On the education front things are moving forward nicely. I now have confirmation that the only thing that stands between me and a degree in computer sciene is finishing my thesis paper. The paper itself is already well under way. I have all the literature research done and I have written the first 2 chapters and I am fairly far with the third chapter. I just send out a ton of email interviews. The general topic is open source in the relational database market. I will publish the paper on this site once I am done.
I am also now officially MySQL 5.0 developer certified. I did the beta exams back in march/april and I passed. Overall the exam felt much more close to real world knowledge than the Zend PHP exam I took last year. I learned a lot of the nitty gritty details of MySQL I have not run into so far. Unfortunately even MySQL 5.0 still has a fair amount of stuff like this. That being said the SQL mode support is great as it lets MySQL slowly clean things up without making upgrades of legacy apps impossible. Anyways while adding the MySQL cert I used the opportunity to do some other minor tweaks and updates to my resumé.
Unfortunately I still have not found my dream job, but I am still quite hopeful that I should have something by the time I am finished with university. Officially I can only hand in my paper on October 6th, but I am hoping to be more or less done by September. Which would mean that I can relax a bit down in Florida before flying to Toronto to speak at php|db|works. Later that month I will be going to the beach tournament in viareggio for the first time. Since my knee is still not back in perfect shape I am considering playing more and more beach frisbee.
I guess the final thing I should mention is that currently my plan is to leave active development in PEAR starting October 1st. I have learned a lot from working on PEAR packages and therefore I would recommend anyone to join the project. But now I feel like I want to move on. I definately still want to do open source, but I think I want to focus more on databases and less on PHP. Maybe become equally proficient in another language. So now is the time if you are interested in taking over one of my packages to join up, poke my brain and get ready to do the thing without me.
Congratulations, looking forward to seeing your paper!
I hope that a dedicated maintainer is found for MDB2_* or else I might have to volunteer ;)
Needless to say, your contributions to the PHP community will be greatly missed (not just in code, but in your willingness to speak up for better API design and to question project directions). You've shown real leadership, and wherever you end up (in both your career and your open-source project interests) is going to be improved by your presence.
Congrats on the MySQL 5.0 certification, and even more congratulations on having the end of your thesis (and university degree) in sight. And good luck with the beach frisbee!
Wow, quite flattering words :)
I will probably not disa"pear" entirely from the PHP scene. Maybe I will finally sit down and bring up my C skills to work on PHP core ..
It was a surprise for me that you are leaving PEAR. You are doing an excellent work leading me in the development of the MDB2_Schema. You are really a great professional and a great friend.
If I get enough knowledge until october, I would take the development of Schema. What do you think about it ? ;)
Congratulations for your professional conquests.
