reading list, late summer/fall 2011

by Matthew DeVille

 

I read Dharma Road in August. It was a good refresher on zen buddhism and a nice view into the world of taxi cab driving (in Austin, TX). Go pick it up. Good stuff!

Still reading Going to Pieces… good stuff and a nice complement for Dharma Road. Like what Epstein says about being unintegrated. As someone who has experienced depersonalization disorder, I found his perspective reassuring. I’m not saying he equates unintegration with depersonalization disorder, but I think they are linked. Now, if I can just start working meditation into the weekly routine…

I’ve been trying to jump into iPhone app dev. Along the way I realized that I needed a better grounding in C. My favorite part of the book is when he describes programmers who are born completely left-brained and the rest of us, who “just need to get something done” (liberal paraphrasing here.)

Finally, Kraken is my October/Halloween read. “Cracking good SF!” — that was on Neuromancer’s cover. I think it applies here as well. A rollicking good time.

What’s next? Moby Dick. More Buddhism. More PHP books and coding books. More SciFi! Let the metamorphosis continue!

 

house

by Matthew DeVille

What Works vs. What’s Good

by Matthew DeVille

I’ve been struggling with using PHP to connect to a Web Service written in ASP.Net. The basic assignment is to send info from a simple contact form to the web service using SOAP. I have read lots of blog posts that start off promising to show how simple it is to use SOAP in PHP. In theory, that is true enough. In practice, at least in my situation, how to proceed is clear as mud.

Most of the tutorials focus on a simple call to a service that passes one parameter. In my case, I need to pass four parameters, one of which is a full XML file. The schema calls for this to be passed as a string.

So far, the only thing that works is assigning the XML (copied from the sample file) to a variable as a string, then passing it to the web service in a __soapCall();

It ain’t pretty, it ain’t good, but it works. If I figure out how to do it more elegantly, I’m swearing to myself I’ll post a complete tutorial about it.

Textures

by Matthew DeVille

Sunday morning is for drinking tea, listening to PJ Harvey (thanks Kirsten for reminding me), quietness, and laying down some textures. The studio/basement is clean. Fall is here today (46° F).

Here’s a pic of Scout when the studio was upstairs:

 

I’ve been working in acrylic, on plywood panels. I was using normal plywood at first, then tried some “oak” plywood, but I noticed the surface is veneer, which seems fragile. I found some baltic birch at the local Woodcraft store. It is much more uniform, has nice even layers. The only limit is that they only carry it in smaller sizes. And it is expensive, but it seems worth it.

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