Aptana Studio for PHP coders, a review...

So I got this new job where I actually get to do what I want which is programming for a living instead of making annoying booklets and brochures (re. my last post), anyhow I've now had the opportunity to work with other real coders and get their opinions on things. One subject that came up right away was what do you use to make your code? Which brings us to this review:

Aptana Studio 2.02 with the PHP pluggins

Summary: IT BLOWS!

Installation: Aptana is easy to install, all you have to do is go to the eclipse website and download it, then download the Aptana plugin for eclipse or you could go to the aptana site and download it, but then after you download it you have to install the plug-ins. I think there's just a couple, maybe 40? oh yea and did I mention you have to guess the exact right combination of plug-ins to install simultaneously or it will lock up and do absolutely nothing? oh and when you finally do get a plug-in installed you have to restart the program twice in order to install the next one, easy as pie

Set up: Set up is simple for Aptana, all you have to do is figure out that you need to start a project before you start and then select that project from your existing code and then wait... and wait... and wait some more while it builds your project (and mind you i'm on a 2.53 Ghz core I5 machine).

Usage: If you've managed to successfully install the software one of the things you will notice right off the bat is that the program takes about a minute to load up every time you start it. Why is this? well as far as I can tell its because every time you start it insists on opening the "My Studio" page which is really only ever needed for installing the plug-ins, but i suppose this is the price you have to pay for a fully featured program which keeps track of all of your files for you, oh wait... whats that?... oh yea it doesn't do that i forgot. Yep in all of its glory Aptana can't even keep track of the fact that you changed a file externally, so every time you open it up you must refresh the entire project otherwise you will not be able to see the code on the pages that have changed.

Extra Features: Aptana does have some nice features, like the debugger, of course if you're like me you have absofreakinglutely no use for such a thing, HELLO! this is PHP moron! we don't have to compile our stinking programs in order to run them so adding an extra "echo" in to see whats going on is extremely simple! and if you can't follow where your code is going and you need to track it then your an idiot, learn how to analyse things better! There are some other extra features as well, like the one where you get to see all of the lines of code as one long run-on instead of having them wrap LIKE ANY STANDARD FUCKING TEXT EDITOR would do! of course there is a plug-in for word wrap but i haven't been able to install it, its right next to the pluging for allowing capital letters and the one that lets you use your space bar.

Alternatives: Just about anything would be better than this pile of crap for editing your code, my current choice however is Notepad++. Notepad++ is kinda like notepad except it allows for multiple tabbed pages and it highlights the code like aptana. another thing it does is OPENS INSTANTANEOUSLY YOU FUCKING COMMUNIST ASSHOLES TRY THAT OUT FOR A FUCKING CHANGE, YEA THATS RIGHT A PROGRAM THAT ACTUALLY FUCKING WORKS!!!!!

The desire to code

So here I am at work again. I have in front of me a partially completed manual that i have been charged with creating titled "Fiber Optic Termination Instructions". I am supposed to make this manual for my work but i don't exactly know why, its not going to end up inside of any product, and it is not anything that any of our customers actually asked for or even mentioned that "it would be nice to have". As I know nothing about terminating fiber optic cables I must find a resource within the company to show me how it is done so that I might write this un-asked-for manual.

So I find Rick in the fiber department and ask if he could help me. His reply is predictable "What's this manual for? we don't have a fiber optic cable termination kit so whats the purpose?". "I don't know" I reply, but I proceed to explain that its something our Regional (insert ridiculous made up title here) manager asked for. So I tell Rick that I will ask him again and copy him in on the Email so that he can know why we are doing this.

The reply from the regional (dipwad) is circular, basically we need it because we need it. Forget the fact that we don't sell to consumers, and all our customers are already trained AND CERTIFIED! to do this exact thing! Forget the fact that this will TAKE A WEEK OF MY VALUABLE FUCKING TIME! no. we must have this. I must learn how to terminate fiber optic cable and write a manual teaching others how to do it even though they all already know how to do it way better than me.

So then I started thinking. Why is this angering me so much. Is it because my career goal is not to write manuals on fiber termination (or anything else for that matter). Is it because whenever I start to do the thing that I really want to do I get sidetracked into doing something else retarded? is it because I could really give a flying fuck how much fiber optic cable this company sells? or is it because I have a desire to code?

Its the code. Why you ask? Well essentially it's because a programmer is an artist, and like a true artist I do not care about money so much as I care about beauty. The salesmen in life (aka most people) only care about making money.

Take my work for example, we sell cables. Who in their right mind would say as a kid "i want to grow up to be a cable salesman" Sure you might say i want to be on TV because TV is liked by everyone, but no one ever thinks of the cable connecting it, who would? Yet every day I see people getting exited about selling cable to other people. why is this? the only explanation is money.

Code on the other hand, (which can be used to make a lot of money mind you) is beautiful. It's logical, a well written piece of code is something you show your friends (if they are programmers) and marvel at.

When cavemen looked up at the stars millions of years ago they noticed something. Patterns. Why did they notice these patterns? simple, because they are patterns. Patterns are the evidence that universal truths exist. Truth, is universal, omniscient, omnipotent. Truth is god.

When the cavemen settled down and made up some rules to explain the patterns they saw in the sky, they started noticing other patterns. more subtle ones such as: Every round object rolls better than every square object; A lever can be used to lift more weight than you could normally; If you have 5 good hunters in your tribe and every good hunter kills 4 buffalo; you will have 20 buffalo to last you through the cold months. 5 X 4 = 20. math was born.

Unfortunately, as man progressed and solved all the basic equations that were obvious to him, he was left with fewer and fewer easy problems to solve. Until one day, it came down to one of the most complicated equations of all time. how do we calculate a perfect formula for selling more fiber optic cable to more people? wow, this was tough. not only could we not calculate the formula but we didn't even know what all the factors were. we couldn't even come up with all the variables involved in this formula.

So what did we do? we gave up. Gave up on all the math, gave up on the logic which is in fact what had gotten us to this point. Instead we try random actions. lets see if chaos might work? We can't come up with the formula, so we presume that there is in fact no formula. We spite logic! we become salesmen, and work on emotion alone. whim. grunt and point. "you buy cable now!"

This is why I code. A piece of code is a small encapsulated block of pure logic. Pure beauty. If something is not working in your code, you can guaranDAMtee it is because of something YOU did. It is the existentialist utopia.

So how is it then that in a world that man has be refining for thousands (millions) of years that we are left with any simple equations to solve? why is it that these simple equations have not already been solved? Why didn't Plato or Socrates figure out how to normalize my database, or how to configure my xmlrpc protocol? duh.

Because we aren't living in the same world. We in fact are creating a new one. one where we understand everything. one where all truths are known. one where we are gods!

this is why i code.

Eggs Benedict Recipe

(Only 3 WW points per muffin!)

Ingredients:


Thomas's 100 calorie English Muffins
Medium Eggs (Not Large, Extra Large, Jumbo or Super-Size)
Sliced Ham (mine was 80 calories per 6 slices, only used one slice per muffin)
White Vinegar


Hollandaise ingredients (enough for 4 muffins)


2oz Plain Yogurt (Albertsons Fat-Free has the fewest calories)
2oz Smartbeat non-fat mayo
About ½ teaspoon Lemon Juice
About 1 teaspoon Brummel & Brown spread (fake yogurt butter)

Step 1, Prepare the fake hollandaise sauce:

Mix all that stuff together in a small bowl (I used a custard cup)
nuke it for 30 seconds when ready to eat
BTW if you need more than an ounce of hollandaise sauce per friggen muffin then you are a fat cow! MOOOooooo! Perhaps I could interest you in my frozen butter stick popsicle recipe

Now the hard part:

Get a pan that’s about 8-10” diameter and at least 3 inches deep, fill it up about with about 2 inches of water. Put the heat on high. While it is warming, get your white vinegar and pour some of that shit in there, about a shot worth.

Now get your eggs and crack them into individual bowls, Throw out the ones you F’d up because you are hung over. The yolks need to be intact.

Now when the water gets to a simmer (small bubbles on the bottom, not rolling boil) bust our your slotted spoon and start stirring it up. Have one of your bowls of egg ready. Now the trick here is you want to get a vortex going in the water, and then carefully pour your egg into the center of it. Your egg will invariably go all over the fucking place and you will want to throw the pan against the wall or beat your wife or something of that nature, but just sit back and watch, it will all work out. After about a minute, lower the heat to the lowest setting (BTW if you have an electric stove good fucking luck!).

Anyhow, you will see the white harden a bit and after about 3-4 minutes you can pick the egg up carefully to see if its done. I like my whites solid and my yolks runny but whatever floats your boat. Remove egg from water and place on a napkin. Repeat this process for all the eggs you are making, you will notice after a few eggs, the water gets all nasty with random egg bits. You can clean that up by lightly washing the eggs under the tap right after you remove them.

Get your wife or significant other off her ass and have her toast up the English muffins while you do the eggs. Once all the eggs are done, transfer them to the English muffins, slap a layer of ham on top and cover with hollandaise sauce.

This whole process can take some time, and chances are that by the time this is all ready it will be cold as shit. Whatever you do, DO NOT NUKE them to warm them up, this will kill the runniness of your egg yolks. If you want everything to be warm, then nuke everything else just before assembly then put it all together.

Now EAT you fat pig you!

Welcome Letter to the USA Today Management Team

Hello friends. 

I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to 1995.  Yes this is a momentous occasion, its hard to imagine that 1984 was over a decade ago! can you believe it?  We live in this strange futuristic society now,  you might even call it a brave new world.   And what of this madness called the internet?  I can't even imagine how it works?  where are all the information tubes at anyway?

Oh but why am I telling you all this, you obviously have a handle on things, after all you have a website right?  Isn't this great?  I mean seriously man.   Now that we have all these internets we don't need to waste all that paper that we used to print all of our news stories on.   Of course those darn tree huggers are gonna like that, but even a good-ol conservative boy couldn't argue about that one right?

The best part about all this technomological stuff is all of your writers can finally start writing stories that are more than two paragraphs long.   Maybe even if you're lucky all your readers will start having thoughts that are more than monosyllabic grunts!   Oh gosh i'm sorry that was a doozy of word there "Mo-no-syl-la-bic" yeah, that means like, the opposite of "UGH",  its kinda like the opposite of this thought "Nuke the F*ers!", what?  oh just forget about it.

So yeah, now that'cha don't have to worry about all that paper, you guys can actually write a story that has more than one fact in it.  maybe even if ya get good 'nuff at it, you might even think about sending out a reporter, to actually report something.

Yeah,  who'd a thunk?  

Ps.  Oh yeah forgot to tell you 'bout something.  you see that funny colored word up there in my text?  yeah thats called a "Link" those internet guys use 'em all the time to do stuff on these internets,  LIKE REFERANCING FACTS YOU F-ING MORONS!  GET YER HEADS OUT OF YOUR A**

McCain Throws Race... news at 11

Today McCain chose his Vice Presidential running mate, and in doing that he has all but given the race to the democrats. This is just about the worst possible selection he could have made. here's why:

1. The argument that Obama is inexperienced is not completely out the door. Obama has been a state senator for 6 years and in the national senate for 4. compared to Palins 2 years as governor of a very unpopulated state thats quite a bit. oh but wait, what was she doing before her governorship? thats right she was the mayer of a tiny podunk town in Alaska which had a population about the size of my high school. Not to mention that Obama's VP choice has 30 years in the senate.

2. Women will NOT vote for palin just becuase she is a woman. Anyone with half a brain (and lets face it men, women are basically smarter than us) will not fall for this sort of gimmick. She is Pro-Life and that doesn't sit well with the majority of women.

3. She won't help McCain get any other states. Alaska has a history of voting republican so there will be no change there, and outside of Alaska no one knows who this person is. period the end.

In my opinion, it's kinda a shame, because i like McCain. I like Obama a bit better, however and i was looking forward to an interesting tight race. too bad.

Riding the Rails

Ok, so i've bought my ticket, now I'm attempting to step off the platform and ride rails. The ticket, is a little 300 page book entitled "Ruby on Rails for Dummies". yep thats me.

So they say, "Its so easy, you can get an application made in no time at all". Well they were right! in about 20 minutes (after installing the software) I had already made my first application, complete with a database, a front end to view the data, and a back end allowing me to update the database online (without needing to access MySql directly). Only one problem... how do I get this online?

Should be simple right? I know, I'll go to the book! even a dummy has to be able to put their site online right? I mean seriously, what good is any website if you can't actually browse to it online? Even when I was first learning HTML, and wrote my very first "Hello World" site the real excitement came when I actually uploaded the file and got to see it through my browser. Surely the author of this Dummies guide wouldn't rob me of this joy right? WRONG!

After 8 hours of exacerbated searching to book and the net I gave up on my first day of learning this new incredible software!, nothing in the book about it (unless you wanted to set up you own web server at home, but with my system and my shoddy internet connection you'd really have to be a dummy to consider that option). No mention in the book! None AT ALL about how to put a site online via a hosted web service!

It was days later, when browsing the computer section at my local Borders, when I noticed another book entitled "Deploying Rails Applications". What's that you say? An entire book, just on the subject of getting your stinking site online?!? how friggin difficult could it possibly be? and why does it need to be this way? After skimming the pages I found out that there are several other pieces of software which are made especially for this task! Wow, don't you think that they would include this in the editing software?

Rediculus!

So, yea I haven't given up on this language yet, but if this language is ever going to replace the old standards its going to have to become a whole hell of a lot more user friendly, because I don't think there are that many people who are as patient as I am.

Why i don't own an apple, yet.

Ok so yea i've heard that apples are great, they run everything flawlessly right, no viruses etc... so why don't I own one? Well it's very simple. I CAN'T AFFORD IT! So you say, well really when you think about all the time you wast debugging your machine, and all the work lost because of faulty hardware/software how can you afford not to get one? so i'll break it down for you.

Here are the specs for a PC Desktop that i just built this on tigerdirect.com (as of July '08 the prices are correct), keep in mind here that i didn't just choose the absolute cheapest crap here, i could have made this for a lot less money if i had tried:

3.4 GHz Intel dual Core +
Motherboard bundle $119

Sony 20x DVD re-writeable drive $29

Patriot 2 gigs 667 ram $39

Xion case w/500 watt PSU $69

good cooling fan (tubes and stuff) $29

512MB graphics card $49

Acer 22" widescreen LCD $229

Wireless keyboard and mouse $29

3.5" internal card reader $19

3 piece speaker set w/sub woofer $29

250 SATA gig hard drive (seagate) $59

Total Price $703


Now lets compare that to a Mac that i might possibly buy:

20 inch IMac, (stock, no add-ons) $1499

CPU 2.6 Ghz intel dual core

Memory 2 gigs 800 mhz

320GB Sata drive

Mouse/keyboard

8X dvd drive

256MB Graphics card

do these things come with card readers?


Ok so at first glance it's obvious which of these systems is more powerfull. and of course its less than half the price of the Apple, but thats not the only reason to buy a PC, for me.

the thing is, I already have most of these componants, and if i want to upgrade my system I don't need to buy a new keyboard/mouse/harddrive/cardreader/Monitor etc.. In reality I upgraded my system for under $200!

But you say "Well our operating system is better and it will save you time/money" Well it's going to have to save me at least $1200 worth of time, and it better save it within 3 years because at that point i will need to trash whichever system i get and buy a new one because it will be obsolete.

And who's time is it saving? Mine? no it's saving my bosses time, and that sounds like more his concern than mine.

"But aren't you sick of your system crashing all the time and having problems?"

Honestly no, you know why? because i am not an idiot, i know what i can and can't do with my system, i know how to keep it virus free, i don't overclock it or do anything stupid like that so NO. my system is pretty much stable. and in the rare event that everything goe's haywire I have a backup.

"So you're just a Microsoft loving idiot?"

No, i hate them of course like any sane man, and i havn't spent a dime on any of their products so there.