General News and Announcements
For 3.0 the team and I are re-visiting how we’ll recommend installing CakePHP, and as always I wanted to try to provide context on what my thoughts are, and get some feedback on the plans.
CakePHP is currently availiable in a few different ways. Generally people either download zip files, or clone the repository. Both of these methods provide a quick easy way to get started.
In the release announcement for 1.3.7, it was tentatively announced that CakePHP would be moving its documentation over to ReST, Git and sphinx. Having documentation in a git repo, and using sphinx to generate documentation has a few nice wins, that would be difficult to achieve with the current book application.
This time last year, amid rumours that the end of CakePHP was nigh, CakePHP died and rose from the dead . The year that followed those events, has been a very exciting one. CakePHP continues to be a thriving project with huge popularity, and a growing community. This year has a number of milestones as well.
In the recent bakery article concerning the ongoing development of CakePHP 2.0. The already underway migration from SimpleTest to PHPUnit was introduced. I wanted to go into some of the reasons and motivations for that decision as well as explain some of the long term benefits.
Its been a few weeks of working in the evenings but its pretty much done. I’ve been wanting to do this redesign for a while now. 2 years ago when I built the version of this domain you’ve all come to know, I attempted to create a design that was different from other programming blogs, and fused my interests in both design and programming. I feel it turned out well.
Last night I updated this site to run on the latest 1.3 build. While I know I should have done it earlier, I simply haven’t had the time. And since I went through it, I figured I could document it and share what the upgrade process is like for a small site, that doesn’t see a ton of maintenance action like this one.
Everyone can breath a sign of relief. Late last night there were rumours that CakePHP had died. Confusion and disbelief spread pretty quickly through twitter, and IRC. However, CakePHP is doing great, and is very far from dead.
If you’ve been following the ongoing development of the 1.3 branch over at code.cakephp.org:http://code.cakephp.org. You may have noticed that bake has had a significant overhaul, and a number of features and enhancements have been built in.
What started out small has grown into an ugly tangled monster. As with many people’s github accounts, mine only had a few things in it at first and all was well. But as more code was written the repository began to smell and was in need of some splitting up. So that is what has been done.
Today is the one year anniversary of my first commit to CakePHP, amazing how time flies. It seems not too long ago that gwoo and nate approached me to join the core team and help with writing the tests for 1.2. What started with test cases soon bloomed into full blown commit access and had me working on all parts of the core. Year one also saw the creation of DebugKit which is nearing its 1.
Well its been a while coming but today, DebugKit officially left GitHub. As noted in the past by some, the CakePHP family of projects were a bit scattered. So in an effort to consolidate everything, DebugKit has moved over to thechaw alongside other fabulous CakePHP projects like CakeBook and ApiGenerator.
If you’ve been to the http://api.cakephp.org today you may have noticed a few changes. First its no longer powered by doxygen. Doxygen has been giving us a few headaches in the last few months. So gwoo and myself have taken it upon ourselves to write our own Api generation tool. We called it ApiGenerator you can see it running at api.cakephp.org.
Well another year has begun, and often this is the time that people mull over the past and make plans for the future. Well this post will be no different.
Personally, my wife and I decided that it was high time we abandon the renter’s life and make a concerted effort to tighten the belts and try to purchase a place. We did so in september, and I’ve never been happier.
Earlier this evening the last 300 changes to CakePHP were merged into the trunk forming CakePHP RC4. It should be a painless update for all, and it brings us one step closer to a final stable release of 1.2, something we all look forward to.
I’ve been working hard over the last few weeks to improve the DebugKit and have added what I think are some pretty cool features. First up is FireCake. FireCake is a fully functional FirePHP library built specifically with CakePHP in mind.
I’ve uploaded the slides from the talks I gave at CakeFest Argentina. Both unit test talks are one file, as that is how it was originally written. You can find them in my Downloads area. Hope you enjoy.
Well I’m finally back in Canada after a somewhat hairy experience at JFK airport in New York, I’m home in the great white north. I had an awesome time at CakeFest and would like to thank all the sponsors and all the people who came out. It was a really great experience for me, and a pleasure to finally be able to put faces to the names and lines of text/code speak to / read each day.
Cakefest 2 Argentina is quickly approaching. If you are sitting on the fence on going until the last minute then get off and come on down. Its going to be a good time with lots of great talks. I’ll even be there! I’m giving two talks one on Unit Testing and the other on plugin development. Hope to see you there.
To find out more about Cakefest follow the link.
I’ve had quite the busy last little month or two. My wife and I have been house shopping for a while, and found a place about 2 months ago. However, just last weekend we moved into our new (to us at least) condo in west Toronto.
The new sideproject is the CakePHP DebugKit . I’ve been hard at work building a ‘debug toolbar’ for CakePHP.
If you are following the development of CakePHP today is a good day for you. RC3 was released today! We have all been working really hard to make this Release Candidate better than the last one. There have been over 400 commits since the last RC2. Some of the big changes are related to performance. Larry Masters and the rest of the team have been hard at work making CakePHP snappier and all around speedier.
Lately you may (but hopefully did not) have noticed this site being unavailable for long periods of time. It seems my hosting company has had quite the bit of trouble with the hardware running the VPS my account is hosted on.
However, they are working on it and hopefully it becomes a thing of the past.
So instead of an article this time around I’ve done some housekeeping and updated the geshi helper to a newer version that includes the ‘show plain code’ links and I’ve provided a sample of the javascript I use to do the effect. Furthermore, I’ve updated the licensing on it to be harmonious with the rest of the code found on this site.
Well the redesign and rebuild is complete. I’ve gutted my site and rebuilt it from the ground up. There are more changes than just a shiny new design though. With this redesign I’m shifting the focus of the site around a bit as well.
Well Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. I’ve been busy as always and have put up a new character painting in the Digital Section. This is the first painting that I’ve done in Photoshop that is approaching the quality and feel of my oil work. As time is always at a premium these days, I will probably be doing a few more digital paintings. They are easier and less fussy to work on than oils.
These updates keep getting farther and farther apart however, this time I have a good excuse. I got married! On Aug 25th of this year I got married to a lovely woman named Tina. We met in college and have been inseparable since. So that is my excuse, I never realized how much work went into a wedding. Insane. I designed the invitations the thank you cards, and did calligraphy on all the name cards.
Well I finally finished a few things that I’ve been working on. I’ve added a couple more shirts to the clothing portfolio. I’m really happy with them, and they’ll be available on my store as soon as I get it complete. It is coming along well, and I plan on getting it done soon. Furthermore, I have more shirts and paintings in the works for your viewing pleasure.
Wow, it has been one heck of a long time since I’ve posted anything let alone new work. I have been working on a number of things including learning much more about programming in PHP and mySQL. I’ve also been doing a bit of sketching and drawing but haven’t had the chance to really get my paints out.
New work! Check the portfolio for a new painting called “the man with the hollow heart”. I tried a new surface with this piece, and think it came out quite well. Since my old cart system was not working at all, I am working on deploying Zen cart and hope to have it configured soon. There will even be goodies to buy as well.
Well it has been a while since I last did anything here. But I have been busy in the last month, and have things to show and share. First is a new painting in the gallery. It is the largest painting I’ve done yet. The triptych measures 20“x52” which is quite large for someone like me who doesn’t normally work larger than 11“x14”.
Another small update, again to the markup of the page. I found that without javascript enabled my portfolio sections simply didn’t work. And while most people do have javascript enabled, there are those that don’t and I want them to be able to look at my work as well. In addition it is just good site/code practices to make pages accessible and javascript unobtrusive.
You may (hopefully not) have noticed that the site is all php now. Difference to you, is absolutely nothing. It makes my life easier though. However, one thing that did change, is that the mailers available for download have been updated. Now they have the right phone numbers and such.
The store in case you are wondering is currently on hold. I can’t find an affordable credit card processor.
Well I changed a few things around here. The drop down menu at the top is no more. I was finding it to be really uncessary and not very intuitive. Furthermore, Explorer just made a mess of it. Also, I’m trying to make the portfolio section more user friendly. A few people I talked to didn’t even know there was more work beyond the 16 images on the first page. I’m still working out the Internet Explorer bugs.
Added my most recent digital work to the portfolio. It was inspired by the constant talk and evidence of gun violence in Toronto. I thought it was relevant, especially considering last summer’s extensive violence, and talks of preventing it from occuring again this year.
It seems that although, safari, firefox, opera, and even Internet explorer 5 like rendering my page, Internet explorer 6 does not. It has to do with the CSS and Internet explorer’s way of rendering it. So I’m working on it, but its hard for me to see the changes as Internet explorer 6 doesn’t exist on Mac OSX. Which makes for a trouble some bug fixing session.
Well its almost done. As you can see, the main interface is done and the content has been reformatted and appended to. Futhermore, there are more images to look at. An entirely new section makes it debut as well. The clothing section has my t-shirt designs and will expand over time to other apparel. The shop section is still under construction, but should be done soon.
Have a couple new images in the pipelines, furthermore,I contributed two images to the OCAD whodunit? fundraiser this year. The show previews on Nov 15th, 16th , and 18th. All the art goes on sale November 19th. So check it out, and buy something. It helps a great institution out, and you get an original piece of art.
Well wouldn’t you know it, I have 2 new images to add to the portfolio. A fantasy game/historical sample, and a landscape. But I have no way to scan them right now, as my scanner is in another city. As soon as we are reunited there will be more to see. In other news conscious media magazine in toronto is running a bio/spotlight on me in their september issue, check it out.
Added a new image to the portfolio. I’ve been busy lately, but there is always going to be more work.
Added a bookmarks icon. Now you can see an icon in the address bar and bookmarks.
Compatibility issues with Internet explorer have been repaired. Furthermore, two images were added to the portfolio section.
The site goes online, and is open for your viewing pleasure. Visit the portfolio for samples of my work. The downloads has a number of PDF postcards, and wallpaper images, enjoy.