Coffee|Code : Dan Scott, Caffeinated Librarian Geek

I'm going a little nutty at the moment with a stack overflow of P* programming languages.

1. Perl: I have been attending Yet Another Perl Conference::North America (YAPC::NA) in my lovely hometown of Toronto. YAPCs are a little out of the ordinary, as far as conferences that I've attended--for one thing, the cost for a three-day conference is about $100 CDN. Do you get what you pay for? Well, $100 goes a long, long way in a true community built on a volunteerism spirit. Oddly enough, Larry Wall gave a very thoughtful opening keynote/meditation on community building... anyways, I've been immersed in Perl today.
2. PHP: But then I picked up this email when I got home, with the subject Zend Certified Engineer Exam - Results!. I had taken advantage of the free certification exam when I was at php|tropics, on a lark, when Jason Sweat walked past me at 8:00 in the morning and I asked him where he was headed so early. I followed in his wake and wrote the test without studying diligently beforehand. When I tried to open the email, to find out just what my Results! were, the combination of an ongoing virus scan + Lotus Notes' turgidness made for a (no kidding) 10-second delay of pure anticipation before the email opened. I had enough time to think "I really hope Zend doesn't use exclamation marks on the notices that inform people that they have failed their exam -- that would be funny, but cruel". It turns out that I passed, so I'm now a "Zend Certified Engineer".
3. Python: For the aforementioned Deep Dive with Apache Derby tutorial for OSCON, I have been wrapping up my summary of Python and using the pyDB2 module to connect to Apache Derby from Python applications. I've got wayyy too much material on Python, geez, maybe I should write a book or something. Oh wait, done that

Despite the perils of varying sigils and whitespace, I think I've managed to keep the languages straight today. Tomorrow should be a little simpler, as it will be a day of pure Perl at YAPC::NA capped off by a Perl cruise around Toronto Harbour. Those Perl folk know how to live it up!

Take a look at the OSCON Top Ten Tutorials -- although it's not in the top ten, nat does put in a plug for my own Deep Dive with Apache Derby tutorial.

Gulp, no pressure!

Congrats to Chris for hitting the top ten with PHP Security -- I know that's going to be a good session, having attended a precursor at php|tropics.

Dad -- I know we've had our differences, sometimes for years at a time. Funny how I wound up with a lot of the same traits as you -- self-assuredness, stubbornness, independence, extreme rationality -- and when we butted heads those qualities made for some pretty intense disagreements. But you did pass on many other aspects of my character too: a love of reading and literature, an appreciation for hard work, and a closeness to nature. Heck, you even instilled in me the discerning and argumentative nature that, while now occasionally infuriating to Lynn, carried me through my English and philosophy degree and stands me in good stead today in my career. And as I have become a husband to Lynn and a father (of sorts) to our cat Spook, I have a much better understanding of the pressures and stresses that face any man -- and a better understanding of you, an understanding that I was never able to achieve as a child, teenager, or student. So, as your third and final son, I say, thank you, Dad. I love you.

This place isn't called Coffee|Code for nothing. I'm quite serious about my coffee, to the point of roasting my own. I started a year and a half ago with a Freshroast Plus roaster that was included with a year-long subscription (of two pounds per month) of Merchants of Green Coffee, borrowed my friend Jamie's Hearthware classic hot air roaster last winter after the Freshroast got cracked and started letting coffee chaff fly around the kitchen, and was hoping that Santa-Lynn would bring me a brand new Swissmar Alpenrost drum roaster for Christmas. So how did I end up with a brand new Hearthware iRoast this week? And why am I so giggly happy?

If you're looking for a book that covers Apache Derby / IBM Cloudscape top-to-bottom, and you want a gentle introduction to programming database applications with PHP, Perl, Python, JDBC, or .NET, Apache Derby: Off to the Races is the book for you! No, really... I'm a co-author, responsible for the chapters on managing Apache Derby (hey, it's a zero-admin database, so that wasn't too hard), setting up Apache Derby as a Network Server for ODBC / Call Level Interface (CLI) applications, and writing Perl, PHP, and Python database applications with Derby with both Web interfaces and GUI interfaces. Wez Furlong, the king of PECL and PDO himself, reviewed the PHP chapter, so you know that, at least, is going to be good My co-authors are Paul Zikopoulos and George Baklarz, who have written a ton of other commercial books. Me, this is my first time out in the real world (I've written technical manuals for IBM before), and I'm pretty excited. I just sent the last, corrected copy of my chapters back to the publisher yesterday, and while I'm sure there are parts that I could improve on (if I thought about it for a really really long time), I'm pretty damn proud of what's going in there and I think it will stand the reader in good stead. Of course, it's not going to be published until the fall, but why wait -- order your copy now at Apache Derby: Off to the Races!