Developer's Stone
By: Oprah's Webinar
Tuned into the event, as the sheer numbers and coordination involved awed this webgeek. I wanted to see how it would do technically as well as content-wise given the amazing price tag of free. I got in early and things went well, but after a half hour or so, Safari crashed.
I'm not sure it was their tech glitch, as I had many windows open, so something else I was doing might have wigged things. Was happy to see it so easily accessible for Mac users. I have "high speed" internet - but "high speed" for a small desert town, so not really all that high. Nonetheless, the stream did okay...a few pauses here and there, but nothing too terribly annoying.
The interesting thing to me, was when I tried to log back in after restarting Safari. I went to Oprah's site and found it shut down for the webinar. Then it took a few tries to access the webinar again. Two entries attempts never saw video. A third, showed some other Oprah show. The fourth got me back in. Also noticed that more links had appeared for more ways in.
Awfully curious what her tech team is doing behind the scenes to accommodate so many viewers during this live webcast.
Tech wise, I'm much impressed and awed. I hope one of her webgeeks might publish some tech details about the event sometime. Mindboggling to think of the dough and resources necessary for this - and offering it up for free and light on the sponsor plugs.
Content-wise it's is about as scary as I expected, but with some potential as still open enough to encourage thinking and not blind following.
Its performance as I write this has dropped again...more pauses, and now has stopped all together. I'll try to launch on more time to see if I can get back in.
One memorable moment was Tolle saying he needed the "energy" of California to write his book. Probably, he did not mean for it to be the funniest thing I'd heard all day.
Relaunch failed, no getting back in for me. Still impressed though...will be interesting to see comments later about others' experiences. 700,000 people signed up from all over the world. Mind-boggling. Go Oprah.
From Philosophy to PHP
My first obsession was and is philosophy. My second is PHP. This second evolved over time, and I remember with great clarity, the moments of inspiration that led me to this current project. As I struggle through one problem after another in coding a large project, and my brain starts to push out of my skull so I have to pause and reach for some cola, I reflect on the moments.
Moment One: For Christmas circa 1986, I received a keyboard from my mommy and daddy. I had just started college and when I saw the keyboard, was not the least bit impressed. But, of course, it was still a toy, and I hauled the new loot into my room and started to tinker. I got the pieces of the Tandon IBM clone PC working and started exploring and then...well, then I looked up and it was morning.
Moment Two: The purchase of an iMac circa 199-something, it was an early one though when they spun in the commercials. It came with Adobe Pagemill. So one day I 'Milled. I remember when I followed along in a tutorial of some kind and managed to link two pages together. I pressed an underlined word and a new page appeared! WOW!
I still feel that same goofy wonder every time I manage to put a little code together. I can't help but wonder as I sit in front of my Macs and they seem to hold endless possibilities and intricacies within such a tiny little box. And the utter wonder that one misplaced semi-colon can send so much crashing down.
- early
adopters 
