Greetings Everyone,

I've found myself being referred to <DANIWEB> from web development-related Google searches quite frequently. So I decided to become a member. I didn't realize the depth of the community and content here until this morning when I was looking up XHTML related issues. Every other search was bringing me back to DaniWeb threads.

After reading the subtle membership solicitation at the top of the thread I was viewing I figured I couldn't go wrong...

What is DaniWeb IT Discussion Community?

"...a massive community of 271,264..."

> Wow! I had no idea... How many clicks is that? [Mr. White: "A lot."]

"...software developers, web developers, Internet marketers, and tech gurus who are all enthusiastic..."

> Even Wow-er! I'm all four of those things! This is getting interesting. Continue... please.

"In fact, there are 2,855 IT professionals currently interacting right now"

> No way! [refreshes page: "there are 2,896..."]. Yes way!

"Registration is free..."

> Say no more. You had me at 'Hello'.


So that's how my morning went...

About Me:

I'm Steve.

I'm 32.

I'm from the Central Valley, California, USA.

I'm a web developer and your quintessential jack-of-all-trades. (I'm sure a lot of you can identify with that)

I'm self-taught.

I dropped out of college when I was 20 to pursue my freelance web development career and never looked back... So far so good.

(It was the mid-to-late 90's and the only Internet-related college course was "How to use FrontPage"... I mean, come on. What was I supposed to do?

Once I read Harley Hahn's "The Internet" (Paperback 1994) I was hooked and there was no turning back. I'm still looking for Archie and Veronica, though. Anyone seen them lately?)


I'm Into...

Web design and client side markup, scripting and programming (XHTML, CSS, DHTML and Javascript, Standards, Usability, Accessibility, Design, etc)

Server Side programming (Perl, PHP5, MySQL, XML, SOAP, cURL, Ruby on Rails) [Java... not so much.]

Web Server Management (Linux, Apache, FreeBSD, *nix shell wrangling)

Web Marketing & General eBusiness Development (No, not the get-rich-quick stuff... Real products and services that offer value to a potential customer.)

Metrics & Web Analytics (Visitor and sales conversion stats... I mean really fine grained detail that you can act on and derive 'actionable insights' from.)


Things to do before I die (or before the end of the week)

1. Setup and manage a pack of Mongrels behind ligHTTPd and Pound: Reverse-Proxy & Load-Balancer... (Well, O.K. Apache can come too.)

2. Sorry, I can't think of anything else at the moment and I really need to reign-in this post as I need to get some work done.


About the name: EchoQuiet

Actually, this is the first time I've used this name as a username. I'll explain...

When I'm developing a server-side project that accesses a database, I invariably need to view the SQL statements that were generated by my code for debugging purposes.

So what do you do most of the time?

echo $sql;

How many times have you written THAT? :-)

Long story short, a while back I wanted to keep the echoed SQL statements from displaying on the page for all to see (and I couldn't be bothered with PHP Debugger or writing it to a file, etc) so I wrote a quick-and-dirty function called echoq().

It simply takes the $sql variable and echoes it quietly in the HTML comments by appending <!-- and --> before and after the sql statement. Then all I need to do is view the HTML source to see the statements in question. Dead simple.

They're easier to read that way too, because they're displayed as unformatted text. No wrapping, consistent colors and font size, line spacing, etc... You get the picture.

It also takes the arguments $filename and $line_number of where the echo is coming from to make it easier when you have multiple dynamically generated sql statements to debug. Yeah, this one goes to eleven.

Anyway, that's the name... echoq() == EchoQuiet.

I think I liked it because it embodied the somewhat blurred line between server-side and client-side that I tend to cross daily... (echoing returned sql statements as HTML comments to a browser's source viewer), but that's probably taking it way too far.

Music:

A. If I'm having a bad day (like last night when my dedicated server went haywire and support had to repair the file system w/ FSCK), then I'm Broken by Pantera.

B. If I'm having a good day and things are just peachy, then the intro theme song to Are you Being Served? (BBC 1972 - 1985).



Favorite Shell Commands


top

ps aux

ls -lta |more

who

last

vi

cat /dev/null > [filename]

tail -500 /var/log/messages |grep fail

iptables -I -s INPUT xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -j DROP



Favorite DOCTYPE




Favorite Editing Software

EditPlus+ & Fireworks


Favorite Quote
"If you're not confused, you're not thinking."


What I'm Reading

"Linux Quick Fix Notebook" by Peter Harrison
(very handy... I run Linux servers in my office for development. This is my manual.)

"MySQL" by Paul DuBois
(been reading that one for years)

Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger
(read half of it last year. Need to finish it.)


What I'd Like to Read

"Web Analytics: An Hour a Day" by Avinash Kaushik

"Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS" by Dan Cederholm

"PROLOG Programming for Artificial Intelligence" by Ivan Bratko

Anyway, I need to get some work done. I plan to contribute and learn when time permits. I hope everyone's having a great week!

As Young Mr. Grace would say, "You've all done very well!".

Best Regards,
Steve
EchoQuiet

Welcome to DaniWeb EchoQuiet -- wow! not many people write a novel as their introduction. But interesting reading. Hope to see you around alot, especialy in the Web Development boards.

Nice intro there.welcome to Daniweb!!!I'll be waiting for you at the PHP forum,ok?See yah!

Thanks for the warm welcome! I'll be sure to head over to the PHP form ASAP.

One thing, though. I noticed that I have a typo in my XHTML Strict DOCTYPE...

In the system identifier section (the URI) it points to www.w3c.org. That should be www.w3.org (sans the "c")

Whoopse! That's what I get for being cocky and typing out my own DOCTYPE by hand. Sorry about that. If an admin could edit that, that would be great.

I wouldn't mention it, but it's extremely bad form and could really throw someone for a loop if they just randomly copied-and-pasted that DOCTYPE as gospel (as some do). And I checked and it is not valid at all... Not in the least. Apparently "w3c.org" and "w3.org" are not interchangeable, unfortunately.

My sincere apologies.

Here's a link to the actual Technical Report at W3 with the correct DOCTYPE.

XHTML 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition)

>>If an admin could edit that, that would be great
fixed -- I hope

Glad that you could join us!

Yep. That was it. Thanks!

Welcome To Daniweb!
Looks like Daniweb is going to suit you

welcome!

love the intro