After a week of solo development I have my first meeting with the client. The short, impromptu meeting focuses on the database.

Having worked for nearly a year on a roughed out codebase I siezed the opportunity to do what I'd wanted to do with the core client project at Clean Power Finance (cleanpowerfinance.com) on a smaller project -- a form wizard. In this context the forms were literal paper forms -- a series of forms that the state requires printouts of to approve a solar panel installation.

The project is quite self contained and amenable to Zend Framework treatment. The forms themselves will be driven by config file data provided by an independent contractor who parsed the original forms.

Things I hate about my iPhone

With thanks to Mike Ruggiero, who put me on the path of unit testing.

One of the big problems with unit testing is that it attempts to do the impossible: resetting your environment for each test, in a context (LAMP) where a true reset is impossible. The resulting compromise means that you must do a fairly rigorous assessment of your environment before embracing unit testing as a strategy.

The largest greatest bookstore in SF is closing.... I blogged this at ManateeBay.com; see the full article there.

Check out my River Experiment. Coded in proessing, traces waterfall over an island to "find" rivers. The second phase of this expirement -- the 3D version -- is here. Note -- this openGL version can be quite taxing on your system!

http://www.limelife.com/blog-entry/Bill-Gates-Releases-Mosquitoes-On-Techies/2371.html Bill Gates released a jar of mosquitos into a tech conference; potential infectees included Tony Robbins and Malcolm "Tipping Point" McDowell. The mosquitos were Malaria free, unlike the ones from the Vista R & D department...

One common tactic in developing any sort of CRM or database reflecting users is to split peoples records into roles. I just got back from a SugarCRM conference (awesome -- thanks guys!) and even SugarCRM, one of the best written applications I've ever been able to poke around, they take this tactic. It has implications when it comes to address recording, duplicate identities and data efficiency that multiplies development where refactoring should be easy and intuitive.

There are many codebases designed to assist you in the construction of web application development. Some require little or no code expertise, others demand it. The quality of code varies widely as does the amount of prefabricated solutions available. I have even tossed in SugarCRM which is not an intentional player in the CRM/Framework marketplace only because its open-ended configuration driven system makes it a powerful web application toolkit for a broad range of tasks.

Most companies release like there's no tomorrow. Consider planning your next release as if there might actually be one.