This represents a potentially major breakthrough for font’s on the web. There’s nothing to see yet but you can get more information on their site.

This new technique for embedding lovely font’s in your web design seems to be much slicker and promises to be fast, so is likely to be more seamless than the currently common SiFR method.

You can subscribe to their update list to get more info when it becomes available and to trial the system.

Can’t wait to see what this will actually turn out – it could be revolutionary!

So I’ll change that now by writing about this book the “php architects Guide to Enterprise PHP Development”.

About the book

As with several of the other books I’ve read from PHP Architects, I expected the the Guide to Enterprise PHP Development to be well written, but lacking slightly in depth. After reading this book I have to say this holds true.

Deliberately a little light when it comes to the nitty gritty, I enjoyed reading this book, it reinforced the methodologies I already use and really awakened me to different options in the testing and deployment areas of the software development lifecycle.

The book is broad covering everything from hiring and building the ideal technical team and planning through to maintenance, and it does it all in 265 pages.

The book is as you can guess specifically written to the needs of a php enterprise development. It presents the best practices and principles of building and managing an enterprise application in succinct and accurate terms. Highlighting recommendations and if you are willing to listen a useful framework for making your application development successful.

There were several areas of this book which inspired me to think about my own development practices, my role in the workplace and rethink how I manage testing in particular in my own work.

It is easy to read a project management book and not apply most of what you read. This book makes all those things you would have ignored accessible to PHP projects. In a way you can show your boss and make changes in your project management and team structure.

Something new?

Nope, nothing new here. If you have read books on Agile or any project management lifecycle, you will have heard 95% of what this book has to offer before. However having read it front to back I recommend it highly for all PHP project managers employers and PHP developers working on or planning any sizeable php development.

In fact I strongly encourage developers and project managers to read this book.

Its direct relevance to PHP programming and project lifecycles is what makes this book worth reading. It doesn’t answer all the questions but puts you in the frame and shows you what questions you need to ask and where to look for answers.

My rating

Readability: 9/10
Length: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Relevance: 9/10

Overall: 9/10

My mail ordeal

For the last month or so I have been snatching minutes to try and sort out mail on my server. And now i’m happy to report that I have finally been successful!

The trick it would seem is to not assume that following a tutorial or even a few will lead you to a working solution. My problems were down to my overlooking the fact that SASL security options I enabled would need me to manually create some more files for them to reference – I had assumed that they were going to work automatically. How silly of me.

I also learnt that logs are a blessing if you can read them, they will tell you a multitude of things about your mail server.

Finally I want to thank my tech guru colleague Dafydd who was the real star and helped me fix in about 10 minutes what had previously eluded me for 10 hours. You should check out his blog (but don’t expect to read it – unless you read welsh).

If you are stuck with a similar problem check the /etc/postfix/main.cf config file and ensure that all the locations that the system will look for things will be created or already exist.

Here how it happened:

January 1st

I made the foolhardy decision of packing up all my belongings, all of Sarah’s belongings and moving to a new house across town. The new place is barely 25 minutes walk from the old but since I don’t own a car the move would have been very challenging.

January 2nd – moving day

We needed to be out of the current place by the 4th, Sarah was down with a chest infection and couldn’t really help too much. It only took 7 full car loads to move all of our possessions – including all the stuff we wanted to throw out – to the new place.

I have to thank Marcus for the loan of his car for the day without him we would still be in the flat!

So we were in but without internet, phone or tv. It wasn’t until the next day that I remembered how isolating it can be to live without the internet at your fingertips.

January 3rd – the cleanup

As I said we had to be out by the 4th so we needed to get the flat spick and span by the end of the 3rd.

It took a whopping 11 hours to clean, hoover, dust, polish, wash and scrub the flat into the gleaming condition it was finally left in. Fortunately my friend Matt arrived in the evening to lend a hand – and it was very appreciated.

January 4th – the goodbyes

Sunday came and along with all my responsibilities for a Sunday I needed to go and have the flat inspected. I ran over to the flat and checked everything was as clean as I remembered and finished off the bits thatweren’t.

The inspection went well and I got ready to leave. I looked out the window and noticed it was snowing lightly.

I wasn’t enjoying the prospect of leaving now as it meant I would have to walk across Cardiff in the snow, whilst carrying a Dyson DC01 and without gloves.

January 10th – a new hope

Yes the phone, broadband and TV have finally been ordered and i will be back online on the 18th!!

I’ll start blogging regularly about stuff you may actually find interesting then.

What I learned from this move

1. Remember to order a phoneline before you move to a new place.
2. Don’t move on new years.
3. Snow is cold.
4. You will look like a fool walking through a city with a hoover.

It was all worth it though, the new house is lovely.

I’ve really noticed peoples passion and energy for the work rise! This is great! I’ve love working with people who are really passionate for the job for the work and for learning.

This year I want to help to encourage change in the department and try to support the key workers and get their ideas worked out in the day to day practice of the work place.

We’ve made some progress already but in the coming year I hope to take big strides in pushing a new product out the door, I see these changes coming through all the people I work and the changes in our working practice we’re already starting to make.

In 2009 I’d like to start making more of some established technology and use it as a platform for my personal and professional development for instance:

Subversion

We’ve already started using this on some of our new projects and I’d like to start using this for all the projects i’m involved in by the new financial year. Its really fab and has seriously improved the reliability and testing of my own work.

Zend PHP Framework

Moving into 2009 I’d like to make more of this robust and comprehensive framework in my work more. You’ll be hearing more about this framework as I do more work with it I’ll post my experiences and how I worked around my problems, I’ll try and keep it useful though as I know there are alot of tutorials and blogs out there covering this already.

Mootools Javascript Framework

What a framework, I know, I know there are lots of frameworks out there for javascript, but Mootools is the easiest and most viable I’ve used so far, in 2009 I’d like to really get to grips with this and make my life easier! I’ll be posting my experiments and work in this for you all.

2009 is a year of change with the worlds economy on the verge of a substantial change, I am sure we will all need to learn to adapt to a rapidly changing work environment, I’ll post my recommendations for making yourself more valuable my experiences working in a medium size business in the Wales, I don’t see the changing economy as a problem but a chance to change, grow and become more valuable.

Happy new year everyone!

My purpose in starting a blog is to give me a platform share my experiences in web devlelopment, to ask questions – and hopefully get some answers but that will depend on you.

I have some plans in the pipeline for projects and will be posting about them here too, plus my general ramblings, hot new software/services and anything else that is worthy of a write up.

So here I am saying Hello world!