Last year was a fairly active one for me in terms of public speaking. I spoke at four events, each quite different than the next, and I really worked hard on becoming a better public speaker. (Those two activities–public speaking and working on becoming a better public speaker–don’t always go hand-in-hand, sadly.) Over the course of the year, I learned quite a bit, both about myself and about public speaking in general. In this newsletter, I thought I’d share some thoughts and resources along those lines.

As always, questions, comments, and all feedback are much appreciated. And thanks for your interest in what I have to say and do!

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Over the weekend, I posted an update to “The Yii Book”. This is version 0.5, which means I’m halfway there (about the time I was hoping to have the book done; so much for good intentions). With that in mind, my sincerest thanks to everyone for their patience. I know this is taking longer than we’d all like, but I’m doing my best and very much appreciate the understanding on your part. It’ll get done, I promise. And trust that “The Yii Book” is not taking a back seat to anything as far as my work goes these days.

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Thomas Fuchs, creator of the script.aculo.us JavaScript library and the Freckle online time tracking site, posted a great page of useful services a couple of weeks back. These are sites and tools that Thomas and Amy Hoy have found to be invaluable in running their Freckle SaaS (Software as a Service). From Web site and server monitoring, to log management, to email tools, there’s about a dozen or more products that come highly recommended (and not all necessarily cost).

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Getting Help Online

February 27, 2013

Last night, while researching something related to Arduino (my newest/only hobby), I came across a forum thread that literally made me laugh out loud every time I read it. I tweeted it, which was subsequently retweeted many times over, and I started seeing various responses. The results were interesting. You should read the thread for yourself to see how you interpret it but to me, it reads like so…

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A topic critical to controllers, although not dictated within the actual controller code are routes. Routes are how URLs map to the controller and action to be invoked. Chapter 3, “A Manual for Your Yii Site,” introduced the basic concept and Chapter 4 explained how to configure the “urlManager” component to change how routes are formatted. Let’s now look at the topic in greater detail.

NOTE: This is an excerpt from Chapter 7, “Working with Controllers,” of “The Yii Book”.

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