The past weekend was the start of a new chapter in my life. I don’t want to change this blog into a religion or Christian blog, so I’ll just quickly do a quick post about this…

My nephew insisted for weeks that I go with him on a Men-only camp at Eksderde . At this camp I just rediscovered my religion and got a great refresher as to one’s life purpose etc.. Coming back to the “real world” feeling energised with a newfound energy just feels great. I can suggest these camps for any Afrikaners searching for that extra something they feel missing in their life. Guys wanting to know more can email me at arne([at])justpulse.com (remove the ([ and ]) or just visit Eksderdes’ website.

written by Arné

Well, at last I’ve decided to go to the next step and registered my Company named Pulsebiz.

Pulsebiz will mainly focus on Web development and certain ventures on the web.

I’ve got some nice logos I have gotten friends of mine to design and also some really kief business cards.

I am also recruiting my first official full-time employee which will be another PHP/MySQL developer that must start taking over some of my projects so I can start working on some new ones and get some contracts coming in. So if anybody know any PHP/mySQL developers you can let them send their CV to jobs@pulsebiz.co.za .

written by Arné

Last night I attended a webinar at Zend.com about Web Services and PHP. (had more than 500 people worldwide attending)

Although nothing new was learnt through the attending it was quite nice to see someone work in Zend Studio and see how this program works. Really looks impressive. I’ve been using a mix of PHPeclipse and SVN(for versioning) to develop my applications but Zend Studio combined with Zend Platform really looks impressive.

So actually the webinar was more of a promotional stunt than anything else.

Also something that was mentioned was coding standards, which in many PHP applications is non existent. The guy that presented the presentation showed some real examples of code etc, which was some really nice interface of classes etc. For example PHP5 ’s very nice XML and atom classes etc.

PHP is maturning slowly but steadily.

written by Arné

At my previous employer our company won the Novell award and REDucation for the best team in SA for knowing Novell products. The award was a TUX penguin made out of beads.

We then stole the penguin from work, and took photos of the penguin being tortured, and sent it to our CEO from an anonymous account. The directors were very stressed and was getting worried about these thread emails, although one of the directors knew what was going on and played along, stopping them going to drastic measures. For a few days I sent a new email everyday, and at the end we told them …. lol

written by Arné

Another EXCELLENT open source project…

This week I went on a expedition for a Microsoft Project alternative to manage project schedules and resources.

After Googling, Yahoo-ing abit I found the URL to this project from a member of SystemShock Forums.

Open Workbench

I downloaded it and quickly went through a 10 minutes into tutorial that I also downloaded from the site. It took me like another 10 minutes to draw up a 2 month project plan almost. Very nice features and very extensible and agile.

THe program works on a view-based system where you custom design your views with the varialbes of the project etc. Obviously the standard views are already there for you like Gantt charts etc.

Open Workbench is an open source desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality. Already the scheduling standard for more than 100,000 project managers worldwide, Open Workbench is a free and powerful alternative to Microsoft Project.

Released in December 2005, Open Workbench 1.1.4 provides significant new enhancements and bug fixes. For more information on version 1.1.4, please review the Open Workbench 1.1.4 Release Notes. The source code for Open Workbench 1.1.4 is also available on SourceForge.

Open Workbench provides all the functionality and benefits that project managers expect in a world-class scheduling application:

* Open Workbench can be used and distributed free of charge throughout an enterprise.
* Open Workbench is a stand-alone desktop application that provides robust project scheduling functionality.
* Open Workbench provides the unique ability to generate project schedules based on resource constraints.
* Open source developers will find a ready-made community of business users interested in their enhancements and extensions. The source code and other developer information are available on SourceForge.
* The open source distribution and community development model will now bring quality, innovation and cost advantages to the project management world.
* Open Workbench can also be used in a fully integrated fashion with CA’s Clarity solution. Please visit www.niku.com/go/owb for more details.

Open Workbench

written by Arné