Tonight was campfire. One of the counselors read the following story:

“One day a father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the firm purpose of showing his son how poor people can be. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, ‘How was the trip?’ ‘It was great, Dad.’ ‘Did you see how poor the people can be?’ the father asked. ‘Oh yeah,’ said the son. ‘So what did you learn from the trip?’ asked the father.

The son answered, ‘I saw that we have one dog and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us, but they have friends to protect them.’

With this the boy’s father was speechless. Then his son added, ‘Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are.’”

(Photo: Entoto, Ethiopia, 2009)

With the July 7th, 2009 release of Silverlight 3 just nine months after the release of version 2, Microsoft has addressed many of the shortcomings of this product.  Between the User Interface controls that come with and the Toolkit Microsoft has provided, (free and open source no less), there are more than enough UI options to meet almost any business need including data entry validation and charts.  The short duration between major releases gives me cause for pause with regard to stability of the product.

One thing missing is printing.  Certainly, there are “work arounds” but that is a fundamental feature missing right out of the box.

From a coding perspective one can use Visual Studio which is unquestionably the best Integrated Development Environment on the market today.  As for learning curve it’s no more complex then any other language or set of controls.  However, the techniques and skills one one hones using Silverlight are unique to Silverlight.  Developers will not apply their Silverlight expertise to app’s that aren’t using it.  Moving Silverlight requires a serious commitment because refactoring to replace it with something else is not for the faint of heart.

Development teams employing the Model View Controller (MVC) architecture will find coding for Silverlight in the View layer much easier to transition to than developers using conventional ASP.Net or WPF.  I say that because of the clear distinction between data and display layers in MVC applications.  There will be significant learning curve anyway, but even greater for developers that aren’t accustomed to maintaining a very clear delineation between layers. 

Like Adobe’s Flash Silverlight requires the users to download and install a plug-in on their workstations.  This could be an issue in corporate environments where users are prohibited from installing anything on their workstations and IT departments do not wish to support a new

Applications developed in Silverlight will run on any modern Windows Server or PC, Apple Mac OS X and Linux (via provided it has Novell’s Moonlight product installed).

I have to mention Expression Blend because it would be such a great tool to have if you’re working with Silverlight.  However, it has a retail price of $599 per developer so it’s not an impulse buy.  Expression Blend is a development environment that makes application flow and UI layout drag and drop.  Things move seamlessly between it and Visual Studio, so the UI can be laid out and even prototyped for users in Expression Blend and then moved right into Visual Studio for coding.

I’ve had some really good communications with Ron Grove concerning tide. After expressing some interest in the project, I sent him the source code for tide and the Northwind client, which prompted some discussion of the licensing I’d be using for the project.

After a couple of nights reading about many different licensing options, and some great advice from Ron, I think I’ve finally settled on using the FreeBSD/Simplified BSD license. This seems like the least restrictive copyleft license that maintains GPL compatibility. I was also considering MS-PL, but this is not GPL compatible. Now, I don’t personally think that’s a huge stopping point, but I figured if I can use a GPL compatible license, why not?

Hopefully this licensing choice will suit all who wish to download, examine, learn from, use, and possible even modify or redistribute tide. I’ll be wrapping up the second part of the customers plugin soon, and hope to have a blog post up about that this weekend.

Thanks to Ron for helping with my licensing questions!

Icon files can contain multiple images e.g. 16×16, 24×24, 32×32, 48×48. If you create an image control in Wpf and set its height & width to one of the larger sizes, Wpf will stretch the first (16×16) image to fill the space. This results in a blurred image. While it is possible to extract specific icons dynamically in code, it is simpler for a static display like the GoalBook About dialog to use a tool like Icon Sushi to extract the required icon from the icon file.

I know a few people who have run into major customer support problems with an LMS vendor over the past few months. The vendor has not provided competent support, communication has been difficult, and the project is taking months longer than what was originally expected. I’ve worked with several LMS vendors in my day (both good and bad), and this one is taking the prize. It makes me ask this question: What level of customer support should you expect to receive from your LMS vendor?

Here’s my take:

• Customer support should be available via phone and email during regular business hours.
• All inquiries should be recognized and responded to within 24 hours (auto-response emails don’t count!). A solution isn’t necessary within 24 hours; just let me know that you’re working on the issue.
• Urgent issues should be recognized and responded to within 2 hours (or sooner).
• An online ticketing system should be used to track all open requests, issues, fixes, etc., and this system should be visible to the customer.
• An account representative should stay in touch with you every month or so to check in and make sure everything is running well.
• Finally, on a more technical level: If I need to troubleshoot a complex SCORM issue, I would like to send the SCO to the LMS vendor to get their input. If the problem lies within the SCO, I should have to fix it. If the problem lies within the LMS, the vendor should address it.

Keep these points in mind when working with LMS vendors. If you’re about to purchase an LMS, carefully review the support details in the contract and request changes if necessary.

Can you think of any other expectations for LMS vendor customer support?

(By the way, the eLearning Guild has a great research report (Learning Management Systems 2008) that provides a ton of detail around features, demographics, satisfaction, costs, implementation timelines, and much more. Be sure to check it out if you’re in the hunt for an LMS.)

Here’s what we reported on today:

• Reactions to Naming of Next Education Commissioner
• Davis Critical Of House Panel’s Healthcare Legislation
• Officials To Ask Cordish For Answers In Baltimore
• Holliday Is New Kentucky Education Chief

It’s no secret that I’ve been struggling with Kohana over the past few weeks as I’ve been building a new site for a non-profit in Vancouver, BC.

You may want to read my web development background for more information about my development path and how I got to this current project.

Although I’ve been programming in PHP for a decade or so I’ve learned the limitations of the language and started building up a reportoire of code modules and drop-in classes. The first one I wrote was an error handler as v4 was hopeless. My class would intercept the errors, log them, show them in development but not production, and would even dump the source around the problematic line.

My second class was a database abstraction class that integrated to the error handler but handled all of my SQL queries, integrating XSS filtering, profiling of the queries and made the cumbersome PHP language constructs more intuitive. For example, pulling a whole result set back as an array.

These two classes became key ingredients in my projects and then I started looking at other classes. Maybe I should use a routing class so I can use SEO-friendly URLs. The concept of MVC appealed. I already had a templating class and I’d already started splitting my code into modules for each subdirectory of my site.

I also wrote a form handling class; one that would construct the forms, pre-populate the fields, validate the results and also highlight any errors in a user-friendly manner.

I then wanted to add session management into the mix, create object-based relationships in my database for ultimate flexibility and I started to outline my own framework.

It was around this time that I learned the word framework and started looking at every PHP framework for one that suited my needs. I’d looked at Joomla!, Drupal and every other CMS but didn’t like the learning curve or the rigid approach to development they enforced. I even bought books on Joomla! and Drupal to help me learn how to use them but I never got on with these systems.

It seemed that I knew more PHP than I needed to know to make them work and my more advanced knowledge of PHP gave me issues as I wasn’t prepared to curb my knowledge to fit in with their systems.

So I went back to the frameworks and found CodeIgniter. I felt at home. It had almost everything that I wanted with minimal bloat and would replace every piece of home-grown code I’d made. All I needed now was a design project.

It took a while. In fact it was nearly a year and then this non-profit request came through. And then I heard about Kohana.

So I downloaded both frameworks and started playing around. PHP v5 does have some neat features, particularly around classes and error handling so I decided to use Kohana.

The code was well-documented, the community was there and there was some documentation. I’m sure it would have been easier to use CodeIgniter as the documentation and support is superb but I feel Kohana is the future. I also like that I’ve had to update to PHP v5 because it was time to leave v4.3 behind.

While I should really be planning interviews, transcribing or otherwise engaged with my research work, I’ve been distracted this morning by a foray into the world of aid worker blogs, and specifically an ongoing conversation about the role, or non-role, of expatriate volunteers in aid projects.  This is a topic I have a great interest in – being central to both my Masters and PhD research, and to my own experience as a wanna-be volunteer.

It started with a single tweet from @SarahMDC:   “Good dig at some of the muky issues surrounding international dev #volunteers + volunteer projects http://digg.com/u18jMS“.  The link is to Tales From the Hood, and the post is the final in a series on international volunteers.  I found myself nodding in agreement with the post as it reflected my own academic scepticism of international volunteers, particilarly short term ones.  It set me thinking once again about my reasons for pursuing post-graduate study in development, and for choosing my research topic.

Here’s an abridged excerpt from some work I did last year on international volunteering:

Despite mounting evidence of the altruistic nature, and global popularity of international volunteering, I remained in a critical frame of mind.  Much of the literature surrounding volunteering for development is explicitly positive, identifying it is something that can potentially shape such new thinking and help to ‘humanise’ globalisation (Lewis, 2005, p. 15).  However I was reading with the eyes of a cynic, and found that not only was it easy to find literature that highlighted the problems with international volunteering, it seemed the critiques overshadowed the positivity.

The first criticism is the related to altruism.  While volunteering is generally considered an altruistic activity, in most cases there is considerable benefit to the volunteer, perhaps even more than to the community or hosts.  Benefits to the volunteer include personal development, enhanced career prospects, friendship and adventure . This criticism is strengthened by the lack of research on the impacts on communities, who arguably may in fact be adversely affected as they spend time, energy and resources to accommodate the volunteer. This argument is particularly directed at volunteer tourism, where programmes may be explicitly developed for, or marketed to tourists rather than being developed from and for the community to be served.

In addition to this, while one of the purported benefits of international volunteering is the development of cross-cultural appreciation and understanding, research suggests that it may actually have the reverse effect, reinforcing stereotypes and actively promoting an image of a ‘third world other’ that is dominated an ‘us and them’ mindset…  The ‘us and them’ mentality is reinforced by the inherent inequality of the volunteer experience, where “the processes that allow young westerners to access the financial resources, and moral imperatives, necessary to travel and volunteer in a ‘third world country’, are the same as the ones that make the reverse process almost impossible” (Simpson, 2004).

International volunteering is also criticised as the volunteers come from outside the host community, with limited skills, experience, and understanding of the local context.  My research on short term, volunteer medical missions was very critical on this point, arguing that language and cultural differences, inadequate resources and time, and a lack of local knowledge significantly limits what the volunteers could do and often results in poor medical care.  (Other studies have found that short term volunteers programmes may) encourage the (false) view that development is a simple matter, and something which can be ‘done’ by non-skilled, but enthusiastic volunteer-tourists.

Another criticism is that international volunteering cultivates dependency.  A host community may become dependent on volunteers and voluntary programmes when these are promoted at the expense of longer term or community driven initiatives.  Dependency is also fostered when volunteers undermine the dignity of communities with handouts.  In addition Western volunteers can be seen as ‘modelling’ a lifestyle of cultural and material values that may be inappropriate, and which promotes modernisation, or development as westernisation.

All of these are reflected in the significant criticism of neo-colonialism.  This criticism… is reinforced by claims that volunteer programmes are built on the structures of colonialism (Smith & Elkin, 1980), use developing countries as training grounds for future professionals (Raymond & Hall, 2008) and are modelling a Western way of living (Roberts; Simpson, 2004).  At it’s extreme, is the argument that international volunteers are a form of Northern imperialism, as their activities boost Northern Government interests rather than tackling the root causes of poverty and injustice (Devereux, 2008).

This excerpt is part of a larger piece that explores both the positive and critical literature on international volunteering, and expands on the ideas as they apply to my research (probably not so interesting to blog readers!). It ends on a more hopeful note, one that is looking forward, looking for ways in which the passion and skills of wanna-be volunteers  (like myself 10 years ago) can be harnessed in ways that are mutually beneficial and constructive; and in which Westeners can learn about the reality of life in other parts of the world in way that break down rather than reinforce stereotypes.  I find it interesting that this is actually the starting place for the series from Tales From the Hood:

Appropriate, structured cultural exchange can be a very positive thing.This, I think, is an important starting place…  We blame lack of having traveled and lack of awareness and understanding of international issues for everything from Third World Poverty to the fact the George W. Bush initiated the Iraq war. But then, when someone has the idea of taking some ordinary citizens from “here” and letting them see what it’s like “over there”, we’re very quick to pick them apart for that. And perhaps in some cases, rightly so. But we ourselves offer no alternatives.

We need an accepted mechanism for exposing aid-work-outsiders. Our work is critical. It is (or should be) making a difference…
But we need a way to meaningfully and appropriately expose our work to our third audience: ordinary people in our home countries. I’m not saying development tourism is the answer. But it’s one possibility.

I guess I have taken this as my challenge.  I’m not sure whether my PhD study will find any definitive answers (actually I’m quite sure it won’t) but I know the questions will continue to haunt me in my future career, be it academic or in practice.

For now I really need to get back to work.  There will be no answers without actually doing some research.

Some other good posts on the issue:
Good intentions are not enough (series on guidelines for international volunteers)
Aid Watch

Next post – back to the non-drama of living and doing research during a (non-?) coup!

I now have two 2 year olds.  Well, really they are 2 and almost one week, but why should any of my blog entries be timely?  I didn’t take any pictures of them on their birthday on my camera, so I have been waiting to get some good ones from other people, but they are just taking way too long.  So, I will have to post some day of birthday pictures later.  Their birthday was a bit crazy because it was also the day that we had Gran’s big party.  So, we did a little celebration the day before and will have a little party at the Little Gym for their friends here next week. 

I am finding it really hard to believe that Bree and Cullen are now two.  It is crazy to think about how fast these two years have gone by.  I look back at photos of them the week they were born and I don’t even recognize those babies anymore.  Now, they are toddlers and running us ragged every day.  I thought I would list a few tidbits about these “big” kids that now occupy our house.

Bree

• Bree is talking up a storm.  She says the funniest things.  Her new thing is “I wanna see (insert name here).”  This means she wants to sit with whoever it is or have them hold her.  On our Tahoe trip, we went to mass and every five minutes, she wanted to “see” someone new.  “I wanna see Papa.”  “I wanna see Mommy.”  “I wanna see Gigi.”  You get the idea. 
• Bree will eat almost anything (with the exception of vegetables, of course) and will eat pretty much all day long if you would let her.  She loves snacks and regularly tells me “I wanna snack.”  This usually means cookies, granola bars or fruit bites.  She also likes to be picked up so she can look into the cabinets and see just what treasures it holds.
• She is becoming a little bit bossy.  She likes to tell people what to do…”Mommy, sit on couch” but usually does it in a nice way.  She just likes to be in charge of what is going on and will try to get everyone to follow her plan.
• She is also a bit of a fashionista.  She likes to help pick out what she wears and will tell you how she likes her hair done.  She and Cullen are both still a big fan of “cips” so we still have a bag full of those at the ready. 

Cullen

• Cullen is still our laid back little guy.  He doesn’t talk as much as Bree (I think it’s because she does alot of talking for him), but he can hold his own and will express himself when he needs to.  He still calls Bree “Breezy” at all times and I just think that is so cute.
• Cullen is still majorly into Cars and vehicles of any kind.  He loves to point out choo choo trains, trucks, tractors and any other kind of vehicle he sees.  There have been several times where he has pointed things out to me that I had no idea he knew. 
• He is definitely our picky eater.  He will eat most types of carbs and chicken nuggets.  I have even taken to getting some vegetable baby food because he will eat that and I figure I might as well get vegetables into him any way I can.  He did eat an Amy’s pizza bite the other day, which amazed me and occasionally he will eat fish.  It is pretty much hit or miss with him, which is fairly frustrating, but he drinks alot of milk and seems to be pretty solid so I will just keep trying to give him a variety of foods.
• Cullen is pretty independent and will play by himself for longer periods of time.  He isn’t as cuddly as his sister, but will sometimes humor his mom with a kiss.  He likes to play pretty rough…he is definitely all boy (until he gets hurt, and then he is very sensitive, a trait that I am sure comes solely from his father).

They are both really great kids.  They are doing well with saying please and thank you and will usually say bless you when someone sneezes.  They both will also say “Two!” when asked how old they are.  We aren’t doing any serious potty training yet.  They will both sit on the potty and pretend to go pee pee, but I am convinced this is just to get to use toilet paper and flush the toilet.  Our next big thing is to get rid of their pacifiers.  They only use them at nap time and bed time, but I hate to mess with their sleeping.  They are still really good sleepers.  But, they are old enough to do without them, so I think we might give that a shot this weekend.  Cullen has also been crawling into Bree’s crib so we have been thinking we may have to switch to their toddler beds, but I am still in denial about that one.

So, there you go.  A little ode to my two year olds.  Honestly, as exhausting as they can be sometime, they are so much fun to be around.  They are smart, funny, sweet and crazy and we laugh constantly.  It is so wonderful to see their little personalities continue to develop and to see how loving they are to each other.  They really do look after each other and make sure that the other one is taken care of .  They are the best and I am so lucky to have them.  Happy (belated) Birthday B & C!

Yuka Izutsu is awesome. Above is just a sampling of the sketches that I got from the 4th term Art Center Illustration student. First off, I love just seeing how another talented, creative person would envision the “Paper Balloons” App looking if they were in complete control. Secondly, I love seeing another talented, creative person make anything. I’m very glad that I got Yuka to do these sketches. Even though I’ll probably stick with doing all of the art assets myself, her sketches still give me a great area to explore that I hadn’t even considered.

The Charles Lafitte Foundation is seeking applicants for their Healthy Living Grants.

The Charles Lafitte Foundation supports innovative and effective ways for people to help themselves and others around them lead healthy and satisying lives.

The Foundation’s areas of interests are education, youth advocacy, and medical research.

Eligible applicants are nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) status.

Deadline: Rolling (Letter of Inquiry)

Click here for more information and to apply.

Teacher professional development is fundamental for single person, whether in a jobor not. It is crucial for each organizationand professional to increase the experienceandaptitude of the . Everyoneshould beattempt to enhance the quality of achievement, to secure an enhancementon the personal and professional front. Often times instructional costs at an obligation hundreds of dollars. However, there are options. How about TeacherTube is an online teacher community that has over 90,0000 videos created by other teachers. There are literaly hundreds of TeacherTube geared toward teacher professional development. TeacherTube has been around for a couple of years now and hundreds of thousands of teachers use TeacherTube as a resource.

Free teacher professional development is crucial to gain experience and aptitude, through and consistent education in the vocation. You cannot expect to support the enireCoachingyou would like to have. You must seek outand find free teacher professional development opportunities when you can find them. And TeacherTube is a good start. By no means does TeacherTube possessa corner on the market. In fact you can visit to most university sites that have teacher departments and ascertaingood free teacher professional development.

Whereas, a good free TeacherTube professional development downloadable videoscan be located in other places such as how to manage students, conflict resolution, how to create engaging lesson plans, how to use technology in the classsroom. In that TeacherTube is unceasinglyenlargingand new TeacherTube community members regularlyincreasing freshcontent.

So whatCustomarily transpires in these cases. A number of times, It’ssad to say the particular teacher is secludedalone without any or a little help. This is what makes TeacherTube most meaningful to me…IT”S FREE!!! Try out TeacherTube and I assure you that you will come across a free professional development worth observing.

Friday afternoon rant.

Engineering software for 25 years & I end up ‘customising’ for a living.. It’s like trying to ‘customise’ a cat to obtain a dog.. Why not just go to a kennel and get a dog?

Constant workarounds. Constant security issues.

The worst development tool ever: Sharepoint Designer – which in many cases cannot be avoided.

And after all.. end users find it difficult to use effectively anyway!

It’s hard to evangelise something you’re not too enthusiastic about yourself

Kansas is famous for its tornados, but how do you explain this one??
She’s the whirlwind of brains, beauty and drive that KPI just signed to a talent deal.

Raised up on a ranch (think: a cow for a pet) in Kansas (Louisburg, pop. 2,940).

“I just remember thinking my mother was so glamorous. She was the first woman I was fascinated with.” This little sprout blossomed to become a fresh-faced MISS TEEN USA. (She continues to mentor Miss Teen USA hopefuls.)

But she’s, uh, all grown up now…and thriving in California.

She started her own business in LA: Style Studio.
Image consulting, corporate branding and event styling to the max.

VERY successful.

Now she’s expanded her biz up the coast to San Francisco—new high-end clients, new hearts to win.

Her name is Keylee Sanders.

Remember that name: KEYLEE SANDERS

Enigma Machine - Encryption - Wikipedia

Defining functions on PHP is one of the simplest things that can be done. Functions are a great way to control your code and, when used correctly, can provide some great power to it as well.

Not likely C++ (and some other languages) that you defined the function output just before the function name, PHP works with a simple definition where you define the name and arguments that will be used to define the function and it’s scope.

As mentioned before defining a function with PHP is simple:

<?php
function userDefinedPrint ()
{
echo ‘My first function … sweeeetttt … ‘;
return true;
}
?>

PHP functions does not carry a need for a argument, return or even needs to be declared on the top of the code (safe a exception – check example 2) to be called, which make them pretty flexible to work with.

The real major restrictions of defining a user-defined function in PHP is the same for any variable declaration or any label in PHP, function names must start with an underscore or a letter, never a number, the functions cannot, at any instance have the same name as a PHP function or structure and the names are case sensitive. Defining a function called print, would cause an error on PHP that’s because PHP does not support function overloading.

There is three basic ways that you can pass an argument to a user-defined function:

• By value and this one being required or optional
• By reference
• By argument array

When defining a function that needs to pass arguments by value or, better explaining, using a variable that will be used inside the function scope to receive a value, it’s the most common form to do it where the only thing that needs to be observed is if the value is required or optional.

<?php
function userDefinedPrint($whatINeedToPrint, $maybeThisToo = ”)
{
echo $whatINeedToPrint;
if (strlen($maybeThisToo) > 0)
{
echo $maybeThisToo;
}
return true;
}

userDefinedPrint(’my first function… ‘);

/** this will output: my first function… */

userDefinedPrint(’my first function… ‘ , ‘yeayyyyy’);

/** this will output: my first function… yeayyyyy */
?>

The function above have 2 arguments, one required and another one optional. Whenever the function is called it requires to give at least one argument, and, by function scope, if the second argument is given (a condition that it’s size is bigger than 0), then it will also be printed.

The second argument, the optional one, is called optional because it already have it’s default value given, therefore the function will always know that if the second argument is not given, it will use the default value on it’s scope.

The second most used type of function is creating a one which receives the parameter by reference. Passing a parameter by reference is quite tricky thing if the concept is not fully understood.

When creating a function that uses a parameter by reference, automatically PHP knows that the programmer is referencing a variable that is outside the function scope.

A nice way to place this concept is the same as the “pointers” used by C++. In this case the function parameter “points” to the same memory area as the previously defined variable.

In order to define a parameter as a referenced parameter you must use the ampersand (&) before the variable name

$referencedVariable = 0;
function increaseCounter(&$counter)
{
return ++$referecedVariable;
}

echo $referencedVariable; // will display 0
increaseCounter($referencedVariable);
echo $referencedVariable; // will display 1

Is important to notice that it’s necessary the full understanding of the “reference” concept. If wrongly used, it will surely return unexpected results, therefore, when well used, it surely can improve the code programming logic.

The last item is to define a function using an argument array (or a variable length argument list). It isn’t a hard concept to understand, but instead of creating a function that will show that, I will use one, very well know one, that can exemplify this concept in a beautiful way.

The “echo” constructor does not require for you to pass the arguments between parenthesis. While using this constructor it pass one or more arguments to print.

echo ‘this is the string I want printed’;
echo ‘this is the’ , ‘ string ‘ , ‘ I want printed’ ;

The result for both calls is the same, what changes is the number of arguments. In the first call “echo” only have one single argument. On the second call “echo” does have 3 arguments (separated by commas).

On the second call the “echo” constructor will first print the first argument, then print the second and third in order. When used some concatenation or any mathematical operation, it will work on those first and then start the output (check the echo reference guide for more information).

To define a function that use a variable length argument list you need to know how many arguments are (func_num_args()) and how to get the argument value (func_get_arg(), and func_get_args()). This surely increases the level of understanding of the function, but, in some cases (let’s say when working for a script that is executed by a cron job), it’s extremely helpful.

Defining a function that uses a variable argument list is simple, just don’t set a number of arguments or parameters on the function scope (leave it blank), but knowing how many arguments and getting the value of each argument can be tricky and that’s why PHP offer the argument function sisters:

• func_num_args()
• func_get_arg()
• func_get_args()

Here is a simple example that will help understanding the creation of a function like this:

function emailBlaster()
{
$num_arguments = func_num_args();
$email = func_get_arg(0);
$subject = func_get_arg(1);
$body = func_get_arg(2);

if ($num_arguments > 1)
{
mail($email,$subject,$body);
}
}

// you could use as well the func_get_args array;

emailBlaster(’noemail@noemail.com’,'testing’,'this is the email body’);

The variable length argument array does not have a defined number of arguments and it should be used only on very specific situations.

About functions pretty much everything is covered and all that needs to be done now is to improve and better understand how each type works and what is the best way to use each type.

Play a bit, check the results, check the PHP manual, have fun.

Introduction

The aim of the CDA/ESM methodology is to enable communities, governments, design groups, corporations etc. to compare and evaluate projects in a transparent and objective way.

The ultimate goal is of course to limit the chances of poor decisions, ruinous choices and industrial fiascoes when comparing projects or alternatives.

Projects whose comparison/evaluation is amenable to the proposed methodology include, but are not limited to:

• Industrial processes (including information, IT & IP protection etc.)
• Civil infrastructure (buildings underground, above ground)
• Transport infrastructures (railroads, highways, airports, harbors etc.)
• Linear facilities (power lines, pipelines, channels etc.)
• Civil protection work (tsunamis, typhoons, earthquakes, avalanches, rockfalls etc.)
• Natural resources (mining (open pits and underground), oil, gas, hydro, forest etc.)
• Environmental protection (clean-up, rehabilitation, restoration, reclamation, encapsulation, decontamination, demining, dumping, waste management, recycling etc.)
• Terrorism and criminality, including Information Warfare (IW).

A Brief Review of Alternative Comparison Methods

Various ways of comparing projects have been proposed in the past in various industries and environments at strategic or tactical level.

At strategic level, sophisticated methods that use the so called “utility functions” (UF) can be applied to compare alternatives and projects. It has been argued the use of UFs may be more appropriate than the use of monetary values when comparing alternatives at strategic level. Modern UF methodologies encompass options identification, outcome identification, likelihood evaluation, value evaluation and probabilistic calculations to estimate the UF of each alternative. Other more appropriate strategic level approaches encompass specific tools to be used in identifying objectives, including wish lists and goals, constraints and guidelines leading to a value focused judgment and generation of possible paths.

However, economic factors, capital expenditures and other “money” considerations remains a factor of choice in most business decisions, even at strategic level and most certainly at tactical level. Tactical level decisions are often driven by comparison of expected financial performances, balance sheet forecasts, and “generalized cost”. Generally, however, discount cash methods such as the Net Present Value (NPV) are used.

When using NPV, some authors have proposed to add to the annual cost of a facility (or project, or operation) its annual “risk cost”. However, this type of analyses developed deterministically, only in terms of expected cost, may result in severe errors and poor decisions. That happens because that procedure cannot fully capture failure effects related to loss of life, environmental attributes, criminal sanctions, or the corporate future. These results can indeed at best be evaluated as widely scattered stochastic variables, and reasonable estimates of their compounded effect can only be achieved if these scatters are taken into account.

Comparing Alternatives with CDA/ESM

In order to solve the problem posed by the approaches discussed above more sophisticated techniques have recently been introduced. These modern techniques allow the probabilistic determination of the costs and risk costs of complex facilities, but are too detailed to be applied at a preliminary level.

Riskope’s CDA/ESM methodology stems out of the modern probabilistic techniques and is geared towards allowing comparison of projects at tactical level, in a simplified preliminary way, and still capture the uncertainties and stochastic aspects of reality along the life span of each alternative.
With the CDA/ESM, the evaluation of projects is carried out by evaluating their Economic Safety Margin (ESM). As the ESM includes life long expected gains, implementation costs and total risks, the proposed methodology encompasses and requires a simplified and preliminary Life Cycle Risk Assessment for Projects (LCRAP).

Like for structural reliability, a large safety margin indicates a strong and robust application. Like for structural reliability, ESM has to be evaluated in probabilistic terms, as all its terms are indeed stochastic, and the probability of the ESM<0 indicates the probability of economic failure of the project.

This approach significantly differs from a classic “provisional balance sheet” approach because risks and uncertainties are explicitly taken into account, as well as the stochastic nature of the costs.

Example of CDA/ESM Use

Let’s examine two alternative for the protection of a railroad segment in the Canadian Rockies. This example is oversimplified and only the expected values are discussed (albeit the method used is fully probabilistic).

Alternative 1: Rockfall Protection Net

In order to protect the railroad from rock-falls a net system is foreseen (life span 20years) at a cost of 200,000$.
A derailment could cost 2M$ in that area, and the yearly probability of occurrence has been defined by geological and rock mechanics studies.
The average ESM of this alternative is evaluated at +1.7M$ over the life span of the rock-fall net system after taking into account the expected return (i.e. the avoidance of derailments) and all the risks of the alternative, from cradle to grave. Desoite the uncertainties and scatter of all the driving paramters of this analysis such large expected ESM means that the probability of a financial fiasco of this alternative is low.

Alternative 2: Rockfall Protection Shed

The construction of a shed to cover the same segment is evaluated at 2M$ with identical derailment potential consequences and cradle to grave risks pertinent with this alternative.
With an yearly probability of occurrence of a rock-fall identical to the one of Alternative 1 the ESM is evaluated at -480,000$, indicating an extreme likelihood of a financial fiasco of this alternative

Comparison Between The Net And The Shed

Quite obviously the Net System is to be preferred to the Shed, as the ESM of the net is widely positive, whereas the ESM of the shed is almost half a million negative.

Before making the final decision, however the following conditions should be considered:

Condition 1:
Is it possible that the expected return was underestimated by as much as half a million? In other words: are there reasons to believe that a 2.5M$ derailment is possible? Or: can we imagine that the yearly probability was grossly underestimated?
Condition 2:
Is it possible that the magnitude of the expected rockfall was severely underestimated and therefore the risks are way larger than estimated?

The brief discussion above illustrate how CDA/ESM can actually help transparent and easy discussions also in the case of public interest cases, when painful decisions have to be taken in full transparency with respect to various stakeholders.

With our upcoming SharePoint 2007 deployment, I am contemplating whether or not I’d like to learn SharePoint development.  I do not have any real development experience aside from some web development (HTML, CSS), and I don’t think my early years with BASIC or that one Visual Basic course I took in college count.  I wondered whether it was too late in the game to learn programming.

As one should for any major life decisions (or minor), I consulted Google.  I wondered, “Is it too late for me to learn programming?”  This was an interesting query because Google’s query suggestions upon typing “is it too late for me to” thought I was asking “Is it too late for me to go to medical school?” or “Is it too late for me to become a doctor?”  I have been watching House lately, so I did actually consider that as an option momentarily.

The wisdom of Google overwhelmingly answered, NO, it is not too late, and encouraged me to learn programming.  “What should I start with?” I implored further.  And the consensus was Python, favorite of XKCD.  Certainly a worthy endeavor, but I wondered if I should be more SharePoint specific in my plan?   After all, this calls for .NET development.

In general, the internets tell me that to be a SharePoint developer, you should know these things:

• Get your MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solution Developer) – five exams on .NET (Visual Basic or C#), and XML services.
• Learn VB or C# .NET
• Also learn C++
• Understand the .NET framework
• Understand Web services, ADO.NET, XML/XSLT, and Windows/IIS security
• Understand SQL server
• Learn ASP .NET development and be a good .NET developer
• Learn the SharePoint object model
• Learn CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language)

The start of this process, for a non-developer, is learning VB.NET or C#.NET (I’m going to start with C#).  I can probably start at Microsoft’s Web Development for Beginners site.

Too bad I can’t download all this Matrix-style. 

(GREEK NEW AGENDA)  The Union for the Mediterranean launched in 2008 has created lots of expectations for revitalising the cooperation of all business communities of the countries concerned. A new political will has been expressed at high level for the transformation of the Mediterranean basin to an area of sustainable development, economic integration and social cohesion.  Following the very successful “Med Business Days” organised by MEDEF in Marseille last year and the previous events in Valencia and Palermo, the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises hosted the new edition of the major Euro-Mediterranean Business Forum: “Bridging the Mediterranean - Athens Business Forum”, which was being held in Athens (Divani Apollon Palace & Spa- Kavouri) from July 8th to 10th, 2009.  Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Speech of FM Dora Bakoyannis at the Euro-Mediterranean Business Forum