Given that I rarely use my Handspring Visor Platinum (AvantGo on the train, Vindigo for restaurant reviews and bar locations) why is it that the new Dell Axim X5 makes me want to buy it so? I'm not sure, but rather than waste time figuring that out, I just signed on and bought one (good thing I still have birthday money set aside from July!). At any rate, I should have it on Tuesday, December 9th so more on the subject then. Maybe even a post about it... from it!

The Access to MySQL database conversion went off without a hitch (or the command line!), thanks to PremiumSoft's MySQL Studio. The toolset provided a GUI interface for me to migrate my Access tables and all associated data to MySQL. The entire database migration process took less than an hour, downloads and installs of MySQL and MySQL Admin included. The PHP edits needed were minor, taking less than an hour as well.

Setting cookies properly on the comments page (for the "Remember me" check box) was the piece that took the longest to figure out and circumvent. Basically, IIS wasn't sending the proper "set cookie" header information to the browser during a header('Location: file.php') redirect. Simply sending a meta refresh to the browser fixed the problem, which turned out to be an acknowledged bug in IIS. Is Apache next on my list? Not hardly. I'm happy with the technology side for now. Next up, will be a full-blown front-end redesign with less structure and more photography.

Thinkblank's Secret Santa project is back for it's second year. The idea is so simple it's frightening... A name is pulled out of a hat and you buy that person a present. Your name is in the hat as well, so someone buys you a present off of your Amazon wishlist. The best thing is that it doesn't matter if you were naughty or nice, so go sign up.

Ok, so I was a bit skeptical when I heard about Muse.Net. I mean, how many services have come and gone that promised to free my music from the PC prison in my den? Sure, MyPlay and My.MP3.com stored my music centrally so I could download them from the nearest available web browser. Sure, MyPlay supported playlists and rudimentary streaming? It was still a pain in the ass to have to upload/ download 1000's of music files just to have them "anywhere". It was even more of a pain in the ass when both services went belly-up.

Despite all that, I downloaded and installed the Muse.Net client last night, pointed it at my music collection, told it to use port 8080 instead of the default port 80 (I have a web server that needs that port really bad...) and forwarded port 8080 from my firewall/NAT to my PC. Next thing I know, I'm streaming files, albeit off of the same machine on the same network that stores the music in the first place. Cool enough, but what about work and that nasty Raptor firewall? "It'll never work", I go to bed thinking. Well, I'm at work as I write this listening to Juno Reactor streaming to me flawlessly from my newly liberated PC.

If you're into music and have a shitload of it at home collecting digital dust while you toil away at work listening to a radio station promising you 10 songs of the greatest hits from the 70's and 80's in a row, go download Muse.Net now.

I could've used a few of these PHP tips and tricks (1.5mb Adobe PDF) at the beginning of last week. Better late than never.

Well, I've been working on migrating co][nz.org from ASP to PHP over the last few days, and am happy to say that the conversion was a success (let me know if you see otherwise). I must admit that I cheated - a little. Given that co][nz.org relies heavily on XML/XSL to store/format content, I did have a boatload of MSXML DOM code to rewrite. Luckily, the latest version of PHP (4.2.3) was packaged with a fairly robust XML DOM implementation - not as easy to use as Microsoft's, but definitely workable. Next up - a PHP/mySQL comments and referer engine. The plan is to convert my existing homegrown ASP/Access 2002 comments system over to MySQL and then make use of Textism's Refer script.

The new version of w.bloggar (3.0) was released over the weekend, and I must say it was worth the wait. The new version adds title and category field, spell checking, file upload and custom tag functionality. It still doesn't perform 100% of what Blogger Pro provides (assigning URL's to a post, assigning titles to a post, etc.), but that's primarily due to the Blogger API's lack of support for the Pro features. While it's still not a blog publishing silver bullet, it is the best client going and definitely worth test drive. And it was responsible for this post...