I’m finally back in the office today. While the conference was very good and informative, and the weather down in the Caribbean was beautiful, it’s good to be back home. I had some good catch-up time with Casey over the weekend, and now I’m trying to get things sorted out at the office. In the short-term, I have several projects I need to get finished:
- Finish the Altiris Deployment Solution installation in Valley City (I’m running into some communication problems between my test client and the server)
- Install and configure Windows Server 2003 on our Web server in Valley City (this needs to get done very soon, as in next week!)
- Get ready for Web Design training in Binford, which is scheduled for Tuesday, March 16th
I just installed Virtual PC 2004 on my laptop and am in the process of setting up a virtual network of computers to duplicate the setup I have going in Valley City. I’m hoping to figure out my Altiris problem while I’m in Grand Forks so that I can spend less time working on it while I’m in Valley City. I might create a system and install Server 2003 as well, so I can practice an install before doing it on a production server (which is always a good thing).
When I got in this morning, I had my copies of The PHP Anthology I & II waiting for me on my desk. From the browsing I’ve done so far, these look like the best PHP resources I have come across yet. The author, Harry Fuecks, is a master of advanced PHP programming, and his expertise shines through in these books. In my experience, many “advanced” PHP books spend 1/4-1/3 of the text covering the same basics that are covered in every other PHP reference. These, however, skip right to the good stuff. Harry is a major proponent of Object Oriented design, so he uses it liberally throughout the text. He also makes use of many of the best PHP packages currently available, including many PEAR classes, JPGraph, SimpleTest, and others. I’ve been waiting for a book that teaches good PHP design, and these two seem to finally get it right. Bottom-line: Highly recommended!