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We incorporated as Prater Raines Ltd and started to provide technical consultancy in addition to developing and hosting web sites. Our first contract lasted two and a half years, working with magazine publisher IPC Media in a hand-picked team to rebuild their content management system for all the magazine websites including Country Life, Decanter, Marie Claire, Wallpaper*, and Ideal Home. This was my first introduction to Symfony and I quickly fell in love with the framework. It may have helped that it was a beautiful commute on the riverboat from the Isle of Dogs to the South Bank and the other contractors there were all great people.
The experience would later become the inspiration for a similar rebuild of the Liberal Democrat website platform. (Although, as I recall, the IPC database layer used Propel which I hated, which may also have kickstarted my love for Doctrine!)
Website launches include the National Benevolent Fund for the Aged, plus logistics companies Seymour Transport and Astran Cargo.
PHP London hosted their first (or possibly second?) PHP UK Conference at London South Bank University. It was a very community driven, small scale affair compared to the later events, but I was proud to be able to attend and help out front of house at the reception desk. After that I was hooked and when Marcus Baker stood down as Secretary I stood and was elected.
This started three years of organising speakers, activities, and venues for the user group’s monthly pub meetings and one-off events, increasing the group’s active membership four-fold. Over the years we regularly met at Doggett’s Coat and Badge on the South Bank and the Theodore Bullfrog pub near Trafalgar Square amongst other places. I liked Doggett’s. It had plenty of room, a lively but pleasant atmosphere, and a really good kebab shop on the way home near Southwark tube. On the other hand there was a German sausage place on the way home from the Bullfrog near Embankment. And both pubs definitely weren’t chosen because of their proximity to riverboat piers.
I decided it was about time I actually joined the Liberal Democrats this year. Which I continue to maintain had nothing to do with the availability of creche facilities at conferences, it was entirely a coincidence that my baby daughter had just been born in time for autumn conference in Brighton.
Tools of the trade
Location, location, location
- Bankside
- Southwark
- Elephant and Castle
- Harrogate
- Brighton
The year in tech
- iPhone shuns physical buttons for large multi-touch screen
- Safari stakes claim as world’s fastest browser to date
- Kindle brings e-books into the mainstream
- Netflix launches streaming video
- Change.org founded
- reCAPTCHA attempts to put an end to spam
Sample code
<?
/* Political Template Website PHP Source
* Copyright © 2002-2007 Matt Raines <matt@raines.me.uk>
* $Id$
*/
class Cache {
static private $memcache;
static private $data = array();
static private $site;
static private function connect() {
if (isset(self::$memcache)) {
return true;
} elseif (!class_exists('Memcache')) {
return false;
}
$memcache = new Memcache();
if (!$memcache->connect('localhost', 11211)) {
return false;
} else {
self::$memcache = $memcache;
return true;
}
}
static public function get($id) {
if (self::connect()) {
$id = serialize($id);
try {
$item = self::$memcache->get($id);
return $item;
} catch (PDOException $e) {
return false;
}
} else {
return false;
}
}
static public function put($id, $object) {
if (self::connect()) {
$id = serialize($id);
try {
$result = self::$memcache->set($id, $object, 0, 300);
return $result;
} catch (PDOException $e) {
return false;
}
} else {
return false;
}
}
}
?>