordings have been sporadic. i’m working on allocating
more time to this.

Whew! All that said, here is the meeting info:

Meeting Thursday, January 21st at 7pm @ Bill Good Marketing in Draper

Bill Good Marketing
12393 Gateway Park Place
Draper, Ut 84020

PHP Fundamentals by Justin Carmony – RTFM – Reading the Fabulous Manual
For a new person to PHP, reading the documentation can be a daunting task.
Even worse when you have legions of other developers screaming the acronym
“RTFM!” Hopefully we can shed some light on how to get the most out of PHP
Documentation, how to search it, how to understand it, and how to get help
if the documentation doesn’t answer your questions. Justin Carmony will be
giving the presentation, and will leave time for questions. You’re not alone
in learning PHP, let the Utah PHP Usergroup help you.

Justin Carmony has worked in web development professionally for the last
five years. With emphasis on PHP, .NET, and Web Services, he has worked on
projects ranging from simple websites to complex communications between
thousands of remote systems. He currently is working as an independent
contractor & private consultant. If you have any questions, comments, or
curiosities you can contact him (justin AT justincarmony DOT com) or read
about his latest endeavors at his blog.

Advanced Topic by Trevor Sharpe – Basic Linux Server Administration
Many programmers are finding themselves needing to understand and administer
linux servers. This presentation is focused on learning how to effectively
use the server through scripts, etc. Q & A session on admining to follow.

Trevor Sharpe is a Systems Administrator for a company in SLC and is also a
board member for Utah Open Source.

Look forward to seeing everyone this year!

My 2009 Technology Recap

Justin Carmony — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:55:31 +0000

Its been two years now that I’ve been a more or less “serious blogger.” I had using the term blogger, since when people hear about blogs, they think of people either detailing their entire lives, or pumping some angel. For me, blogging has just been a way to share information with people I know locally, and those I don’t even know who find my blog via searching. I’ve had a few spurts where I blogged quite frequently, but for the most part it was just here and there.

I’ve gone back and looked at this year of 2009, and the things I’ve blogged about, and I thought I’d give a little recap.

My CSS Conversion

At the beginning of the year I realized I had 100% percent to using CSS. I’m still a little in awe that being such a table junkie I finally did it. There were a few key things that I did to help me learn all the difficult things with CSS. I hope I can help some poor web developer out there understand their CSS a little better.

A Year of PHP IDEs

I really invested some time in trying out and experimenting with several PHP Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). I had been using Zend Studio for several years, however more and more I found myself frustrated with it’s quirks. However, I haven’t had time yet to blog about the new IDE I am using, NetBeans. I’ve made the switch from Zend Studio to NetBeans, and while I’m not completely sold, I’m still giving it some time. Maybe over christmas break I’ll blog some about it.

Interesting Challenges w/ MySQL

While I haven’t blogged about most of them, I have had some interesting challenges w/ MySQL over the last year. One was converting 40 Million rows from a MyISAM engine to an InnoDB Engine. I’ve been having some serious heart-to-heart conversations with MySQL (metaphorically of course) on how I’m going to scale it to millions and billions of rows. I think I’ve mapped out in my head how we’re going to handle it for Dating DNA. That will be one challenge I’ll be addressing in 2010.

New Blog Design

This year I got around to re-designing my blog using the Carrington Theme as a base. I kinda like it, but it still could use a little more polish. One day I’ll find time to give it that extra polish.

Memcached

This year I really got into the theory on how to design an application with Memcached. I’ve decreased the load on several websites by using it, and wrote an in-depth article on the theory of caching, and how to implement it effectively. I’ve been amazed at how well it works, and that I hadn’t used it before.

A Year of Presentations

I’ve given two presentations this year, my Memcached presentation at UPHPU, and my “Real Life Scaling” presentation at the Utah Open Source Conference. I got great feedback from both presentations, and I look forward to what I’ll present on this upcoming year. I’m thinking about putting together a presentation called “Being a Web Ninja with jQuery,” and showing of the dozen of awesome applications I’ve built using jQuery.

Utah Open Source Conference 2009

This year I helped organize and throw together the Utah Open Source Conference. I was made the Sponsorship Manager, and it was interesting trying to talk to companies in a recession about donating to a non-profit conference. I haven’t had a chance to blog about different techniques on how to professional ask for money for something like this, but hopefully in 2010 I’ll be able to share some insights.

Things I Didn’t Blog About

There were a lot of things I didn’t get around to blogging about this year. I’ll quickly touch on them here, and hopefully in 2010 I’ll be able to blog about them more.

Web Services – I’ve done a LOT of web service work. Web services provide a unique challenge, since many times its hard to debug them. At my old job, one of the biggest challenges is we really couldn’t debug our web services until all of the other pieces of the puzzle were done. Then we spent long hours with trial and error, debugging via dumping logs. I’ve learned a lot of tricks with PHP and web services. Hopefully I’ll be blog more about those soon.

Performance Tuning LAMP – I’ve had to do a lot of tuning to keep the Dating DNA website afloat. Because of the awesomeness of our iPhone apps, we’ve had a lot of load on our web servers. There are a lot of things you can do to get the LAMP stack to run well.

Alienware Arena – Here was a fun little project I was able to crank out for probably the largest client I’ve done work for: Dell. We made them a website for their Alienware brand called “Alienware Arena.”

There were a lot of challenges to this website, mainly timeline and budget. But we were able to walk away happy with our work, and the Dell / Alienware team were really happy. It was interesting going through and trying to copy / mimic the look and feel of the Alienware website. I’m really proud of what we made.

Never Ending iPhone App Store Saga – Anyone who knows me has heard of the bloody wars that my current employer has had with Apple, their iPhone, and the App Store. The ridiculous approval process, the extremely long wait periods, and Apple’s OCD when it comes to their phone. I won’t say much anything else on the topic, but boy it has been frustrating.

What to Expect with 2010

Boy, 2010 will be interesting. What to expect? I’ll be doing some pretty sick programming in jQuery, as I’ll be adding integrating chat to the Dating DNA website. What else? A lot more when it comes to integrating websites into other social network platforms.

From a business platform, 2010 will be a lot of work spent on taking some great ideas and trying to monetize them. While working on awesome stuff is great, its important to pay the bills with them. I will have an entire year to sign up Sponsors for the 2010 UTOS Conference instead of 2 short months.

Hopefully I’ll get in a better habit of documenting my discoveries and solutions here in my blog. Sharing information is the best way to help everyone out.

I hope everyone has a happy holiday and good luck in the new year! 2010, here we come!

My PHP User Group Experience

Justin Carmony — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:46:09 +0000

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for awhile now, but never got around to it. I woke up and couldn’t sleep only 1 hour before heading out for some Black Friday madness. Might as well make some use of me being awake.

I will have to say that belonging to a local PHP user group has been an awesome experience. A little over a year ago I somehow stumbled upon the Utah PHP Usergroup, ran by a now good friend Victor Villa. I had no idea other people were meeting on a monthly basis to talk about PHP and web development stuff. I joined their IRC channel on freenode, and I instantly found a great little resource for myself. Within two months of regularly using the IRC channel, I decided to drive the hour down to where the meetings are held. I now go almost every month whenever possible. I miss now and then due to family functions and such, but for the most part I make the trek down from Ogden to Murray to enjoy the meetings. There are a few things that I found local user groups (LUGs) can provide others that I’d like to share.

Resource for Help

Its amazing the wealth of knowledge that the rest of the members bring to the user group. My experience in asking for help with advanced issues has be much more positive than trying to ask on forums or the regular PHP channel on freenode. The reason? Over time you build up friendships and acquaintances with the other members, and you get a feel for their different skill sets. When asking help from total strangers, especially as a veteran developer, most people will assume that I am a newbie, and typically ask “why would you want to do that?” instead of “here is how I’d do that.” I felt like I would spend more time explaining how I had logically arrived at my decision to use technique X or technology Y rather than getting actually help with my problem.

With the user group, we know each other and skip the whole “determining if you’re a newbie or not” phase. This is great for both experienced developers and new comers, as we are able to help each other out quicker since we already know where the other person is coming from.

Another great aspect of the user group is that we’re not all 100% exclusive PHP people. Each person has other unique skills that we can draw upon. There are two or three guys who are killer system administrators. They have helped me on numerous occasions to point me in the right direction to solve a Linux problem. Another two guys are Database Gurus who have vast experience with HUGE databases. We have some guys who rock at CSS/HTML/JavaScript, which I typically find myself fielding a lot of those questions. I’ve also had the opportunity to share some tips on Web Services and Mobile Web Development. I’ve probably had 3-4 non-PHP questions answered for every PHP related question. It is just so awesome.

Friendship & Fun

One thing I’ve missed since leaving my old job and doing full time contract work are my co-workers. Oh I know, sometimes they can drive you absolutely nuts. However, on the flip side, working basically alone every day, and my only contact with other work people are with my main client via Skype. While my wife is super smart, she doesn’t appreciate my war stories of adding a simple index that took down the entire website, or how I improved our DB performance one day by 40%. On a daily basis I don’t get to talk with other developers about development stuff. I missed that a lot from my old work, where I could talk about this stuff with co-workers.

Going to the PHP meetings helps bridge that gap. Its fun talking & discussion at the meeting about whatever topic we have. Then we go to the local Applebee’s for the “after-meeting-get-together” and shoot the breeze for a few hours. I get to talk to other PHP guys, swap war stories, exchanges ideas and techniques, etc. It helps satisfy the social aspect that working as a solo developer can lack.

Getting Involved & Giving Back

One year after starting attending the meetings I got “roped into” helping with the Utah Open Source Conference. I presented there on scaling, and helped organize with the sponsors. It was an opportunity to “give back” to the community for all the awesome things they provide here in Utah. Many user groups do “bug hunts” and other activities that help open source projects, and enable people to “give back” to the different communities.

I highly recommend seeing if there are any local user groups that pertain to what you enjoy in your area. They provide a great experience to meet new people, learn new things, and have some fun.

Thanks UTOS & UPHPU.

Steamlined Web Development Presentation Video

Justin Carmony — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:41:26 +0000

Alright, it looks like the Victor at UPHPU has gotten my presentation up on Steamlining your web development. Since it was the first night Victor had tried to capture video & audio to mesh them together, the video on the presentation is a little bit further ahead than the audio. However, I think the presentation went quite well. You can view all the UPHPU meeting videos here. Here is the presentation I gave: