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Why You Should Finish Your Presentation Earlier

May 12, 2014

My goal today is to finish the rough draft of the two presentations I’ll be giving at php[tek] in Chicago next week:
How to Get There (keynote)
Faster Web Development with Yii 2 (technical)
In trying to finish up these presentations today–a full 10 and 11 days before I give each presentation (respectively), I’m reminded of the myriad benefits of finishing the presentations you’re giving way, way, WAY earlier than you’re probably used to.

I’ve been to conferences where there’s a dedicated speaker room, and there’s undoubtedly many presenters in there, actively working on completing their presentation, even up until the time the presentation is given. At other conferences, I’ve seen presenters in the hallways, or in the backs of other presentation rooms, working away. Frankly, if you’re still working on your presentation while at the conference, you’re doing it wrong. Here’s why you should have your presentations finished way, way, WAY earlier than you’re probably already doing it…

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php[tek] 2014 Keynotes

March 28, 2014

I’m quite happy to say that I’ll be one of two keynote speakers at php[tek] 2014! The opening keynote is from Terry Chay, Director of Features Engineering for Wikimedia Foundation. He’ll be discussing the technology challenges faced by Wikipedia. On the second morning, I’ll relay an inspiring story about how to get where you want to be in your career, based upon my own experiences.

The conference takes place in the great city of Chicago (well, just outside of the city), from May 21st to the 23rd, with training and tutorial days preceding the conference itself. You can read on to get more details about the two keynotes, and don’t forget to check the full schedule and speaker list on the php[tek] website to see all the other great talks that are being offered.

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Server Migration Complete?

January 13, 2014

So…it was an unnecessarily rough migration, and a very frustrating Sunday, but I think the server migration is complete. I had to reimport 10 orders for “The Yii Book” (that happened on the old server). If anyone has any problems with “The Yii Book” site or their account, please let me know. I’ll open the forums back up momentarily. If anyone catches anything else odd or untoward or…, please let me know. Thanks to everyone for their patience and understanding!

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Server Maintenance

January 10, 2014

Starting tonight, Friday, January 10th, 2014, I’m going to pause some activity on my site for necessary maintenance. My hosting company, ServInt, will be migrating my VPS to a new server (big yay!). The migration will give me a much more current machine, with much more current software, including the latest version of PHP (big yay!). But during the migration, no new data can be added to the sites, whether that’s comments in the blog or postings in the forum. So I’m pausing both for the time being. Once I’ve confirmed the sanctity of my sites (over the weekend), I’ll renable the disabled features. Hopefully this will be Sunday, or Monday at the latest.

Please do not send me any emails (in lieu of a comment or forum posting)! Any emails I receive will go to the back of the queue, and I’m currently trying to get through December’s emails. You’re best off waiting until Monday and posting a comment or forum message then. Really. Also, you should take a couple of days off anyway. It’ll be fine.

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience. But this migration has been a long time coming and is sorely needed. And if you wait until the perfect time, well, that never comes.

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What’s New in the 2nd Edition of “Effortless E-commerce with PHP and MySQL”?

November 15, 2013

The second edition of my “Effortless E-commerce with PHP and MySQL” book is now at the printer, and the electronic version is already available. So, you may ask, what’s new in the 2nd edition? In this post, I’ll highlight additions and changes in the book, and in a subsequent post, I’ll put up the complete table of contents. (And, in the interim, I’ll be working to finish up another book that just won’t end!)

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