Zenning!

Here’s a graphical look, by Henrik Kniberg, at how a small Kanban system works, making it easy and simple to understand how Kanban – a concept related to lean and just-in-time (JIT) – creates value in software development:

Source: One day in Kanban land

After having tried many IDEs for PHP development, including Eclipse and Komodo Edit, I have found myself the most comfortable and productive with the excellent NetBeans IDE.

You can start building PHP applications with NetBeans right out-of-the-box by simply downloading NetBeans for PHP (version 6.8 is the latest as of this post). Debugging with it requires an additional download of Xdebug.

Here is a quick and step-by-step guide to quickly start developing and debugging your PHP application projects with NetBeans + Xdebug:

1. Download and install NetBeans IDE for PHP.

2. Download Xdebug (it’s a small DLL library file).

Advice: Among the plethora of download links available on that page, let me tell you that you generally wouldn’t want the ‘non-thread-safe’ version, so ignore that; go for the latest non-beta version. I downloaded 5.2 VC6 (32 bit) of Xdebug 2.0.5.

3. Next you need to make changes to php.ini found in apache\bin folder (the location of your apache folder may vary depending on your installation, look for it).

Find “[Zend]” section in your php.ini file, which should look like the following:

   1: [Zend]

   2: zend_extension_ts = "E:\Servers\xampp\php\zendOptimizer\lib\ZendExtensionManager.dll"

   3: zend_extension_manager.optimizer_ts = "E:\Servers\xampp\php\zendOptimizer\lib\Optimizer"

   4: zend_optimizer.enable_loader = 0

   5: zend_optimizer.optimization_level=15

   6: ;zend_optimizer.license_path =

   7: ; Local Variables:

   8: ; tab-width: 4

   9: ; End:

Xdebug is not compatible with Zend Optimizer, so comment out lines 2 to 5 (by prefixing the line with a semi-colon), and add the following lines under [Zend] section heading:

   1: [Zend]

   2: zend_extension_ts="E:\Servers\php_xdebug\php_xdebug-2.0.5-5.2.dll"

   3: xdebug.remote_enable=on

   4: xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp

   5: xdebug.remote_host=127.0.0.1

   6: xdebug.remote_port=9000

Note: Remember to change the path and filename to match your Xdebug path and version.

4. Restart Apache (if using XAMPP: Open the XAMPP Control Panel and first stop, then start Apache).

5. To verify if Xdebug is configured properly for debugging, create a php file containing this one line:

   1: <?php echo phpinfo() ?>

Save it in your htdocs folder [phpinfo.php], and open it in your browser [http://localhost/phpinfo.php]. If Xdebug is loaded successfully, you should see something like this:

That is it! Now you are ready to debug your applications with Xdebug using NetBeans IDE. Simply open your PHP project in NetBeans and press Ctrl + F5 or click in the toolbar.

A detailed guide on configuring Xdebug with NetBeans can be found on this wiki: http://wiki.netbeans.org/HowToConfigureXDebug.

Happy coding!

Late last year (November 2009), the CollabNet sponsored open source version control system Subversion (SVN) was submitted to the Apache Incubator, in order to become part of the Apache Software Foundation. A press release was issued to this effect.

Subversion is now officially called Apache Subversion and has a new home address at http://subversion.apache.org/.

The old homepage of Subversion is showing the following message:

It’s an exciting development for me, as I have recently become more interested in the whole Open Source lifecycle: the community, the forking, the contributions, and the learning. This submission, and consequently the acceptance, of Subversion into the folds of Apache Software Foundation is an important case in point of how open source softwares (will) continue to live and flourish.

Another feather in the cap of Apache Software Foundation in particular, and open source in general. Keep going!

Related reading elsewhere:

Subversion moving to the Apache Software Foundation

I liked the way I was able to create additional toolbars from the taskbar in Windows XP, and then detach and move them around to dock to any side of the desktop screen. Unfortunately, this is not possible in Windows Vista, or so I experienced at first. The ability to detach a toolbar from the taskbar is no longer there, but there is another way now.

This nifty little feature of having a toolbar dock to any of the edges of your desktop screen is still there; only the mechanism to achieve this has changed.

The new technique is nicely described here: Create a New Vista Toolbar – Magic Trick. It’s quite simple: all you have to do is drag a folder to the edge of the screen and it will dock! Yes, that is all.

Here are a few additional links to take maximum advantage from this sweet little feature:

10 things you’ll miss when you upgrade to Vista (and how to get some of them back) – #1 tells you how to get the Quick Launch bar off of the main taskbar and dock it vertically to one side of the screen.

Trim Windows Vista’s Bloated Window Borders – You might find the new docked toolbars a bit ugly because of that thick translucent border around them (with Aero in Windows Vista). Follow this link and put those borders on a diet for good!

The Vista taskbar: it’s worse than XP’s – Although this rant by Dan Warne is no more relevant, since the solution has been discovered (and mentioned in the comments), but it’s still fun to read this old blog post on this at-that-time-presumed missing feature (of detachable-n-dockable toolbars) from Vista.

How to Create a Toolbar in Vista – Once again, the link to the article containing the solution (magic trick) mentioned above.

If, like me, you are running out of space on your desktop/laptop hard drive, or you require a central storage space to store all your digital stuff – hi-res pictures, HD videos, movies, music, etc – then you certainly have been thinking about getting an external hard drive for yourself. The market is inundated with manufacturers marketing their external hard drives in the sleekest of cases. And it’s not just the conventional storage brands anymore – Western Digital, Seagate, Iomega – offering a range of external hard disks, but the non-storage players have entered this arena too, including HP and Toshiba, offering competent products.

Western Digital My Book Essential 500 GB

Out of all the options available in the market, I decided to get myself the My Book Essential 500 GB from Western Digital. Apart from its big storage, it looks stylish in its black shiny body, with just a small blue LED light on the side.

Some of the things that I loved about the Western Digital My Book Essential:

• The design: its sleek, black shiny body looks stylish
• Cooling vents: To keep the drive cool
• Quiet operation: To hear a sound, you have to bring your ear closer to the vents
• Smart and energy efficient: Turns itself on and off with your computer
• Instant plug-n-play: No need to install any drivers or software to use it
• Book style design: Collect two or more and they cuddle neatly together like books on a shelf

Reliability, Accessibility and Design

Most of the external hard drives end up doing the same thing anyway: provide external storage for backup or extending purposes. Thus, the decision in the end probably comes down to reliability, accessibility and design.

Reliability: Most of the reviews of the WD My Book Essential I read (on Amazon) termed it as reliable. Though there were occurrences of the drive dying out, but the reviewers got it replaced from Western Digital easily under the warranty.

Accessibility: The drive is ready to be used as soon as you unbox it! As for carrying it around, it is designed for the home/office and thus, designed to be stationary at one place (although you can carry it around, if you wish to).

Design: 10 years ago, we could have argued that design should not be a deciding factor for buying a tech gadget. But after Apple scored with designing the best products in the last decade, design has become a crucial part of gadgets today. The My Book Essential scores pretty high on this front with its simple, yet stylish design. Place it on your book shelf or table and it will fit perfectly there.

Setting-up WD My Book Essential: What’s included?

The drive is plug-n-play: Just power it up and plug it in (in that sequence).

The My Book Essential 500 GB includes setup files of a few backup utilities – both for Windows and Mac. The main backup software included is the Memeo AutoBackup. Sadly, its a trial version, which is quite odd, since I read elsewhere on the web that other WD external drives (including others in the My Book series) include the full-version of Memeo AutoBackup (with its serial key printed in the manual).

The file system on the drive is FAT32 by default.

Spice-up your external hard disk!

You can spice up your external hard disk experience by converting the file system to NTFS and installing an alternative free backup software. I will write about them in detail in my next post.

I recently started a blog on Tumblr called Sawant’s Scrapbook and I have to confess, it’s a very slick blogging experience! Tumblr excites me!

Currently, Zenning (this blog of mine) is being served by Wordpress, as it has been since its inception. So, even for a pro user of Wordpress like me, Tumblr shows me that blogging can not only be easier (yes, easier than Wordpress even) but it can be a lot more fun too!

From their about page:

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML.

It’s so much more easy (and did I mention fun?) to post on Tumblr that I am blogging there much more frequently than I do here at Zenning.

For now, I am utilizing my tumble blog as a scrapbook, where I post about anything and everything that I happen to land upon (mostly short posts)! It’s like my place of zen! My idea pad! My lab!! Whereas I will be posting the longer posts – the ones that are more analytical – over here at Zenning. I am pondering over the idea of merging the two, or at least, aggregating the two together.

The only drawback of Tumblr that I have so far come across is that comments on your blog can only be posted by Tumblr users! Now, that’s a major drawback for a service that is positioning itself as a competing blogging/micro-blogging platform against the likes of Wordpress and Blogger.

But despite the drawback, I am in ♥ with Tumblr.

Do check out Sawant’s Scrapbook and follow me on Tumblr.

Last month, a world-wide survey was conducted by the UN.

The only question asked was: ‘Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?’

The survey was a huge failure because…

• In Africa they didn’t know what ‘food’ meant.
• In China they didn’t know what ‘opinion’ meant.
• In Western Europe they didn’t know what ’shortage’ meant.
• In Eastern Europe they didn’t know what ‘honest’ meant.
• In the Middle East they didn’t know what ’solution’ meant.
• In South America they didn’t know what ‘please’ meant.
• In the US they didn’t know what ‘the rest of the world’ meant.

I was just reading this article Why there will be many Twitters (Scripting News) by Dave Winer, where the author makes his case for why he thinks there are going to be many Twitter (clones) out there, and that ultimately one of them is going to be THE Twitter – one platform to rule them all.

But isn’t Twitter already a de facto for micro-blogging? Yes, surely, clones are going to pop up left, right and center, but how can one make something better than Twitter? Twitter’s success lies in its utmost simplicity. More features is just going to make it more complex. Imagine if someone comes up with a Twitter clone, that can have text in bold, italics, or underlined. (That doesn’t sound that bad, hmm.)

How about a clone that is funded by some major media network – Time Warner, Fox, NBC – and they get celebrities to ‘tweet’ on their Twitter? That surely is going to draw away the hordes of followers who only live to idolize these celebrities and follow them on wherever they are. For example, if Ashton Kutcher – the first twillionaire – shifts to a Twitter-clone, he is surely going to walk away with his million followers on Twitter. Oprah will take her followers if she decides to build her own social platform. Yes, Twitter might lose so many followers. But that’s all a big IF!

Celebrity endorsements are definitely good for any social website out there, but a social website needs much more than celebrities. In the case of micro-blogging, it needs simplicity; it needs ease of use; it needs ubiquity; it needs active user base; it needs to evoke an industry around it. Twitter has been able to do all that without much effort, especially the last part, and it continues to grow at astounding rates.

Twitter is not a success because of celebrities tweeting on it. It’s because Twitter is a success that celebrities are tweeting on it.

Have a look at what fast food joints advertise and what do they deliver in these comparison pictures from: Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality.

Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing 
was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate 
representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.

Here are three of my favorite ones:

Wendy’s Chicken Club

KFC Famous Bowl

McDonald’s Sausage Breakfast Burrito

Check out the rest: Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality