OKCOOL

My dad has always been able to turn his hand to almost anything. It was quite inspiring growing up around him and he is responsible for teaching me everything I know about computers and IT.

I've had someone add me on skype this morning, I always tend to accept invitations and when I tried to find out who it was I had the following conversation:

I'm currently at dork bot down in Bristol!

I originally started this post with a big rant about Vodafone and O2, both of whom in the last month have treated me like a child, an idiot and a contract slave. Having read back through it all I realised that all I was doing was detracting from the positive story that is LEGO's absolute awesomeness. So I took both rants out and proceeded with love.

There are two kinds of business website...

I went off stored procedures for a long while. I got pretty good at T-SQL in SQL Server 2000 a few years ago, having written some hundred odd procedures for a single website. The reason I went off them came down to maintenance. I guess, because they are not really 'connected' to your app logic, it makes it tricky to refactor stuff and get to grips with exactly what might be calling what. Coupled with our total shift over to MySQL, it means I haven't written a sproc for a long time.

We’re ready to let the first few people test out Simple Web Management - or SWiM for short. Beta is a bit of a fib really, alpha is a more apt description at this stage. Although we do use it everyday with our clients, who so far love it.

I moved to PHP not too long ago and, I have to say, the transition from ASP.NET has been refreshing and quite straightforward (I used to do a lot of ASP and it’s pretty similar).

As our SWiM platform is built in PHP (specifically on the Zend platform) I will be spending far more time with PHP than I ever have done.

So, the question is, is it worth becoming Zend qualified? 

Keir and I spent perhaps, what you might consider, too long roaming around liberty city last night. A few hours in we found ourselves doing the normal thing of just driving around checking out the sights (running down the occasional innocent party).

As SWiM starts to become real; the technology bedding in, the api becoming really useful and clients being happy, it's time to think about business.