Crumpled Thoughts

I’ve got a few upcoming web projects that I need to get cranking on. My PHP skills are a little rusty right now (as typically happens when I don’t touch PHP for several months). I watched a super cool demo of Ruby on Rails about 6 months ago and got really excited. Ruby on Rails makes the claim of cutting development time by a factor of 10 for web applications.

The problem is that I don’t feel like learning an entirely new language (Ruby). I’ve gone through some tutorials and kept thinking “I wish I could do this with PHP.” Well, it turns out you can.

CakePHP is an open-source web framework written in PHP. It uses the same MVC framework that Ruby on Rails uses, and does it all in PHP. I’ve watched some of the demos, gone through some of the tutorials, and feel much more at home with it. The biggest challenge I am having is wrapping my head around the whole MVC thing. I can see how it really simplifies things, but it is taking some getting used to.

By this time next month I hope to have two projects completed; one for my Mom, and one for Paula. Then there’s a bigger project (for myself) I’ve been dying to get underway once I’m more comfortable with CakePHP.

I generally have terrible luck with the lottery. I only seem to play it after the jackpot goes over $200 million. That’s when my demented psyche deems it to be worth $1 to play.

I typically buy a 1-5 dollar Quick Pick… and I’ve never won. In all 20 or so times I’ve played. Obviously the Quick Pick is intentionally giving me bad numbers. To test my theory I created my own system to pick numbers. No longer will the lottery machine choose my numbers for me. Now I’m sure to win.

You can use it too if you like: Chris Hillman’s Powerball Picker™.

If you’d like to see the source… steal it, molest it, claim it is yours… you can get it here. I give up all rights to this code. Use at your own risk. No warranty expressed or implied. Of course if it picks winning numbers for you I know you’ll do the right thing and send me a fat check.