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It's a commonly known problem that if you import an ICS event into iCal, which is happening in another timezone, iCal will ignore the set timezone, and add the event in your own timezone. This means that a meeting in Israel time (GMT+2) at 14:00h, will happily show at 14:00h local time, even if you're not in, and maybe never been in, the GMT+2 timezone. You can't move the meeting to the real time, as iCal will happily notify you that you can't move the appointment, because you are not it's creator. By accident, I found a work-a-round that does allow you to change the time. Read on....

Only a mere 24h, and the world will know where the Americans want to go next. Like to know where the world wants the America to go? Cast your vote on iftheworldcouldvote.com and find out how the world, and your country, thinks about the future.

~RW

Ethanica is the codename for a project which re-implements the Zend Framework as a PHP extension in C. For more details, see the project website at http://www.ethanica.com/ .

(Ethanica used to be the name of a Server Control Panel in Java, which has been marked comatose for the time being. If (and when) active development on the project will be resumed, it will continue under another name, which will be announced here, and on the active projects page.

A couple of weeks ago, the PHP Enterprise Management Magazine Newsletter approached me with a request to do an interview with me for their section 'Developers World'. My first PHP related interview, and I'm actually quite fond of how it turned out. If you want to know a bit more about me, you can read the whole interview here. If any questions arise, please leave a comment. If you want an answer, but do not want your comment displayed, feel free to mention that, and the manual moderation will make sure your comment won't be published.

~RW

A search engine excels or fails with the results it returns. It's not the number of results that count, but the result the user was looking for. If a user can't find what the user is looking for, even though the user knows it's there (just not where), the search engine will get the blame. Even if the user used to most irrelevant keywords for the search, it's always the search engines fault. Google became famous with this. It found what you were looking for. You didn't need a degree in computer science, it just found what you were looking for.

In an attempt to get some of the negative attention off of Windows Vista, Microsoft starts a marketing campaign called 'The Mojave Experiment'. In this campaign, users who don't want to upgrade to Windows Vista are shown the new Windows version, codenamed 'Mojave', which is actually Windows Vista in disguise, and they are recorded with a hidden camera while being asked about their feelings about Windows Vista, while they see a demonstration of the 'new' Windows Mojave, and when they are told that Windows Mojave is actually Windows Vista with a different label on it. A few days ago, Microsoft published these video's, to convince everyone who doubts that Windows Vista is a good choice, that it actually is a good choice. Read on to see why this experiment horribly failed, and only has the potential to make Vista's reputation even worse.

Today the PHP site announced the results of the QA TestFest in a wrap up article on the php.net site. First of all, I must admit that I was extremely disapointed with the amount of people that participated. Only 30?!? Of the huge world-wide community?!? That can't be justified... Either way, it appears that the dutch PHP usergroup team has done their job quite well. One of the participants (felixdv) turned out to be the top submitter of the whole TestFest. Now that's something to be proud off, and I'd like to congratulate him via this way. Besides that title, there was also a raffle to give out ten elePHPants. Four of the ten stuffed animals were awarded to participants of the dutch PHP usergroup! So also a congratulations to Skoop, DragenBE, Rein V, and Marc V. with their family extension! I believe those guys deserved it most, as they went through all the trouble of organizing everything and giving all participants a great day (wrap up of my experience of the dutch PHP usergroup TestFest '08 event). I'm looking forward to the TestFest next year, and I really hope the turn up will see a growth as exponential as the PHP community's growth. If you can't wait till next year, and want to know more about it right now, please read everything you want to know about the TestFest and how you can be part of the solution on the PHP QA TestFest site.

~RW

For a specific reason, I needed two photo's taken, and I needed them on a very short notice. So, as usual, I call a guy who usually takes pictures for me if I need them, and set up an appointment to have them taken. Before the appointment was due, it was already very clear that he was going to bail on me, and later on, it proved to be true. So I had to find something else. Since I didn't knew anybody else with a decent camera, and I had the deadline within 24h, I decided I had to buy one myself. Which immediately raised the biggest question: which...

While checking if there was already a new IRL race on UseNet (only 2 more weeks till I have Sport1!), my mouse jumped, just before I made a click. This happens quite often on my Imac, and I know the solution is to buy a mousepad, but I just keep forgetting that. This jump made me click on one of the ads on the side, which happened to be for some webcam site, and of course I was taken straight to there. While being stunned about the amazing high payrate (80 eurocents per minute(!!!)), and wondering if there actually would be people desperate enough to call such a line, something remarkable caught my attention. Although the site clearly says "All models on this site are 18 years or older", the girls on this page were being advertised as being 17. To the best of my knowledge, that's illegal in the whole world, except for maybe some Scandinavian(sp?) countries. One of the 2 is a lie. Either they are advertising a wrong age (which is false marketing, you don't get (to see) what you pay for), or these girls are underage, and it could actually be a crime to watch them on their webcam...

See the (not recommended for work) image after the jump... (Click 'Read More')

~RW

On May 10, 2008, in a little place called Roosendaal (Netherlands), somewhere near the Belgium border, on an extremely sunny day for the time of the year, 10 developers gathered together with a similar goal in mind: improving PHP. Seated in a l low-lit room in a fancy hotel, they booted their laptops to reach their goal. One man had traveled all the way from Germany by train, just to instruct those 10 on how to accomplish their goal. Two people had traveled all the way from Belgium just to take part in accomplishing this goal. And I was there too... Read on...