My copy of Pro PHP: Patterns, Frameworks, Testing and More by Kevin McArthur has already been worth the money I spent on it.

In our, albeit slow, upgrade to more modern development practices (code version and unit testing being the last elements on my list), I was particularly fearful of code versioning namely concerning issues of automating a build process to export a copy of the repository to our shared development server, or just have a local server installed for everyone one.

However Chapter 8 has pointed me to two programs that I sincerely regret not having heard of until now: Phing and Xinc.

Phing is a build system written in PHP that works extremely well with PHP and PHPUnit. You can configure your own build targets, for example like “get” (SVN update essentially), “test” (run PHPUnit or any other unit testing), “try” (copy to a development server), and “deploy” (copy to your live server).

Xinc is a continuous integration server. Essentially, it monitors an SVN repo and performs a user defined action (usually running a phing buildscript) on any changes to the repo. Which is awesome because its solves the issue of updating the dev server. Having Xinc run a > phing try on SVN updates is exactly what we need! I’m even having delusions of grandeur of having it monitor tags for doing live deployments as well.

Don’t take my word as gospel, I haven’t actually installed and tested these systems out, but when I do you can rest assured I will be writing about it.

I’m a sucker for good quotes, so without further ado, my favorite quotes to catch this blog up. In the future I’ll post quotes that I find particularly good or inspirational.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky

Take away the right to say ‘fuck’ and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government.’
Lenny Bruce

Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don’t need.
Bill Maher

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path much clearer
I will choose free will
Rush

So I’ve been on a pseudo Leon Uris binge lately (pseudo in that this is my third Uris since Christmas, depressing considdering I used to knock out 2 novels a week).

I absolutely adore his writing. It’s historical fiction, always somehow rotating around the Jews and/or Israel (in the 40′s). He likes to present two sides of a story, or more accurately, two characters at odds with each other. He spends the first part of the book detailing the lives and backgrounds of each character, each in a positive light, before dropping the characters on the proverbial battleground.

The character depth and development Uris has is quite amazing and rare in books these days.

I do however dislike how he ended “A God In Ruins.” What was a good book became very rushed and extremely preachy at the end. While I respect his opinions, I have a distaste for authors that blatantly push their opinions on you. An author should be sublime with his indoctrinations, he should cause you to feel the emotion he feels and hopefully have you come to the same decision as he did. Sadly, all he did for the last hundred pages was all of a sudden push gun control like it was crack, despite the fact that the novel had no emotional construct for such decision (e.g. a beloved character killed by loose guns, etc.). I’d like to say it’s my personal views on gun control that cause me to have this rift with the book, but sadly I cannot.

Otherwise he is an amazing author, “The Haj” was an amazing book, and I have to finish QBVII.