PHP/technical New Year's resolutions - 2009

· 512 words · 3 minute read

Reflecting on my 2008 New Year’s resolutions, I didn’t accomplish all of them. The only one I really even began to tackle was contributing to Zend Framework. I participated in PHP TestFest, and my tests ended up making their way into CVS, so that was a nice surprise. I did manage to speak at both php|tek 2008 and ZendCon 2008, so that was good…though not really a resolution of mine.

Regardless, it’s been a good year for accomplishing some of my technical- and PHP-related goals. But what about 2009?

Well, since it’s public knowledge now, my wife and I are expecting our first child in June 2009 (woohoo!), so I’m going to be taking a bit of time off of the conference circuit. I specifically didn’t propose anything for php|tek 2009, because it’s due to take place just a few weeks before the kid’s due date, so I don’t want to be away from home at such an important time. Maybe I’ll supplement that with more talks at Atlanta PHP?

So, since I’ll be stepping back from conferences a bit, what will I be focusing on? Here are some of my PHP/technical resolutions for 2009:

  • Continue contributing to Zend Framework: With my first proposal now in the state of “Pending Recommendation,” I’d like to start drafting a proposal for a Zend_Cache_Profiler of sorts, ala Zend_Db_Profiler. I’ll be looking to write up and submit that proposal within Q1 2009, I think.
  • Contribute to php|architect: The 2009 Editorial Calendar for php|architect has been released. There are at least two topics in there that I’d love to write on. Specifically, I want to attempt to adapt my “Rickroll To Go With PHP, WURFL, and Other Open Source Tools” presentation into an article format. That should prove to be an interesting, entertaining challenge.
  • Catch up on my list of technical books I want to read: My Amazon Wish List is filled with all kinds of books that I want to read, so I’m really hoping to get through a handful of them this year.
  • Finish my iPhone game: It’s a super top secret idea, of course, but the gameplay is largely done and works well. I’ve got to work on scoring, how leveling works, preferences, and finally, graphic design. So…I’ve got a long way to go on that. It’s been a great exercise in learning UIKit/Objective-C!
  • Write an OS X Memcached GUI monitoring/profiling client?: I’ve wanted to build a little OS X desktop app for monitoring the performance of Memcached servers for a while now – think cool graphs of gets, puts, evictions, bytes used, etc. Something that, if you managed a pool of many Memcached servers, that it’d come in really handy at giving you a snapshot of performance and potential areas of improvement. This would be another great exercise at learning more about Cocoa/Objective-C, too. Desktop software development just feels a bit more legitimate sometimes, ya’ know? Or maybe that’s just me.

So, I think that’s it for now. We’ll see how I do this year.

Happy holidays to everyone! See you in 2009.