mac's weekly disposables..

GottaGo - a hopefully useful application for the upcoming swiss iPhone release

marc ammann — 2008-06-08T01:23:32Z

Whew, it's been a long time since I really blogged about something worth blogging :)
Today, I want to announce the release of `GottaGo'. An iPhone application to help people get around in Switzerland if they will (soon?) own an iPhone :)
It shows you your closest stations and their corresponding link informations. I've dreamed about such an app since I moved to Zurich, so now I had the opportunity to make it myself.
There are a few things yet-to-come like when you have to switch trains or which number of train you have to take etc. But these are just a few more xpaths :)

Check out the video (.mov) here (with sound!): GottaGo Movie

Check out the screenshots:

How to get SBB Timeschedules..

marc ammann — 2008-05-27T01:36:58Z

In case anyone will ever wonder again, how to get just a plain html time schedule from fahrplan.sbb.ch..

set your post body contents to:

http://pastie.caboo.se/203747 (damn cms..)

and use the following url:
http://fahrplan.sbb.ch/bin/query.exe/dn?externalCall=yes

watch out for the date (not in the past) as well as the time..

doomed?

marc ammann — 2008-04-30T12:45:48Z

Somedays.. like the past 40 days.. I hope that a lot of my problems are just PEBKAC, if not, doctrine would be pretty damn doomed..

paneenee tauschbilder..

marc ammann — 2008-04-13T15:15:14Z

After a few hickups of MySQL and OpenVZ, one of the lowcost servers we are currently building up is serving as a db-read host for tauschbilder.com. I wish the project all the best during that time.. and if you think about other online paneenee exchange portals: don't look any further, it's the best!

Some presentations..

marc ammann — 2008-03-22T15:39:31Z

A long time ago and recently, I held 2 techtalks at our office..
One is about `optimizing PHP' and the other is about `mysql 5.1 / 6.0 - some changes'

Optimizing PHP Apps: Download here

Mysql 5.1 / 6.0: Download here

I'm not alone

marc ammann — 2008-03-19T00:01:52Z

wheee.. i'm not alone..

http://blog.libssh2.org/index.php?/archives/97-Have-I-mentioned-I-hate-Javascript.html

what is scrum

marc ammann — 2008-03-14T22:58:36Z

my boss explained me: when you stick your head between others asses, then it is scrum.

okapi release 1.0.0

marc ammann — 2008-03-14T12:49:09Z

Now we can really celebrate. After a long time of work, we were finally able to release v.1.0.0 of Okapi (Which is our preferred framework).
Why another PHP framework you might ask.. A pure sign of the `not invented here' syndrome :)
Why is it better than other frameworks? It's pretty darn fast! And it lets the developer hack a lot of stuff on his own - which, I've been told, is the intended way in PHP :)
And it's still a framework! Not like some other frameworks which are just one big include to get stuff like A() B() C() D() E() and the like..
We actually tend to keep the core very simple and small and try to support as many custom extensions as we can, to keep extensions which are not as documented and tested as we want them to out of okapi. But since we can't do everything on our own, it's actually very simple to include PEAR and ZendFW code into your Okapi application/project.

Find okapi here: okapi.liip.ch
Find the buzz here: blog.liip.ch

And I really want to personally thank Patrice for keeping his flock of sheep (us) together and to make us write documentation and tests! (Actually, documentation required a lot of his effort!) Thanks a lot!

the childhoodstory about my frontendphobia

marc ammann — 2008-03-14T12:37:58Z

I don't want to write a lot, but since everybody thinks that I hate GUIs.. This is not the case! While it's generally true, that I hate a specific GUI, I don't hate the concept of a GUI. (That means I like eyecandy, even if this might come as a complete shock now!)
The thing I hate about Flash GUIs and JavaScript GUIs and the like is, that they are friggin slow. In the console, everything reacts fast and responds quickly. When I click around in flash, everything gets blurry and the like. This is just hampdydampdy stuff.. For example: I really love to make GUIs on the iPhone because everything is fast and very quick in responding. I think this has to do with the languages they are made in.. I just hate that javascript/flash quirkmode stuff where everything tends to be overengineered today. (This does not contradict the fact, that there are cool JavaScript/Flash UIs out there) There are situations in which it is nice to have JavaScript.. (of course!) Like when you want to customize your Dashboard or do ClientSide input checking or doing collapsable/expandable folder-trees and the like. But please stop when it gets barely usable on a Mac Pro! :)
And this is why I hate to make such GUIs - they just don't scale and I just don't like doing something which makes something else slow just to get some blithering marketing idiot to talk about it.

let's celebrate

marc ammann — 2008-03-08T17:20:02Z

marc@yoda:/Volumes/hdb1/Work/okapi-core> svn up
At revision 10000.