I'm very excited to be able to say that I was published in php|architect, in December's issue. I had the /etc column, where I wrote a bit about phpwomen.org and what we're up to these days. As I've wanted to write for them for ages, I was very chuffed to be asked and it was fun doing it :)

Already a few days ago I got tagged by Manuel Pichler and Gaylord Aulke. I could not post as I was really sick the last two weeks. Today is the first day where I see light at the end of the tunnel and I feel good enough to answer the questions.

So you really want to know seven things about me ? Well - you asked for it

1. I earned my first money by creating a blackmarket in secondary school for sexual explicit material, which I bought cheap and sold expensive. This was one of the reasons I had to leave this school.

2. My first love was named Commodore 64. I teached myself Assembler and started to rip off music from games, creating my own demos.

3. My holidays are usually spent in croatia as my beloved wife was born there.

4. I work with a bunch of developers in lithuania, and hey - these guys (and girls!) are really good.

5. Recently I donated my book collection of > 2500 science fiction and fantasy books to a shop where handicapped sell the books to life from that.

6. Although I was born in bavaria my limit are 3 litres of beer, after that I am really really drunk.

7. I can’t stand cold weather - I feel well at an average of 26+ degrees. Oh, do you remember 4. ? In .lt the winters are really really REALLY cold and I hate it.

So - now my turn. Not so easy. I think nearly everybody who I know was already tagged, therefore - sorry about that - I need to tag a bunch of german people who I think are not yet tagged by this meme.

Here we go:

1. Nils Langner for teaching PHP
2. Thorsten Rinne just to remember him that he still ows me a self cooked thai menu.
3. Xenjo because I am curious what he would write….
4. Ralf Eggert to support his upcoming Zend Framework book (in german only)
5. Christopher Kunz who runs partly my servers for swoodoo and takes care about themeven from holiday. Thanks Chris !
6. Tomas Liubinas one of the .lt developers I mentioned and actually he was part of the team who won in plat-forms contest.
7. Max Horvath for… hmm… I still wait for the pics

These are the rules apparently:

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

We just released the 2008.2 release of the eZ Components yesterday. This stable release received 6 months of care by the core developers and many contributors. Thanks to all of you for the great work!My tasks for 2008.2 were dedicated to the Webdav component. This package allows you to easily integrate WebDAV access features into your applications. For the new release I implemented support for authentication and authorization, which allows easy integration into your existing environment. In addition, I added lock support, so the Webdav component now complies to WebDAV class 2 (and almost 3).

When I returned from vacation it looked to me like Planet-PHP blogs were all infected by some strange virus. Everyone seems to be keen on providing 7 things that many people don't know about him. Since I got "tagged" 2 times now (Kore and Sebastian), I'll jump on the bandwagon and also share some secrets with you.

Sometimes internet memes are something horrible. On PHP, right now, the whole idea is to share seven things about yourself (not things everyone knows about, it won’t be any fun), all of this because of Tony Bibbs (yes, it’s his fault, even if I don’t know him at all, he’s the one who started it all on the Who tagged who).

By the way I’ve been tagged by Mark Karpeles, myself. If you want to know why, you’ll have to read more.

For the people who don’t know me at all, I won’t eat you, you can come and try to talk to me. I started working on PHP’s WDDX extension (right now rewriting a part of it to use xmlreader instead of expat-like stuff) which was maintained by Andrei Zmievski (who wouldn’t have liked at all seeing the wddx functions assuming “everything is ISO-8859-1″, as he said before, “English is not the only language” and stuff like that).
Oh and now, I’m not using Coldfusion at all, I never touched Coldfusion, I use WDDX because it’s a nice serialization system, and because I got something to unserialize it on the other side.

• Like Paul Reinheimer, I also do some photography.
  I like being able to take still images out of things I see in my daily life, and that’s what cameras are made for. Since I had the chance to travel around, I got a few pictures from other countries, and a few months ago I bought  a second hand Nikon D70s which helps a lot taking nice pictures.
• I never finish anyth…
  In fact, sometimes, I happen to finish something, but “finishing something” is just too boring. I always do a new version at some point, so nothing is really “finished”. Just tag it with a version number and continue it (already got this thinkgeek tshirt).
• My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128k +2.
  My mother was writing little games for me in BASIC, and I started BASIC quite soon. I knew almost every instruction in BASIC (was just missing arrays with DIM) and already started touching the ASM part with POKE, PEEK and USR before I was 7. When I was 8, I got an Amiga 500, quickly followed by an Amiga 2000, another Amiga 2000. Today I own two Amiga 1200…
• During the Paris’ PHP Forum 2008, I showed Lukas Smith around (especially to find a nice place with better food than the forum’s sandwitches). That day I ate twice.
• I fully speak and understand spoken French, English and Japanese (which I’m unable to write, and sometimes unable to read). I’m able to utter some words in other languages (the tourist survival base) in Italian, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Russian, Latin and some Chinese. I love travelling, and I even went to Tel Aviv (Israël) during my PHP training (hey, PHP3 is from there).
• I’m geek. And not half, as I even been featured in a documentary called “Suck my Geek“. While I’m mainly a computers geek, I also do common stuff like watching japanese animation (I learnt Japanese from there), replying to “seven things” extraweb memes, troll by using non-existant words, etc…
  Being geek also implies being curious. While I never finish anything, I started a lot of things, including an OS project, a xinetd-like program in PHP, a BitTorrent client in PHP using PHP/GTK, IRC bots with PHP (MatrIRX), an IRC daemon in C++, and even more useless things than that. Most of them aren’t documented (I’m not a documentation guy, it was hard to write, it must be hard to use… isn’t it?) but are working, and some of them are even actively developed (I recently got a guy who decided to work on some things for pinetd).
• I make apple pies.
  Not apple pies like the ones you’re used to eat. My apple pies are uniques. If you ever come to Paris, message me before so I can prepare one and let you take a bite. My apple pie follows a receipe I got from my mother, who got it from my grand-mother, etc

Truncated by Planet PHP, read more at the original (another 1410 bytes)

Seven Things

- I've lived in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montréal, Bergen, and New York.
While I learned to love big cities in New York, I intend to raise a family in the 'burbs or some rural area, just as soon as that family thing
gets started.

• 
  
• Photography, Running, and Cooking bring me surprising amounts of joy.
  Photography tends to be one of my few artistic outlets, it's great. The effort of running tends to center my mind, and work off some of this fat (I'm not fat mind you, simply drought and famine resistant). I love cooking, I want a garden.
  
• I've managed a retail store, selling such wondrous items as: the flowbee, set it and forget it, turbie twist, and ginsu knives (but this method doesn't work with a tomato).
  Not only did I work there, I also did demonstrations, or "showcasing", it was quite exciting. For a time I could solve strange golf ball in a snow globe puzzles while hanging upside down on an inversion table in under 30 seconds (in fact that feat was televised).
  
• I generally dislike ingesting warm liquid.
  Soups, coffee, etc. Not really a fan. I'll drink tea to be sociable.
  
• I completed the second year of a two year computer programming program at Sheridan College while I was in High School.
  Night classes for the win. I was quite the hot shot Visual Basic developer for a time.
  
• I own a 50" Television, but have no cable or satellite subscription.
  Cable company is stupid, I'm giving the money they were getting to World Vision instead.
  
• Wearing that Kiss costume was actually my idea. As was the make up.
  I'm sorry. In particular I'm sorry to Marco's children, who (if I understand this correctly) cried a little when they saw the pictures.
  

My 7 Tags:
The first 7 people who read this (who haven't been tagged already). Leave a comment with your name in the comments. I have server logs, and we have.. people. Don't not leave a comment and think you can get away with it. We will find you.


Victims/Tags:

1. 
   
2. Christine(Post in comments)
   
3. Philippe Gamache
   
4. Jeremy Glover
   
5. Jake Smith (Post in comments)
   
6. Edwin F (Post in comments)
   
7. Stuart Herbert
   

Everyone likes an Interweb meme! I was tagged by Elizabeth Naramore (thanks! and my jokes are totally awesome!) with Seven Things, so I'm supposed to tell you seven things about me. So here we go!

• I still drive my first car: an awesome '92 Ford Crown Victoria, silver with stylish red vinyl on the inside. It caught on fire once but we put it out with a cup of coffee (the amazing part being convincing a Seattle native to surrender his coffee for any cause).
• I originally wanted to study math in college, but then I found a job at an Interwebs startup called ScreamingMedia, where I learned PHP (yay, .php3 files!). Eventually, I switched my major to computer science.
• I once worked at Amazon.com, on the Books/Music/Videos/DVD parts of the site where the QA department featured a real rocket scientist (she used to work for NASA).
• I know how to construct a trebuchet, use a blow torch and have built a small remote-controlled solar-powered car once.
• My first interaction with a computer was on a green screen, typing dir *.*
• I had a story published in The New York Times once (in the "Metropolitan Diary" column, but still!)
• I miss the tiled website backgrounds of the late 1990's.

I am hereby tagging these individuals:

• 
  
• Matt Purdon for always staying on top of new technology and never settling for comfort when coding.
• 
  
• Cal Evans for always starting his day with a cheerful Twitter message.
• 
  
• Paul Reinheimer for bringing the meat from America's Hat.
• 
  
• Ed Finkler for nicer web design than the rest of us combined!
• 
  
• Brandon Savage for pointing out that I can't count to 7!
• 
  

These are the rules apparently:

• 
  
• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• 
  
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
• 
  
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• 
  
• Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.
• 
  

As Johannes tagged me, here are my 7 things:

1. I leared PHP because I wanted to write a form mailer for a website.
2. When I was 13 years old, I spend a lot of time on a city network called RivalNet, causing a telephone bill of 600DM. There were no flatrates at that time.
3. I studied analytical philosophy for 6 months.
4. I make coffee the old-fashioned way by throwing hot-water through the coffee filter. My favorite sort is Jamaican Blue Mountain
5. I fear of dogs, seriously.
6. I started reading “Das Kapital” from Marx when I was 18, but still not finished it. Nevertheless, I still insist to call it a book that I’m currently reading.
7. My last name is spanish but I don’t speak castilian.

And here are the rules I’m supposed to pass on to the following bloggers:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

And as for chaining, in no particularly significant order:

• Pierre A. Joye for doing awesome PHP windows work
• Thorsten Rinne for the invitation to Augsburg
• Ulf Wendel
• Zoe Slattery for helping to improve PHP’s quality
• Wolfram Kriesing
• Jan Lehnardt for his inspiring criticism
• Stefan Esser

Due to the efforts of Brian Moon and Michelangelo van Dam, I've been sucked into a meme started by Tony Bibbs. My initial reaction to this unfortunate event was ... (envision Steven Colbert, hands raised...) "Noooooo!!!" But I got over it. Hey, it's the holiday season, I might as well be a good boy and fulfill the modern-day geek's equivalent of a chain letter.

So, without further ado, here is my list of seven things about me you probably could care less about and will skip over to see if you are on my list of tagged people. (Yeah, you know you will.)

• My real name is not Jay
• I have a twin brother, Andy, who lives in England with his wife, Vicky, and my nephew, Archie. (I'm originally British, and my brother moved back to the "motherland" around 10 years ago)
• My father worked for American Standard Plumbing Products for something like 30 years. Having a Dad working in the plumbing industry with a surname of Pipes has been, well, interesting.
• My wife, Julie, has a yoga studio in Columbus, Ohio, where we live. I have no interest whatsoever in Yoga. This works well, as my wife has zero interest in technology. We always say that the secret to our marriage is low expectations.
• My favourite shows on television are Mythbusters, Top Gear, and Big Ten Football (and, yes, I know the Big Ten sucks this year.)
• I love the texture of velour. There's just something about it. If not for social customs and expectations, I would likely dress entirely in velour.
• I find garden gnomes, clowns, and mimes incredibly creepy. Oooh, and magicians. They're creepy too.

Here are the folks I'd like to know a little more about:

• My brother Andy. Being in England, I don't get to see him as much as I'd like to, and especially since he's now a proud father, I'd like to know what's changed in his life and what he wants others to know about him.
• Jonathan Schwartz - yeah, he's the CEO of Sun, yeah, he's got a ponytail, but seriously, what makes him tick?
• Thomas Friedman - he's an author I really respect and admire. Be cool to know if Mr. Friedman ever gets sick of going on all those talking head shows...
• Jan Kneschke, the creator lighthttpd and MySQL proxy, and all-around interesting dude.
• Sergey Petrunia, another brilliant guy. He's on the MySQL optimizer team and hangs out on #drizzle, but I don't know too much about him personally!
• My co-author on Pro MySQL, Mike Kruckenberg, is an all-around fantastic guy, wonderful father, and great thinker. I'd like to learn a little more about him more than I know already.
• Since I don't think Hans Reiser will be able to continue the meme, I'll choose Monty Widenius because I am positive he'll come up with some very interesting tidbits about himself that may well make its way back to his Wikipedia page.

And, of course, the rules in case anyone missed them:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Trying to get a bit of overview of all people who have put up their "Seven Things" list, I created a little map that shows who tagged who with an overview of the most tagged persons.

Check out the Seven Things map at http://in2it.be/whotaggedwho.php.