Neulich im Foyer bei SinnerSchrader am Standort in Hamburg

Blogger 1: Ich hab' vielleicht was erlebt! Das muss ich sofort verbloggen.

Blogger 2: Bei aller Freundschaft - ich habe das ja eben auch mitbekommen. Weißt du eigentlich, wie schwer es manchmal ist Themen zu finden? Das ist was für mein Blog!

Blogger 1: Nix da, in meins

Blogger 3 schlendert vorbei: Im Normalfall verblogge ich ja nichts Berufliches, aber das hier ist ja von allgemeiner Natur...

Blogger 4: Außerdem habt ihr ja dauernd was zu erzählen. Mein Blog hat lange kein Content mehr gesehen, also gehört das Thema mir!

Blogger 5: Ist mir doch alles egal. Ich blogge auf Englisch: Es lest sowieso hier keiner mein Blog.

Blogger 6: Och, ich blog das einfach heimlich. Getwittert isses schon.

Blogger 2: Ich hau jetzt schnell hier ab, bloß schnell weg in die Mittagspause, sonst bekommen womöglich noch mehr Blogger davon Wind!

Blogger 7 sagt nichts, aber denkt: Nichts ist blöder als Meta-Blogging!

Now we celebrate the second anniversary of the PHP Usergroup Dortmund. 2 years of geeky and professional exchange, interresting talks, nice events like the php weekender and most important - the FRIENDSHIP.

2 years ago when I was searching for a usergroup in Dortmund and near surrounding there was none. But I couldnt believe that there are no PHP People in Dortmund at all. So I browsed phpug.de, but except one post in the forum nothing raised like this. So I decided that I want to change that and find others that share my interrests.

So I talked with Thomas Weinert on IRC and asked him to add a UG Dortmund to the page to get people together. I contacted the people from which I know they might be interrested and posted on the forums and so on.

The first 3 or 4 meetings we consistet of only 2-3 people (and around 5 interrested people I was aware of). In between by fortuity I read on Toby's blog that he is moving to Dortmund. After a bit searching I found his ICQ Number and contacted him, if he would like to visit us as well. He aggreed and helped by setting up a mailinglist for better synchronization. Soon after that more an more people registered to the list. Jakob (which I knew before over the web) also joined. And on the fifth meeting we consisted as far as I can remember of 5 or 6 people.

That was also the first day I meet Kore. I looked at his website when he registered to the list. And I first thought "OMG" when I saw that he tried to generate 3D with php. On one of the following meetings he also presented shortly was later became Image3D. It was impressive.

When I founded the UG in March 2005 I only hoped to find some guys which like to talk a bit about php. I never dreamed of the cool thing it became. A group of nice and friendly geeks with a high level of php knowledge.

I want to thank all of them for making this a success. The support with organization and hosting made the ball rolling very quickly.
I also want to thank eZ Systems for providing us with hardware and rooms for our meetings.

Seeing them every week (yes you read right, sometimes more often) at the meeting is always a thing I await happily.

Update: Toby also blogged about it.

After a longer period of talk-less but geek-rich meetings we will again have two talks.
Jan Lehnardt is so kind to hold two talks. We decided to split up the talks to two seperate dates. Next week on thursday, he will talk about "HTTP(S) Load Balancing und High Availability mit Wackamole". A week later on the 22nd march, he joins us to present "CouchDb" and how to use it with PHP.
Here are the talk details on german (copied from his email):
HTTP(S) Load Balancing und High Availability mit Wackamole

Ihr wollt weitere Webserver in Betrieb nehmen um mehr HTTP(S)-Requests zu bedienen als es eine einzelne Kiste koennte, aber ein dedizierter Load-Balancer ist euch zu teuer?

Ihr wollt staendig online sein, auch wenn mal eine Kiste oder ein Provider absemmelt, aber zwei (oder mehr) Load-Balancer sind nun wirklich zu teuer?

Ich stelle euch eine Moeglichkeit vor, wie man vorhandene Resourcen ideal ausnutzen kann um hochverfuegbar und lastverteilt zu arbeiten.

CouchDb[1] -- Eine Alternative zu MySQL?

Die wenigsten Daten sind per Definition relational. Hat z.B. schonmal jemand Baumstrukturen in SQL abgebildet und keine Krise bekommen? Sind die Daten eines Blogs relational, oder werden sie nur so abgebildet weil MySQL & Co das gerne so haben?

Relationale Datenbanken sind deswegen so erfolgreich, weil sie, wenn noetig, nicht auf die reine Lehre der Normalisierung bestehen sondern praxisrelevante Praktiken erlauben. Z.B wenn Geschwindigkeit oder Komplexitaet zu Problemen werden.

CouchDb ist von Haus aus garnicht relational sondern erlaubt, wo noetig, Beziehungen zwischen Daten explizit herzustellen. Ein Vorteil ist, dass Programmdaten viel einfacher Modelliert werden koennen. Diese Modellierungen entsprechen dem natuerlichen Character der Daten. Ein Resultat: Das Programmdesign und der Code werden einfacher.

CouchDb kommt ausserdem mit einer Vielzahl von Features, die es erlauben Systeme zu bauen, die sich unter hoher Last vorraussagbar verhalten und prima warten und skalieren lassen.

Ich erklaere ich euch warum CouchDb so cool ist, was es kann und wie ihr von PHP aus darauf zugreifen koennt. Und weil es so schoen ist, enthaelt das ganze einen Ueberblick ueber die Erlang/OTP Programmier-umgebung.

The talks will take from 60-90 minutes and will start around 18:30 or some minutes later.
Afterwards we will definately hack a bit around (most likely with the new stuff learned) as usual .
I am very happy that he holds the talks for us and meet him personally.
If you want to join, please register to our mailinglist. The talks will be hold at the eZ Systems office in Dortmund (http://phpugdo.de/Termine/Treffpunkt).

Update: Jan wrote an english announcement of the first talk in his blog

I set up my blog again. I damaged my old installation and i was to busy to repair it. Thats also the reason why I still use a standard design.

I will create a custom one soon. Actually already created a bunch of designs for my blog & personal page, but I guess everyone with a bit creative aptitude has the same problem like me. Everytime I created a design for myself and start implementing, I start to dislike it and want something new. There are too many new ideas popping up that appear to be much better as the previous one.

I think in the next days I will add my archive entries from my old blog again.

On January the 12th Sebastian Bergmann will be at the PHP Usergroup Dortmund and talk about PHP Unit.


The talk starts at 18:00h.

If you´re going to join it, please notice us on our Mailinglist.


The meeting will be at eZ systems in Dortmund.

Google and Microsoft started providing personalized information portals with RSS Feeds, Wheater Data and so on, with the use of ajax and some drag&drop dhtml they provide an easy customizeable center of information with great user experience.


In the PHP Usergroup Dortmund some members also signed up for this service. I dislike this data collection acquisitiveness of google more and more. I asked why they use it. As answer there was "Because it is cool and easy", "There is no other service like them".


So i decided to rescue my friends from these data molochs and started to code a portal where you also can change the structure with drag&drop and see all interesting rss feeds personalized on one page. Now it is able to handle multiple users with skin support integrated search and translation. Sure the 3 hour quick and dirty code is not enough for a glory, but the system works and the people are happy using it. So i think – MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, PEOPLE SAVED -.


Cause i have much interesting new ideas and the impulse to write it clean and nice i would like to ask if somebody out there is also interested in it? What licence should it be (some sort of opensource)? What features would be great? I would be happy if some people also response.

At the next week Ill begin my new job at eZ Systems in Dortmund.

I think it will be a interesting new job with challenging tasks and teamwork with great people.

My excitement is raising each day. I hunger for working with my new colleagues like Kore, TobyS, Derick, Sandro, Dirk Schmedding and the others .

Some days ago, i needed a small Content Management System for our company page. And the old questions came along. Build dirty include-o-rama somewhat page, or use a full featured blown up Content Management System available on the net?

Cause all the big systems where oversized, I startet to make a little experiment. What i needed was system which is easily manageable for people who dosent make webpages all day. It should be able to make use of modules for some needs like nice html forms, polls, databaseoutput and so on. For easily customizing it should support some kind of templates. Not at least it should have user friendly and search engine friendly urls like domain.tld/company/aboutus and so on.

So i startet to code it plain down (ugly procedural code) with just a tiny bit of time used for it. Now i have a CMS which fits all the above needs. And the funny thing is, it is only about 90 lines of code long.

I think it shows how much is possible with such a little effort by using php. Ive talked to some other php people and they find the approach also very cool. We had a big bunch of features discussed. Some quite geeky, some really usefull. So i decided to make it open source and work on it with them. It seemd that it will transform in some kinda Modular CMS Toolkit whatever . When we recode it to structured clean oop code with some additional futures we will publish it. So stay tuned .

Ah before i forgot: We already had a name for it PureEnergy.

UPDATE: Fixed some misspelling.

I moved inside Dortmund. Many problems came up on this. Like: get a big

vehicle, organize everything, renovate the new home a little and on the

moving day my driver went ill. So everything messed up again .

Today is the first day Im connected to the web again. Here is still some chaos but the light shines through. I had some really hard-working friends that helped me out. I want to thank them again and again. .

In


the last days i had no time for anything else than my new domicile. I

just posted a little on our PHP UG mailinglist. The other time i had to

catch up 5 days of work in 2. You maybe know it – your company had to

finish something and you are the only one who is able or have time to


do it.

The last week hardened me. Keep up even if i where

exhausted. I would think in the last days i grow with the problems i

faced. Maybe you think "hey moving is easy" – then you should had be on

my move. Next time you are invited to help *g

I dont know if i ever need this but it is quite cool to have php access to Gmail-Drive.

Dont have a Gmail account? Ask me i have a bunch of invitations free.

Die Franzosen sagen NON die Hollnder NEE und die Politiker wundern sich.

Sicher haben die wenigsten sich wirklich Gedanken ber Vorteile und Nachteile der Verfassung gemacht. Das haben die Politiker versaut, die in Ihrer Grenzenlosen Arroganz meinen das Volk nicht mehr Aufklren und Informieren zu mssen (es sei denn es geht um Urheberrechte bei Musik und Video), sondern einfach ber dessen Kpfe hinweg etwas durchzusetzen.

Der Verdruss der Leute liegt eher darin begrndet, das nicht klar wird welche Vorteile die Verfassung bringen knnte. Die Menschen haben Angst. Wovor? Vor Niedriglhnen, Arbeitsplatzverlust, Lobbyisten usw… Und die Politiker haben bisher alles getan damit diese ngste auch weiter bestehen.

Ich denke auch Flle wie diese zeigen das endlich Schluss sein muss mit dieser Art von Politik. Wenn die Politik wieder fr das Volk (nein, ich meine jetzt nicht "Geschenke fr alle") da ist statt gegen es zu Arbeiten, sind die Menschen auch bereit einer solchen Verfassung zuzustimmen.