Non-sequittal _______

11:00 pm - I'm back, but I'm not

22 months after my original idea about moving my blog to my own host, I finally did it.  So this probably is going to be my farewell post to Livejournal.

10:11 am - Software design

10:38 am - Firefox 2.0 alpha 1

The next version of Firefox is making the public alpha debut, with a code name Bon Echo. How exciting.

But after seeing the page above, I'm a bit concerned. The professional developers are willing to release their flagship software without having all components in place? I'm worried that they're starting to rush their products out, rather than taking their time and make everything as perfect as possible. Grrr...

10:37 am

So soon after I ramble about something, another potential solution pops up - The Zend Framework. This looks interesting. Because of its simple design, it seems to have less dependency on libraries and stuff. And it should be fitting in more environment than other frameworks.

But.... eh, it's a bit too late. Right now, I'm using the combination of the Stupidly Simple MVC Framework and in-hous PHP based template system. I'm still struggling to set things up correctly. I dearly hope that this will be saving me time in the future, because it sure feels like tons and tons of time being wasted now. Bleh the learning curve.

09:35 am - Japanese on Linux

I knew it's been possible for years and years. But for some reason, I could NEVER figure out how to do this. Last night, I took another plunge at setting up the environment up so I can type Japanese on Linux again. This time, the tools used were Ubuntu running XFCE desktop (Xubuntu), anthy, and uim. I followed some instructions on various ubuntu wiki and forums, and... ta-da! It's good to go!

I took this linux laptop to Walmart this morning before work. While they were working on the oil change, I typed up my first Japanese blog entry on that laptop. It works like a charm. ;_; My 8+ year goal has been finally reached.

11:25 pm - Blog move

[22:48] <Sylf> installing wordpress was so, so, so easy
[22:48] <Sylf> I'm thinking about moving my blog from LJ to my server
[22:48] <Serjei> yea, LJ sucks
[22:48] <Serjei> be leet
[22:48] <Serjei> and host your own
[22:48] <Serjei> hahaha

It's not that being leet sounds good. I've bee thinking about moving away from livejournal for quite a while. For over a year, actually.

So yeah, I'll be moving soon. This is actually the 2nd time this blog will be moving. It used to be on my own domain, using something I wrote really quickly. Then moved to LJ. Now I'm moving back to my own domain. I'll post more about that soon. Probably tomorrow.

11:12 am - Confused programmer

Beware - highly geek whining ahead. And it's rather unorganized.

As a programmer, I've hit a huge stumbling block. Actually, it's not something that happened at once. I've been feeling the pain for at least couple years, and I'm getting more and more fed up with the situation. And the worst part - I still haven't found a way out.

When I started using it in 1999, PHP was somewhat a new language on the web. It's a language that was made for the web. It did what I needed. It was very easy to learn, especially with my background in C, however rudimentary it was. I've built a site with it, and it worked. Not the best, but it worked. But ever since then, I've been stumbling on number of problems that these various "why PHP is bad" articles point out.

I think the worst problem I'm facing is that the apparent simplicity of the language is actually the cause of added complexity. I don't know for sure - I'm just guessing. I don't have the expertise in other languages like these bloggers. I must be missing something in the area of knowledge in software engineering, and the knowledge of the features that those languages offer.

The sites I manage here at work are getting bigger and bigger. The complexity adds on each time. At first, these sites were rather simple, just like some simple personal sites. I didn't have code manageability in mind when I started on these sites. Spaghetti codes are everywhere. We're managing the current sites fine, but I'm not sure how we'll manage if we have to do a total overhaul of these sites.

I have no intention of abandoning PHP just yet. Despite the weaknesses that PHP has, I still think it's possible to build a good software with somewhat clean codes with it. There are some major, successful projects built in PHP. Many popular blogging software like wordpress, drupal, b2evolution, etc are written in PHP. New wiki systems pop up quite regularly, many of them written in PHP. Large scales bulletin board systems too. Heck, I use b2evolution, PmWiki, and Simple Machines Forum, all driven by PHP. So I know it can do the job.

But on the sites that don't rely on these pre-built software, I'm really struggling. First and foremost, the separation of the logic and presentation is not there. I've been reading on that topic for quite sometime. I've heard about Smarty template engine. I've read rants about smarty. I've looked at some much smaller template system such as this one. But I've never implemented these. And I just left it alone.

Ever since I read this article on slashdot, and learning what this WASP thing is about, the whole issue of separation of logic and presentation came back to me. Actually, it's a bit more than that. It's the concept of MVC - Model, View, Control. To me, this thought pattern makes the perfect sense. It does separate the logic and presentation. Not only that, it separates the data access logic from the core business logic. And here it is - WASP - a framework written in PHP that handles the MVC. Perfect.

Or was it? NO. A big no. It assumes I have certain libraries and such that I don't have. It doesn't work well forme. And my search for a perfect MVC framework started. Symfony? No. PRADO? No. Cake PHP? This one looked the most promising of all systems I looked in to. I spent about two weeks trying to learn this system. But still, it just isn't flexible enough.

There is one problem when it comes to these systems written in PHP. Many of them assume that the hosting environment is Unix/Linux based, and is run with Apache web server, and MySQL is used as the database engine. My situation is completely different. I run my PHP site on Windows server, using IIS, and use an obscure database connected via ODBC, as well as IBM DB2. We connect to several others as well. Yes, multiple databases adds more complexity to the system.

Then I came across this series of article, Stupidly Easy MVC in PHP. It's not a pre-built frame work. It's a walk through on how you can build your own frame work in simple format. It takes inspiration from the same system that WASP and CakePHP did - Ruby on Rails. Great. I think this might work.

Right now, I'm in the middle of trying to figure this baby out. It still is quite a monster when I try to fit this monster spaghetti code in to this framework. I can no longer slap codes together as my instinct tells me to. I'm struggling hard to just rebuild one application using this simple framework. What I thought was somewhat simple when I coded it isn't simple at all.

I really lack the proper knowledge of software engineering. I wish I could get some experience in larger software shop, and learn how to work in an organized software project. I want to learn how to manage large scale software projects. I just don't know where to start. I feel like I'm trying to grab on to whatever piece of straw I can find.

01:37 pm - I'm still alive!

That's what I've got to say for today. Really, you don't want to hear about 6 months worth of my monotonous life.

OK, let's spice up the post a bit.
100% corn socks - socks made out of corn. Yup. Instead of using cotton or wool or petrolium based fabric. And Kansas produces helluva lot of corn - most of it for cattles, but others for ethanol production too. Go Kansas agri-business! (Not that I have any part in any of that business.)

01:02 pm - Firefox - as safe as condom

http://www.factorycity.net/sfx/always_use_protection.jpg

I knew this was going to happen.  Firefox ain't perfect.  What a shocker that is... NOT.  But now all I hear anymore is about the security vulnerabilities found in Firefox.  Oookie...  Of course, if you don't practice safe sex safe computing, you'll always be vulnerable.  Duh.

Anyway.

I want that condom.  Such a geeky sex toy.  <3

10:32 am - $30,000 cat

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=8443560&src=rss/oddlyEnoughNews

No, I don't buy that.  That's screwed up!