Aside from my attack on the bourgeoisie of TYPO3 templating, I wanted to mention my big new adventure: Vintage 56. Yes, although I may hate the escapade that was freelancing (on the side), I’m really excited about getting to form an honest-to-goodness production/design agency with some great people that I’ve worked with at Generals International for years. Basically, we’ve figured out how to make our own mark doing web, iPhone apps, graphics, video, and audio production with clients we love and help out a ministry by donating a large portion of our profits to Generals. Actually, we’re helping a lot of ministries and medium-size companies right now because they’re getting the full agency treatment without the full agency budget. Basically, I get to work with really talented people, and I wanted to brag on them. You can check out http://vin56.com to see what I’m talking about (yes, the video works on iPads, iPhones, and iPods).

p.s. – You need to check out our graphic designer’s blog…  she’s awesome.

p.p.s. – We will be launching another blog for Vintage 56 soon, but I’ve been slacking off– writing a frickin’ book. Stop pestering me. Seriously. I need to go.

Now that we’ve eliminated the lazy readers, let’s get down to business. TYPO3 4.3 Multimedia Cookbook is, like you would guess, essentially 200 pages of little extensions, TypoScript tips, and server hacks for sites with audio, video, images, and pretty much everything that’s not text. It says that it’s aimed at “anyone running or starting a website with multimedia” and recommends “prior knowledge of TYPO3”. That’s pretty vague, but it kind of sounds like everybody with a TYPO3 site to me.

In reality, I think the target they hit was a lot smaller. To actually understand what’s going on, you’re going to want some extensions under your belt. One of my only real problems with the book is that it’s supposed to be targeted at people with “prior knowledge of TYPO3”, and that sounds way too broad compared to who will actually get much out of it. Honestly, I would recommend having some real extensions (with actual PHP you’ve written) under your belt before attempting almost anything in the latter half of the book. If you’re only copying and pasting you can probably make it through without a lot of experience, but— hold on, I need my soapbox for this — you should never, never, never (and I mean never) be copying and pasting code that you don’t fully understand into a real site. If you buy this book thinking that it’s going to explain everything you need to know about API integration, you will either react as a good developer or a very bad developer. If you react like a good developer, you’ll be inspired by the power you can wield with a few tricks, spend some time getting caught up and understanding every command Dan uses, setup a test area, and come back to implement some of these later when you’re wiser. If you react very, very wrong, you’ll go ahead and start pasting code with very little explanation (unfortunately) into a site that you care about. That’s the end of my rant. I think they should have specified the target audience a little more judiciously, but we will all live another day.

Now that I’ve ranted, I’ll say that the rest of the book delivers for anybody with the right experience (or willingness to read other books for understanding). Like I said, it’s very spotty on when it decides to explain more about any subject, but you really can’t expect much more from a cookbook. The first chapter explains setting up a web server from scratch, multithreaded servers, and some concepts that would probably be best studied elsewhere, but the next half of the book really explains file management, editing in the RTE (rich text editor), and basic work with audio and video in good detail. Part of the dichotomy is that those chapters are well-written and complete, but anybody with the experience to read the last few chapters probably doesn’t need help adding images. For the experienced, though, the last few chapters provide some good code for S3, Flickr, YouTube, OpenOffice, services, automation, and even geolocation.

Overall, I’ll be happy to have it on my bookshelf. I will use it to help generate some ideas, grab the occasional snippet of code, and I’ll be happy. If that’s the book you need and you’ve hacked your way through some real TYPO3 extensions before, I’d probably recommend it. It’s “bookshelf candy” for me: not general enough for my desk, but specific enough be necessary when I need to reach for it. The price seems a little high for 200 pages; but remember that, like most cookbooks, you’re paying for the fact that it’s been collected and compiled. No single chunk is worth much more than a free Google search, but a whole collection is just plain handy. You can check it out on Packt’s website (I get no kickbacks).

Shock. Awe. I know. It was an easy decision based on the server stack we were running, our growth plans, and the fact that we needed to train intern developers with a very quick turnaround. We went with the sexy newcomer, but that’s not the interesting story. The interesting part is that it wasn’t a big deal at all. With good frameworks, it didn’t really matter what language we chose.

Part of the reason that I love frameworks so much is that dropping from CakePHP to Ruby on Rails is a syntactical change and not a process change. In a way, frameworks are just enforced design patterns (MVC, mostly, in my case). Plus, playing with a different language after all this time away has been great experience. This jaunt into the land o’ pure object-oriented madness and strict coding rules has made my PHP coding (especially CakePHP) better. I have new appreciation for fat models and thin controllers, and I throw in the ternary operator more often. On top of that, I’m getting to teach people (like my friend Neil) who have never really done web development on this level. Through teaching others about MVC architectures, I’ve gotten better.

So, I’m still a PHP developer. It’s the basis for 80% of my work projects and all of my freelancing.
I’m having fun, though, on the other side. Stretching my PHP skills, adding to my toolbox, and remembering that I was just a better programmer when I couldn’t rely on ten-year old knowledge.

(via Phil Cooke)

The identified phases [of burnout - not in a particular order], several of which I bet sound familiar, are:

• A compulsion to prove oneself
• Working harder
• Neglecting one’s own needs
• Displacement of conflict (the person does not realize the root cause of the distress)
• Revision of values (friends, family, hobbies, etc., are dismissed)
• Denial of emerging problems (cynicism, aggression, and frustration become apparent)
• Withdrawal from social contexts, potential for alcohol or drug abuse
• Behavioral changes become more visible to others
• Inner emptiness
• Depression
• Burnout syndrome (including suicidal thoughts and complete mental and physical collapse)

A List Apart – Burnout

In case anyone was ever wondering what Spaces looks like at 1 a.m. on a particularly frustrating night.

[via tul.com]

If you want to see this in action, you can just go to FulfillingDestiny.com in English or Spanish (or just go to the page and switch languages when you’re there, obviously).

Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

Forgoing sleep is like borrowing from a loan shark. Sure you get that extra hours right now to cover for your overly-optimistic estimation, but at what price? The shark will be back and if you can’t pay, he’ll break your creativity, morale, and good-mannered nature as virtue twigs.

[via Signal vs. Noise]