bigger, better, faster. (AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Dual Core / 4 GB DDR2 / 2 x 400 GB SATA II / Debian)
Well ok – bigger, and better than the current one

I’ve installed today a new svn, trac and a websvn at work on a ubuntu machine with plesk on it. Actually it’s really easy but there seems to be no instant-setup guide, so I had to google quite extensive. Well I haven’t configuered it fully yet, but the svn seems to work fine, even though I’d like to make use of the pre-commit-hook (having the users commenting the commits, with at least 3 words); but that’s something I’ll change later. Currently we use mantis as bugtracker but I see some requirements for more. Trac seems to be a good alternative. Personally I’d like to use JIRA and Confluence – but I am to lazy to convince my boss to buy it and of course – 2400 Bucks *is* < insert the f-word here > money.

However – my work-life balance *seems* to be *unbalanced* and the affected personal relationships seems to truely suck atm; But therefor my boss said he’s satisfied with my work – and I have only 7 days left until the employment probation period is over and I am fully employed. – I guess that would be a classic scenario of a double-edged sword.

< insert your favourite f-word right here >

Three weeks of hard work are over and we’re done. http://gruene.de is online since 9am today and the feedback seems overall to be positive though of what I’ve heard and read:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=gruene.de
http://meedia.de/nc/details/article/wahljahr-09–grne-setzen-web-mastbe_100018828.html

I guess we’ll polish some things in within the next few weeks but in general I like it. However – I’ve slept only 4 hours tonight, after 18 hours of final spurt and still have another time critical task on my list …

coffee!

Everybody is talking about CSS fontstacks and there are plenty of good lists/combinations out there but do not use them carelessly – like the prototype.js guys did (@see screenshot). DO NOT use «Helvetica Neue» for your bodycopy or fontsizes smaller than 18px! It is a narrow/condensed font – not made for continuous text, nor small text. Use it only for headlines with 18px++.

Yesterday I ran into a problem with zend form and zend validate which was quite confusing. I wanted to check if a multiCheckbox has less or equal 2 selections. I really thought there would be some “shipped” validator but there isn’t. Then I’ve tried to write my own validator for that purpose, but Zend Validate didn’t pass the MultiCheckbox values as an array but as strings and I wasnt in the mood to hack the Zend “core” itself. Then I tried to use addError(), markAsError() or set _errorsExists explicit but that didn’t work either, as described here. Maybe I am blind and there is an much easier way … but the following works quite fine for me.

1. Create an Validator which always fails.
2. Check right after the isPost() condition if “your condition” matches.
3. Assign the “will-always-fail” validator to your element and you’re done.

// save as 'Zend/Validate/CustomError.php
require_once 'Zend/Validate/Abstract.php';

class Zend_Validate_CustomError extends Zend_Validate_Abstract  {

    const SOME_ERROR = 'someError';

	// configure to whatever you like, or override it with setMessage()
    protected $_messageTemplates = array(
        self::SOME_ERROR => "is not valid"
    );

	// sets the element as invalid
    public function isValid($value)
    {
        $valueString = (string) $value;
        $this->_setValue($valueString);
		$this->_error();
        return false;
    }

}

And in your form controller add right after the isPost() condition:

if(sizeof($_POST['yourelement'])>2) {
	$customError = new Zend_Validate_CustomError();
	$customError->setMessage('You must select less than 2');
	self::getElement('yourelement')->addValidator($customError);
}

Since the world of a bits and bytes consumes a lot of time, I’ve bought some new books, to clear my mind from code and graphics. The first one I’d like to introduce is by G. Edward Griffin and entitled “The Creature From Jekyll Island” – and it is the story about the federal reserve bank/system, the world bank group and also the International Monetary Fund (IMF aka in Germany IWF). It “tells” you where the money comes from, which ways it goes and where it possibly ends. I’m on page 160 and it’s a thrilling one.

The other one is by John N. Demos, getting started with neurofeedback. Since I am interested in this topic for more than 10 years I am really lucky that I’ve found that one. I’ve scanned it only just – but it seems to be a good book, because it seems to be well written, in an easy language without being flat nor to trivial. I guess this book addresses not the average folk – but if you are interested into brain waves, its meaning and how to “change” em – this book could be an option for you

It’s late – gotta sleep now

I’m currently trying to get some multi step/wirzard forms in Zend done and it seems to work as far as I can tell. I’ve used this little class as inspiration and it works so far.

I really like multi step forms as user but as developer I hate em. Nevertheless it’s 1:40am/Saturday and I am doing stuff for work. Actually I should go out and do party but that is not the case and so I code.

Oh ya – at least I did /some/ tagging, when I went to the grocery and there are still /some/ beers in the fridge.

cheers!

A few days ago I got a private message via meinvz.net and a girl, possibly with japanese ancestory asked me a few thing that only a very few people could possibly know about and if we could meet soon. That sounded strange and even herself pointed out, that it might sounds “strange”. A vague idea came up to my mind of what it might could be, but it made it less strange.

Flashback: In 2001 I met my real dad for the first and last time, by ambushing him in Poland, Brzeziny, without a warning. He was thunderstruck by seeing me but after an expensive redwine I brought along and a couple of beer he became talkactive and so we talked. One of my questions was, if I have some siblings but he negated it. I was not sure if he was talking the truth, but I was fine with that answer, whereas I wished he would have said the opposite. [...] after a couple of beer and a slight drunkenness we decided to stay over night and go to sleep. On the next mornign we got up early and decided to leave early aswell. He asked if we could stay a little longer, but we had rented a room in an international student hotel and had to leave.

Today I’ve met my youngest sister and her Mom! I do not only have one silbing, nope – two younger sisters. Okay – half-sisters but to me it means I have two sisters now and one brother. Yay and that’s so cool! The uberstrange thing about it is – they always lived here – where I live for about 7 years now. Just around the corner. The one lives just 300 m around the block and the other will move there too in a short time.

The tragic part about this story is, our chichi(jap. f. Dad) has no friggin kudos.

I needed a little backup devide and bought this one:

I’ve got the 32gig model for 60 Euro – which is quite ok. The speed is ok – not that super fast but storrage space is more important for me than speed (atm).

*update*

Some friggin idiot stole it. If I find out who you are – I’ll make it an unforgetable moment for you.

If you try to get a serialized array (php_serial) from the flicker api from a group (flickr.groups.pools.getPhotos), you may find your self a little bit lost, because you do not get the photos you want, only the amount of how many. You double check if everything is set to public, your account is ok and even try to upgrade it – but that’s not it. You used the usefull API querybuilder from flicker and then it works in that case and you wonder why it doesn’t in your application. The simple solution is, it doesn’t work with the php_serial format. Skip this parameter and you get your set as XML response. The only thing you need to do is, use the XMLReader and iterate through the result set.

It took me quite a while to figure this out – like 1,5 hours – so eventually this post is usefull for someone