Justin Carmony » utos

UTOSC 2010

Justin Carmony — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:10:19 +0000

One thing I haven’t mentioned much this year is the Utah Open Source Conference that is being held in two weeks. Larry Cafiero, a.k.a Larry the Fedora Guy, has written a nice summary of how he feels UTOSC “has been building up to a top-notch, not-to-be-missed show.”

During the course of the year, the FOSS traveling salvation show in North America wends its way around the nation to end up, finally, at the Utah Open Source Conference (UTOSC) in Salt Lake City in October before taking a hiatus for the holidays. Then of course the new year, FOSS-wise, starts with the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) in February.

There’s only one word for those who might want to skip the last-of-the-year Linux expo: “Don’t!”

Quietly and with little fanfare, UTOSC has been building up to a top-notch, not-to-be-missed show that is beginning to draw deserved attention — and people — from outside immediate Utah area. In fact, in the last four years it has grown to become the best community computer conference in the Mountain West.

UTOSC will be held from Oct. 7-9 at the Miller Campus of Salt Lake Community College in Salt Lake City. Attendees who register before Saturday can save 30 percent on the price of admission to the three-day event. Regular admission to UTOSC is $70 for a full-access pass, $25 for an expo pass with entrance to try-it lab workshops and $15 for an expo pass.

I’ll give you a little hint: You can get %50 off if you register with the Discount Code UPHPU. So I highly recommend if you would like to learn about some very cool software that is free, to check it out. Unfortunately, this year I won’t be presenting, since I kind of got busy and forgot to get my abstract in before the deadline. Probably next year then.

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 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.

Speaking: Utah Open Source Conference 2009

Justin Carmony — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:00:13 +0000

I will be speaking this year at the Utah Open Source Conference this year. My presentation is “Real Life Scaling: A Tale of Two Websites.” Here is the abstract:

Scaling is a real issue for many websites. However, many developers try to implement solutions used by the giants of the internet: Google, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, etc. However, many of these techniques are designed for very unique and high demand situations. Implementing these techniques prematurely to smaller websites can lead to overly-complex solutions that can be difficult to manage, and even hinder progress.

See real life examples of from two popular websites: cevo.com and datingdna.com. Learn what challenges and bottlenecks they faced, and the solutions they created to overcome them. Find out what optimizations and implementations returned the greatest ROI for scaling with the project.

CEVO is an online gaming league that hosts thousands of matches for hundreds of video game events. They have contracted with DirectTV, Dell, and other companies to offer branded gaming events. Because the company is run by a staff spread across the USA and Canada, the website runs 100% of their business. Hundreds of gaming servers and player clients communicate with CEVO’s APIs to get real-time information. Learn how they’ve handled the ever increasing load on their servers.

Dating DNA is an online dating community that integrates with today’s popular social networking sites. The site has exploded since it released its iPhone App, which is currently the #1 iPhone Dating App. Learn how Dating DNA has scaled from having daily user sign-ups increase 1000% in a matter of weeks.

This presentation will be given by Justin Carmony, a lead developer for both projects.

I will be speaking on Friday, Oct. 9th at 7:00 PM. I’m looking forward to presenting and have my slides done early for once. Hopefully you all will enjoy it! If you aren’t signed up to attend this year, really consider! It is going to be a very awesome, there are a lot of great of local, and national, presenters. Use the coupon UPHPU to get 50% off attendance! See you there!