Hello everyone. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas season this year, and I wish you many blessings for the coming year.

I don’t know how many people know this, but this is actually the fourth (or fifth?) incarnation of The Idea Basket. It was originally a tech news and commentary site, which underwent several permutations and eventually closed. I started up this blog version of The Idea Basket in 2005, and I’ve been very happy with the format. However, in recent times, some major events have transpired in my life to cause me to reevaluate pretty much everything I’m doing. As difficult as this decision is for me, it is one that I feel is right. I’m closing The Idea Basket. This is the last post I’ll make, and I just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed posting here, and your comments and suggestions have been most appreciated.

The xajax project which I’ve been working on since October 2005 is still in business, and we’re very close to releasing Beta 2 of the new 0.5 codebase. A new Web site for xajax is also in the works, which will include a development blog managed by myself and rest of the xajax team. So you’ll still be able to get your xajax news from a familiar face.

Meanwhile, I’m in the process of embarking on an entirely new venture, a personal blog on Christian spirituality. Yes, it’s a completely different subject, but it’s one that has become a significant transformational aspect of my life the past couple of years. I’ll update this post when the site goes live.

Anyway, thank you again for being my readership, and I wish you all the best in 2007. God bless you!

As you may have ascertained, I’ve not had much time to work on Willowgarden for quite some time. I have to admit I was disappointed in the lack of interest in the Developer Preview 2 release from a community perspective. Perhaps it was partially my fault, since I never got a chance to flesh out the end-user documentation to the degree I wanted, and many an open source project has been stymied through a lack of simple, clear documentation.

However, I’ve been really happy with DP2 as a platform for my own Web apps and sites, and so I really can’t complain about any of the work I’ve put into it. One such project is the Native American Flute Portal which just launched today — yay! With a few exceptions, the entire site was built on top of Willowgarden, and I’m extremely pleased with how well it’s worked out.

Another PHP project that’s shifted my attention away from Willowgarden is xajax, which of course is used by Willowgarden for the Ajax layer. xajax is in the process of a huge rewrite leading up to a 0.5 release, and I’m happy to say we’ve had some pretty neat action there due to the addition of a new developer (”CtC” aka Joseph Woolley). Much fun on that front is yet to come.

So, to wrap this post up, Willowgarden has met my personal expectations from a technology standpoint, but as a viable open source project, it just isn’t there. So I’m going to maintain a pretty low profile for a while and put off another big marketing/release push (aka 1.0 Beta 1 or something like that) for some time. I’ll be checking in tweaks and minor improvements here and there in the Subversion repository, but that’s about it. As always, I’ll keep you folks posted here at The Idea Basket!

Geez, I haven’t posted anything here since the 19th? For shame! But it’s not completely my fault. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve been up to lately:

• Launched a new Web site for Binary Sea, an electronic music group I recently co-founded with Shayne White
• Rehearsing for upcoming gigs of aforementioned group
• On the Commandtext front: finished major milestone of internal project and begining work on a new consulting project
• Attended an awesome, Spirit-filled youth conference at my local church (guest speaker was Banning Liebscher of Bethel Church in Redding, CA). I love you Jesus!!!
• Hammering away at the design and coding of a major “portal” site co-hosted by my flute maker friend Geoffrey Ellis
• Released a low-profile Beta 1 of the upcoming xajax 0.5 release
• Lots of other odds and ends

I think my life needs some simplificaton right now. The modern lifestyle is a constant drive to accomplish 120% of what we can actually do if we want to maintain health, comfort, and spiritual growth. I’ve made the decision to start trimming away at the edges. I’ll let you know how that goes!

Hey folks, I’m back! After being gone for a few weeks due to a family emergency, I’m now ready and rarin’ to go. First on the agenda: getting Willowgarden Developer Preview 2 out the door! The first step in that direction is adding the code to a Subversion repository, and to that end I’ve put Willowgarden up as a project at Sourceforge.net.

So, the good news: the codebase for DP2 is now available via SVN and is roughly 95% complete! Yay! The bad news is that it’ll be probably another week at least before I’ve worked enough on documentation, sample code, tutorials, etc. to feel comfortable building an official DP2 release. But if you like to be on the bleeding edge of tech, by all means go ahead with the SVN code. Please note: you’ll need to read this post at the Willowgarden forums in order to set your environment up correctly.

In other news, xajax 0.5 is still on the table, and I’m hoping we can get a beta release out by late September. Keep your fingers crossed! Much more news on that to come in the days ahead.

Thanks for your patience, and I’ll see you again here very soon!

Things have been pretty quiet around here lately; mainly because I haven’t found anything very interesting to talk about and have been so busy doing tedious low-level programming work. It’s good to clean up and polish code, but certainly far less glamorous than inventing cool stuff from scratch. In another life, I’ve also been busy rehearsing for an electronic music concert I’ll be performing with my brother Shayne later this year. My live music chops go way back with Distant Oaks doing acoustic music, but electronic music with keyboards, computers, etc. is a very different beast.

One thought I’ll leave with you: blogging is a very personal and very immediate form of media. So much so that I sometimes fear that bloggers can get too wrapped up in a cocoon of self-glorifying reflection. You see this when prominent bloggers bristle anytime blogging or the blogosphere receives any kind of criticism. Now I love blogs, and I get a lot of my news and commentary on a variety of topics from good blogs, but I think sharp, unbalanced attacks and out-of-control egos can be a real problem sometimes. Of course, this is really all about human nature and nothing about blogging per se, but with all the talk about blogs bringing freedom of expression to everyone and turning information into a democratic, level playing-field, we have to ask ourselves this important question: what are we now free to express?

I know I promised to post something last week, but I was just feeling too crummy. However, I’m much better this week and getting back into the swing of things. Man, I feel like most of June just completely disappeared on me.

Anyway, I want to give you all a status update on the two big PHP projects I’ve been working on, xajax and Willowgarden. First off, however, I want to thank my day-job employer, Commandtext, for allowing me to spend some time working on these projects during business hours.

xajax — I was really getting down and dirty with 0.5 until a few weeks ago, but what I did get done was lay down on “paper” a good foundation for the new modular architecture. The first programming stabs at that were checked into SVN, so I hope to pick up where I left off shortly. Big thanks goes to Eion Robb (BigBrownChunx) who’s been enhancing and refining the 0.5 codebase in my absence. It’s good to have him on the project.

While xajax 0.5 will have a somewhat different (and IMHO better) API and will not be backwards-compatible with software currently using xajax 0.2.4, we’re moving forward with the idea of a “legacy” layer that will allow you to upgrade to 0.5 without having to rewrite all of your code. You might have to make a very few changes just to use new class names, but that’s about it I hope. More information about how this will work is forthcoming.

Willowgarden — In terms of Willowgarden’s public face, I didn’t get the momentum going that I wanted to for this, and at the moment it seems a little bit like abandonware. In reality, I’ve been significantly improving and enhancing the base architecture on almost every level. I’m feeling really, REALLY good about the direction of this project now, and I’m looking forward to releasing Developer Preview 2. The release date for DP2 won’t be this month as I had hoped. With luck, it’ll be ready by this time next month.

Some of the main highlights of DP2:

1. The Data Access layer, which includes the data mapper infrastructure, has been almost completely redone. Before, it was just a slight abstraction of a database layer. Now it’s a full-fledged, storage-independent layer that is highly modular and easily customizable and gives archetypes (data/domain objects) ActiveRecord-style functionality using a clean API.
2. The configuration classes have been enhanced to use a “best-pratice” XML format that distinguishes between framework-specific settings and custom settings via namespaces. Required and optional (with default) settings can be specified via custom subclasses. I honestly believe this new config system is now one of the best of its kind in the PHP world.
3. Framework-wide access to logging and session management is now handled by simple interfaces which can be implemented by third-party libraries. PEAR’s HTTP_Session2 is included by default for sessions. For logging, you can easily use PEAR_Log, Zend_Log, or another library (or your own).
4. Due to the improved Data Access layer, archetypes are now very “smart” when it comes to data schema, relationships, validation, filters, etc. You can specify all this information programmatically using a cool “fluent interface” via the power of PHP 5. It’s the perfect blend between the Zen-like abstraction of Ruby and the hands-on pragmatism of PHP.

You’re going to love DP2. I’m just plain excited about it — the level of detail is far greater than with DP1 which still had a lot of “holes” in it. Obviously, some aspects of DP2 will still be under construction, but more of the platform will be heading towards stable APIs and stable code, which is always a good thing. The Wiki/documentation and tests won’t be fully baked yet, but something will be up and running when DP2 is released.

As always, check back here for the latest news. In closing, I want to reassure you that I’ve invested a lot of effort into both xajax and Willowgarden and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Jared is here to stay.

I just haven’t been feeling great lately and in fact seem to be re-sick with the same cold I had two weeks ago. That and a wacko schedule has restricted my ability to blog effectively. However, I refuse to let this site get stagnant, so I promise I’ll post some interesting stuff later in the week. I have a status update on Willowgarden in particular I’d like to share with you, so I hope you’ll drop by soon and read all about it.

Cheers! –Jared

Now some might say I’m just engaging in an ego trip, but I decided I’d try to scrounge up a decent portrait of myself and put it on the blog here so y’all know who’s writing what you’re reading. I like to connect with people on the Web and always enjoy seeing what they look like — otherwise, I could be reading random noise generated by a blog robot for all I know.

Since I’m working at the home office today, and nobody’s around, I tried the self-portrait method. Surprisingly, it came out reasonably well (if you’re into the serious artistic genius look). Of course, it doesn’t hurt to be using a Canon Digital Rebel XT while you’re at it.

I’m going to rant for a moment, so you may want to leave if you aren’t in the mood.

I’m sick and tired of seeing political tirades mixed in with technology discussion on blogs. When I go to a blog that’s all about, say, marketing Web services, or developing Cocoa software for Mac OS X, or running Ruby on Fedora Core, or whatever, I want to read about those topics. Why the **** do I care what they think about George W. Bush? Why am I in the least bit interested in their opinion of the latest NSA program exposé? Who died and made them Political Commentator Extraordinaire? Who says they know anything about what the hell they’re talking about?

Politics is an extremely complicated subject, just like computer programming or graphics design. Let’s put this in reverse, and imagine some dude working for a senatorial political campaign who learned how to use a PC in high school and just got a new Mac. Should we be interested in his opinion of the OS X microkernel architecture? Should we appreciate his views on how Universal Type Identifiers aren’t as useful as file extensions? Should we acknowledge the importance of his claim that Windows has a better network stack?

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Let me tell you right now: if you think you are qualified to comment on politics, you probably aren’t. Very few people are, in fact, which is why it’s hard to find really, really good political blogs. Most people just talk out of their collective asses and demonize people they hate instead of talking sensibly and rationally about real issues.

So, if I see one more “Bush sucks” or “I hate Ted Kennedy” style nonsense on one more technology blog, I just might go bang my head against a brick wall. With luck, I’ll pass out and not have to read that crap when all I’m interested in is what the guy had to say about Javascript associative arrays.

P. S. My pledge to you is that The Idea Basket will NOT become a political blog, EVER. If I want to talk about politics, I’ll direct you to another Web site. I promise.

Hey, I was recently interviewed by Hatem Ben Yacoub at the online AJAX Magazine, so you might want to check that out if you’d like to hear me talk more about xajax and Willowgarden. Thanks Hatem!