Professional PHP

Well, I’m finally back in town after the holidays. Let me tell you, I’m glad to be home. Between multiple holidays and taking my grandma to her cancer treatments in Ann Arbor, I was gone far too much of last month.

My Grandma is doing well. They used an experimental new procedure called radio frequency ablation to remove the meta-static colon cancer tumors from her lungs. This procedure is amazing compared to the standard treatment. The doctors at the University of Michigan were impressive. We’ll know the results in a couple months when her lungs look a little less like scrambled eggs. We’re hopeful.

I’m not much for retrospectives. Looking forward into 2007, I have a few major goals. I joined a gym today. I’m going to get a new laptop and refresh my development environment next week after MacWorld. I want to get at least a beta release of WACT out by May. I have to prepare for php|tek. I need to find a new place to live by this fall. (Ann Arbor?) I want to move by the end of the year.

I loved all my christmas and birthday gifts this year. (My birthday is December 28th.) This year I pointed everyone to my Amazon.com wishlist and I ended up with a ton of good books to read. Jason Gillmore from Apress also sent me some web development books. My to-read stack for 2007 includes:

• The Promise of Sleep – A survey of the subject of sleep for laymen, written by a top sleep researcher. I’m almost done with this one. This book has a bunch of sleep deprivation horror stories and a good survey of what is known about sleep, which is not much. Its incredible that we know so little about something we spend so much time doing. Its also amazing how many people have easily treatable sleep disorders that don’t even know it. Do you snore?
• Don’t make me Think – Looks like a nice overview book on web usability.
• Domain Driven Design – Recommended by Jason and Marcus. How did I get this far without reading this book?
• Da Vinci Code – Wasn’t on my wishlist, but I’ll read it anyway. I read so little fiction these days. Where is a beach when you need one?
• Getting Things Done – I’m almost through this one. It is a testimony to the power of the ideas that this book expresses that so many people recommend it, despite its being so incredibly dull. Useful? Yes. Inspiring? No. But, then I’ve read enough of these self help / personal productivity type books for a lifetime. Anyone want to buy a Franklin Planner? I used mine until I got a cell phone.
• Practical Subversion – I’m really liking subversion. If you haven’t tried it, do so. I’m hoping to combine this with Greg Beaver’s book, The PEAR installer manifesto — the book on my wishlist I most wanted that I didn’t get, to create a new deployment process.
• Pro CSS Techniques – A CSS book that tackles maintainability? I’m really looking forward to this one.
• Pro MySQL – The last MySQL book I read was a couple years ago, yet I use it almost every day. I’m due for a refresh. This one looks good.
• Pro PHP Security – Never hurts to brush up. This one looks like it has alot on encryption, SSL and SSH; not strong areas for me.
• Pattern-Oriented Software ARchitecture Volume 2 – The first volume, A system of patterns, is one of my “always within reach when developing” books. Nice to add to the set.

Thanks for the books, guys. I’ll have in-depth reviews of some of these here in the future.

Happy New Year.