November 05th, 2009
Last week my good friends over at EE_Insider focused on the imminent release of EE 2.0. If you haven’t read it yet, go read it now. They feature articles, interviews, and news, and always with a bit of humour (yes Kenny…. there’s a “u” in that word). They asked me for an interview, but after EECI2009 my wife and I took a few more days to tour around Holland… and l long story short… the interview only got finished right now :)
Go read EE 2 Week Straggler: The Return of Derek Allard! (Interview) for my thoughts on the future of CodeIgniter, the development of EE 2.0, and what it means to unite CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine.
We had sent out a set of interview questions that we weren’t sure we would receive for ExpressionEngine 2 Week. Derek Allard, one of EllisLab’s developers, was on vacation. Since he’d been slaving away for years on EE 2, we gave him a free pass. But Derek is what the kids call a “trooper” and he came back to us this week with the answers! It turned out to be a really great interview, timely due to the discussion and popularity of CodeIgniter and EE, and we got permission from the ‘Lab to post it. So, EE denizens, it’s my pleasure to give you our interview with the great Derek Allard
Continue reading “EE 2 Week Straggler: The Return of Derek Allard! (Interview)”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Personal with no comments 
November 03rd, 2009
Back when I first setup this blog, one of the first things I did was setup akismet to catch spam (Sidebar:huge props to Lodewijk “Low” Schutte for his article on setting up Akismet for ExpressionEngine). I just checked today for false positives, which I do every few days. Generally the spam is very easy to spot and I delete it sight unseen, but today I took the time to read the few spam comments that were caught. 8 of them were banal, but the 9th was hilarious.
Now I know that that they often try to decieve filters with Madlib style randomly made up sentences, but this one couldn’t have turned out any better.
Your blog was of armpit awesome again even though it was petrifying for me to flagulate what happened.You turned what could have been a very folderol thing into something side-splitting and positive. Do pick with care! Also you dwell portable radio news programme show.I betrothed you xoxox
And doubly funny is that “folderol” is actually a word.
fol⋅de⋅ral [fol-duh-ral]
–noun
1. mere nonsense; foolish talk or ideas.
2. a trifle; gimcrack; gew-gaw.
Its a sad day when I learn that spammers have a better vocabulary than you do. The good news is that “flagulate” is not a word, and I get to keep holding my head high!
Continue reading “Its sad to learn that spammers have a better vocabulary than me”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy with 2 comments
October 23rd, 2009
The last night of EECI2009 is coming to an end. What an amazing time I’ve had. I’ve been under a fair amount of stress prepping for it, getting my speech ready, and getting ExpressionEngine 2 ready for release on December 1(!!). But it was all worth it!
Our fearless President Leslie Camacho gave an amazing speech. As he said, the cone of silence has been lifted! Highlights? Pricing details, licensing details and a release date! Exciting times. Punchline? Non-commercial License, $149. Commercial License,$299. Upgrade, $50. Coming (as stated) December 1.
I also had the opportunity to speak. “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants : How Community Shapes Development in EllisLab” went very well. It was recorded, and I’ll share the video here when its made available. In the meantime, here are my slides. I’ll be out of commission for about a week, but when I find more time I’ll post another blog entry summarizing and complementing the presentation for anyone who couldn’t be there.
Edit: the video is now available. EECI2009 Videos and Slides page, or directly on Vimeo.
I met an amazing group of folks, and this time I had a chance to hang out with some real superstars of the community. Everyone is just as awesome as you might think.
The city that hosted us, Leiden, is of course stunning; and our hosts from Whooz! WebMedia (particularly the eminent Robert Eerhart) made us feel welcome and wanted.
And now, I’m off to enjoy a (frankly, well deserved) few days of R & R with my beautiful wife storming around Europe!
Continue reading “EECI2009 all wrapped up, EE2 details announced”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, Personal with 10 comments
August 06th, 2009
Last year I had the chance to speak at the very first ever Annual ExpressionEngine Roadshow. I had a blast, I met a bunch of really cool people, and it was a great experience both as an EE dev, and as an EE fan.
Now in the second year – and second city (Seattle) – the ExpressionEngine Roadshow is coming up again. Its a conference designed to bring ExpressionEngine users and developers together offline. The conference offers something for everyone, newcomers included, but also provides in-depth development tips for advanced developers. So far, the day will include 6 excellent, varied sessions on ExpressionEngine with breakfast before the event, and a great party and networking event after.
If you have the chance to go, I strongly recommend you get down there. You’ll learn tips, techniques and development expertise from others who have been using ExpressionEngine for years, plus meet people in the EE community. From EllisLab this year, Rick Ellis, Leslie Camacho, and Lisa Wess will all be there; as well as Ryan Irelan (of EE Insider and Airbag Industries) coming, and they’re working on several other big names.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Seattle, WA
For full information hit up the ExpressionEngine Roadshow site.
Continue reading “Second Annual ExpressionEngine Roadshow”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with no comments
June 09th, 2009
I’m very pleased to announce I’ll be joining Leslie Camacho, Simon Collison, Veerle Pieters and a host of other brilliant minds at the the first ExpressionEngine & CodeIgniter Conference in Leiden (Netherlands) at the end of October.
What doubly excites me about the entire conference (well… aside from the whole European vacation thing) is that they are specifically focusing on both of my favourite tools, not only EE or only CI, but both. The topics are balanced, the conference is very well organized so far… this will be a pleasure.
If you don’t already have plans, why not take a few extra days and make a vacation of it; and join us for several days of nerding out.
Continue reading “I’m speaking at the first ExpressionEngine & CodeIgniter Conference”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine with 17 comments
November 11th, 2008
EllisLab is hiring an ExpressionEngine Technical Support Specialist. I won’t bore you with the job specifics (you can already follow a link and are literate) but I will say that 3 out of the 4 people doing development started in the support team (the forth fourth is Rick… who apparently founded the company or something), as well as the Director of Community Services. I’ll also tell you that its fun, the EllisLab staff are awesome, and working on the product is rewarding. If you are a CodeIgniter user and thinking about it, drop me a line, I’d be happy to answer questions. The truth is, aptitude and attitude are universally more important then experience (although, that goes a long way to help). Its a part-time position, so you can get your foot in the door, and still keep freelancing if you wish.
Continue reading “EllisLab hiring to the support team”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine with 3 comments
October 29th, 2008
In no particular order, here are some things that I’ve found interesting, useful, or funny. Mostly useful.
Fluid
A Site Specific Browser (SSB) that you can use to run web applications in. I use it for BambooInvoice, ExpressionEngine and Campfire. It rocks my socks. Find it at http://fluidapp.com/.
Growl Notifications with messages for campfire and fluid
I tried using Pyro as a client for Campfire, but it didn’t go so well. It looks like promising software, but for now… wasn’t working. Enter my favourite app from above, Fluid handles it like a champ, but one thing that was bugging me was the lack of Growl notifications (if you aren’t using Growl yet and are on a Mac, go install it right now). First result in Google was Growl Notifications with messages for campfire and fluid. :: sniff ::... its like they read my mind.
Also useful is the Fluid Icons Flickr group. I’ve got to get one for BambooInvoice into there…
DataMapper
DataMapper is an Object Relational Mapper written in PHP for CodeIgniter. It is designed to map your Database tables into easy to work with objects, fully aware of the relationships between each other. Well documented and with a loyal following, it looks like Simon Stenhouse has a real winner on his hands. I’m hoping to find time to really sift through the code but so far haven’t had the chance.
[edit: And D’oh! I was a fool for not also mentioning IgnitedRecord at the same time! Thanks for the comment m4rw3r.]
Sequel Pro
Sequel Pro is a desktop program for managing your MySQL databases. It runs beautifully, and I think I’ve mentioned it before, but was asked again recently about it. The only catch I found is that with Mamp I needed to set the “socket” to “/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock” when connecting.
ExpressionEngine Plugin: SS Friendly 404
The SS Friendly 404 plugin suggests relevant pages to users on your 404 page. It is used in your 404 template and returns suggested weblog entries based on the final segment of the 404 URL. Well documented and cleanly implemented. Well done!
jQuery Pumpkin
Found in the jQuery blog, the jQuery pumpkin had me smiling for 30 minutes.
Continue reading “Fluid, Campfire, DataMapper and useful links”. Posted in
Browsers, CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Mac with 11 comments
September 28th, 2008
Well, the highly anticipated Vancouver EE Roadshow was on Friday. It was attended by (among many others) Rick Ellis, and a very secret guest… me! ;)
Before I even discuss the actual show, the community, or the wonderful city, I’d like to send out a few words of thanks to Kevin Shoesmith, Travis Smith, and Monique Trottier for putting on a killer event. It was very well organized, run, and attracted the type of folks who I love spending time with. Thanks all!
As to the show itself, it was an afternoon of connecting with a bunch of really smart people, who are passionate about what they do, and how they do it. All the sessions were worthwhile, and well done. First was Susannah Gardner, whose talk “Templates and Buckets” was well thought out, and a fantastic demonstration of the over-arching ideas behind any EE site. I wish I could have packed the room with EE-newbies for this one, as in 45 minutes she clearly laid out the flexibility, power, and utility of EE, as well as a few handy tricks and tips! Rick and I gave a talk following Susannah (more on that in a sec), and then after us was ExpressionEngine SEO (they’ve given me much to think about on my own site) and Justin Crawford and Travis Smith wrapped up the day by teaching me and Rick how to build extensions for EE ;) - truly, they did a great job, and while extension building is a bit on the “high-end” for most EE users, I spoke to several people during the (ample) beer drinking afterwards who told me they were inspired to start in on a few of their own extensions.
For our talk, Rick and I weren’t sure what we were going to do, since the conference attendees ranged from people who were only investigating EE, and haven’t even used it, to grizzled EE-veterans who have seen it all and done it all. We opted to give a glimpse into the future of ExpressionEngine, highlighting some of the new features of EE 2 that will allow administrators to customize the control-panel experience for their clients. After I clean up a few loose ends in the actual code, we’ll release another video showing some of this to the world.
The most fruitful part of the day came after the conference, as these things usually do. I was surprised at how engaged and passionate people really were. They view ExpressionEngine as “the home team”, and root for it, support it, and help to shape it into what it is today. I met people from Ottawa, Alaska, Cranbrook, and of course several Vancouver-ites. Each of them, people I’m happy to have gotten to know. Ray and Alli were 2 users who have been with ExpressionEngine since the 1.0 days! Wow!
Seriously, I want to take a moment to thank everyone. The community gives back to us as much as we try to give back to them. After the talk, and over beer, I had this conversation that I think sums up how we stand with respect to EE users:
So wait a minute. For this small conference, you sent Rick (President and bigcheese), and you, and you came thousands of kilometers, and gave up days of your time, and you brought all this (referring to t-shirts and swag) and gave away the EE licenses? I can’t think of any other company on the planet who’d do that.
And the truth is yeah, we did, and we loved it. I can’t wait for the next conference either. Selfishly, I really hope its in Canada also. Go Canada! Way to reprEEsent (oh, clever, clever play on words there - cheap shots at my lack of a humour bone are welcome in the comments).
Continue reading “EE Road Show Wrap Up”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with 8 comments
July 22nd, 2008
Man there’s good stuff on the net, and sometimes I even get a moment to read it!
- Jamie Rumbelow‘s, got a good start to a series of CodeIgniter articles with his first part of The Guide to CI Databases.
- From the “D’uh, why didn’t I think of that!” department comes the excellent (and funny) CleverAndy. You know all those designs you do that your clients pass on for one reason or another? CleverAndy helps you find them homes so they don’t go to the island for misfit toys (or um… whatever the design equivalent is).
- 36 seconds! Fedor Emelianenko… wow. You are a bad, bad man. But seriously… Megadeth?
- Learning ExpressionEngine? Micheal Boyink (he of the mighty pogo) has put together Train -EE just for you. Fantastic resources, including instructor led workshop training. Congrats Mike, this is the way it’s meant to be done!
jQuery sparklines. Looks to sweet to pass on.
Continue reading “Cool Stuff for Cool People”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Javascript, Noteworthy with 5 comments
June 26th, 2008
Despite mad work going into ExpressionEngine 2 development, we’ve still be heavily focused on keeping our current products the best we can. To that end, today we managed to eek both a new version of CI and EE out the door. While relatively light on new features (there are some nifty ones in there though) the main thrust was a significant improvement to the Input library for both security and performance. To this end, I’d like to publicly express my gratitude to Pascal Kriete (Inparo), whose tireless efforts helped us immensely.
Continue reading “CodeIgniter 1.6.3 & ExpressionEngine 1.6.4 released”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine with 10 comments
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