Utah Graphic Artists Forum

Updated - April Geek Lunch at Rodizio Grill in SLC on 4/18 @ 1p

This month’s Geek Lunch is going to be in downtown SLC at the Rodizio Grill in Trolley Square!

I have setup reservations for 15 though I’m pretty sure that will need to increase this. Please Please Please RSVP so that I can give an accurate count to them. This is their opening week, in fact, the day after grand opening, so it’ll likely be packed!

Info:
RSVP : mindjuju at gmail // please give count of how many are coming with you or at
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/470822/
Salt Lake Location
600 S. 700 E. Trolley Square
Salt Lake City, UT 84102
Ph: (801) 220-0500

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=600+S.+700+E.+84102&jsv=107.hc&sll=40.756291,-111.871053&sspn=0.007404,0.013433&ie=UTF8&z=17&iwloc=addr

• mindjuju
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UPHPU Presentation - UPHPU Meeting - High Availability with memcache - Thursday @ 7p - Jeff Sherlock

I’m pleased to announce this month’s meeting topic is High availability with memcache. Memcache is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. The talk will include live demonstrations of memcache.

Presenting will be Jeff Sherlock who is primarily a LAMP developer with a focus on creating scalable solutions. He’s been working with PHP for over 4 years with most of that geared towards backend work. He loves designing database schemas, optimizing existing processes, and generally making slow things run fast. He currently work as a PHP Developer for a financial services company in Salt Lake City. He is also a part-time student in the U of U Computer Science program.

You can catch Jeff at his blog at www.hoodlu.ms.

Meeting info:

UPHPU
Thursday April 17, 2008 – 7p
12393 Gateway Park Place Suite 600
Draper, Ut 84020

View Larger Map

• mindjuju
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UPHPU Presentation - PHP and Asterisk - Thursday March 20th @ 7p

Asterisk is the leading PBX in the open source world. Combining Asterisk and PHP produces a great tool for building custom telephony applications.

Presenting is Senior member of the UPHPU family, David Boucha.
David works for the State of Utah and the Utah Army National Guard as an IT Analyst and does a lot of technical consulting for the federal law enforcement and medical fields.

Inquires to David about consulting should be directed to boucha@gmail.com .

Meeting Info:

Thursday, March 20th 7pm
Bill Good Marketing
12393 Gateway Park Place Suite 600
Draper, Utah, 84020

We are intending to have audio streaming and wifi restored at this meeting. Please contact me for details on audio streaming.

• mindjuju
• 0 responses
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March Geek Lunch at new location - Brickoven in Provo at 12:30p

The very kind Laura Moncur has brought to my attention that Bombay House is closed for lunch!

Instead, we are going to eat at the BrickOven in Provo. The address is

Brickoven in Provo at 12:30p
111 E 800 N
Provo, UT 84606-1713

My most sincere apologies for the new location. Here is a map:

• mindjuju
• 0 responses
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Geek Lunch - Lorena’s - 2/01/08 @ 12:30pm

This month’s Geek Lunch is going to be at Lorena’s near Bountiful (Woods Cross). So for all you Northside geeks, this is for you! The reviews on Google show this as 5 stars and has top recommendations from our very own Bryan Petty.

See you there this Friday!

Lorena’s Restaurant
2477 S 800 W
Woods Cross, UT 84087
(801) 295-2441

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• mindjuju
• 0 responses
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PHP and Ecomm using Authorize.net

Travis, a former employee of Authorize.net, will be building his presentation from experience he has with input from current Authorize.net staff.

He will be presenting on two main topics: coding to Authorize.net and the Business Aspects and opportunities of Authorize.net.

Coding:

SIM (Simple Integration Method) – where you calculate the totals and pass in the credit num, etc, info goes to an authorize.net domain
AIM (Advanced Integration Method) — more hardcore, Authorize.net is totally masked, the entire transaction appears to be on your domain

Business:

What is merchant account
What are requirements
Info on how to be a reseller

PHP and Ecommerce using Authorize.net
With Travis Barney of Progrexion
Thursday, January 17th, 7:00 pm @ Bill Good Marketing
12393 Gateway Park Place Suite 600
Draper, Utah 84020

• mindjuju
• 1 response
•  Presentations

Book Review: MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide

Packt Publishing sent me a copy of MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide for review. MediaWiki is the open source wiki software that powers Wikipedia.org. Many organizations, including mine, use MediaWiki to power their own wikis. The book is a bit incoherent at times and needs polishing, but it had some good sections and introduced me to several new features of MediaWiki.

The title is a misnomer since the first half of the book addresses MediaWiki basics, topics with which an “administrator” should already be familiar. Besides chapter 2, which covers installation, it’s not until Chapter 7 (”Administrating MediaWiki”) that the book really begins to address administrative topics. In a few places the book even suggests that you “request an administrator” (sic) to complete a certain task. (Wait, I thought I was the administrator?) The book might more aptly be called “The MediaWiki User and Administrator’s Guide.”

These are the chapters:

• Chapter 1 - About MediaWiki
• Chapter 2 - Installing MediaWiki
• Chapter 3 - Starting MediaWiki
• Chapter 4 - Advanced Formatting
• Chapter 5 - Organizing Content
• Chapter 6 - MediaWiki in a Multi-User Environment
• Chapter 7 - Administrating MediaWiki
• Chapter 8 - Customizing MediaWiki
• Chapter 9 - Hacking MediaWiki
• Chapter 10 - MediaWiki Maintenance
• Chapter 11 - Cool Hacks

There were a few instances of gushing praise for wiki software that seemed untempered and unsubstantiated. These weakened the book, as if the book were fighting for legitimacy. For example, the introduction states, “If we think a forum, blog, and CMS are easy solutions for this, then a wiki will be an even easier solution for the problem.” (p. 9) Not a line you’d use to sell MediaWiki door to door. After explaining how to edit a page (again, is that necessary for an administrator?) it reads, “Can editing be simpler than that? I don’t think so.” (p. 15) An administrator’s guide doesn’t need to preach the virtues of the software — administrators are already sold — but if it attempts this, the claims should be specific and backed by evidence, not sweeping and general. If the book were to explain that “X percentage of users prefer wiki software because of Y and Z” or “wiki software isn’t right for every situation, but it’s great for A and B,” the administrator might actually have some ammunition with which to sell wiki software to users and decision makers.

Chapter 6 addresses using MediaWiki in a multi-user environment. I think this should be assumed from the beginning. Again, wiki software is not universally superior to all other blogging or CMS packages. It should be assumed that MediaWiki will be used for multi-user collaboration since that’s where it excels. It shouldn’t be an afterthought.

I found several typos and awkwardly written sentences. The editing team should have done another pass over the book.

The book taught me several new things about MediaWiki, including the following:

• Interwiki links, page 61 — “Using interwiki links, we can create links to other sites on the Internet. This gives users the option to avoid pasting in entire URLs (as for regular web pages) and instead use shorthand by adding a prefix to another wiki.”
• External images, page 67 — Use $wgAllowExternalImages = true; then write something like this: [http://www.packtpub.com http://www.packtpub.com/images/PacktLogoSmall.png]
• Definition Lists, page 75 — “To indicate a definition term, use a semi colon at the beginning of the line. To indicate the definition, use a colon….”
• Creating a gallery, page 100 — You can create pages with four columns of image thumbnails.
• Magic Words, page 107 — “Magic words [like NOTOC or NOEDITSECTION] are a few reserved words that are used for special purposes in MediaWiki. They are used to create special types of formatting.”
• Using Sort Keys to Sort Category Listings, page 121 — Category listings are sorted alphabetically by first letter. With sort keys you can cause specific categories to appear out of the usual order.

Administrators and developers will like the sections on how to use templates (p. 122), how to create a new skin (p. 208), and how to write MediaWiki extensions (p. 226).

I would have liked more information on these topics:

• Subversion (SVN) usage and best practices
• Database internals
• Memcached
• Administering multiple installations of MediaWiki (wiki farms)

This book could conceivably be two. After being thoroughly proofread and polished to match the audience, the first half of the book could be a great resource for MediaWiki users. The second half, expanded to include the above topics, would be well suited for a MediaWiki administrator.

• Richard K Miller
• 1 response
•  Reviews

December Geek Lunch - Shanghai Cafe @ 12:30p

Greets UPHPU!

In addition to the Geek Lunch scheduled this Friday (info below), I’ve just been contacted by Mac Newbold of Code Greene about a PHP community event they are hosting!

Called the Lunch-and-Learn, Code Greene offers a lunch and then a presents a topic. This week they’ve kindly synchronized with our Geek Lunch so that after the UPHPU event, you can go back to their place for a lesson!

This week’s lesson is being taught by the Code Greene design team to talk about Graphic Design.

The location for presentation is:

Code Greene – Learn
44 Exchange Place, SLC UT 84111
350 South between state and main st
enter from southbound State St on Exchange Place, or from westbound 400 S on Cactus St (~50 E)

December 14th @ 12:30p
Shanghai Café
145 East 1300 South
Salt Lake City, 84115
map

Thanks again to Mac Newbold and Code Greene for his service to the community!

mj/v

• mindjuju
• 0 responses
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Looking for good intro programming training and theory

So I understand the basic of HTML, the concepts of CSS (even if I am still a newb that can’t write it from scratch) and a master of design (;)). But Wade suggested I get some good intro theory training before diving straight into PHP.

Does anyone know of any good online courses or materials available for such a venture?

• vuel egham
• 8 responses
•  Articles

404 car not found

Randy and Aaron, of NorthTemple.com (the blog of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s design group), pulled up behind a vehicle with a humorous license plate this morning on the way into the office.

• wade
• 0 responses
•  News