Here’s the presentation I put together for last month’s meetup. I hear nobody showed it in my absence, but I thought at least some of you might be interested.
Yeah, we’re a PHP group. But most of the PHP code out there is on the web, and modern web sites rely heavily on Javascript for AJAX & DHTML effects.
This talk from last year’s OSCONconference talks about ways to improve Javascript performance. Some of these techniques are pretty sneaky, and aren’t immediately obvious. But I’ve tried some of them out, and they made a big difference in the how performance was perceived, even if they didn’t make big actual improvements.
If driving to West Chicago this Saturday isn’t your cup of tea, MacSpecialist in Villa Park is hosting a big electronics recycling event as well. Drop off some old computers or monitors, pick up a coupon on some Mac gear, help the planet, get some food, and enjoy some music.
Now isn’t that better than staying home all day?
From their announcement:
The Place:
MacSpecialist, 234 West Roosevelt Road, Villa Park, IL (In the Villa Oaks Shopping Center behind Guitar Center)
The Time:
Saturday April 19th, 2008 from 10:00am - 3:00pm
The Event:
MacSpecialist, Chicagoland’s largest Authorized Apple Reseller, Service Provider and Training Center, will be hosting Reboot: A Consumer Electronics Recycling Event. During this free event you will be able to drop off any consumer electronics equipment to be recycled and/or disposed of properly. Any person who drops off equipment will receive a coupon toward an in-store purchase. Coupons will be valid for that day only.
During the event MacSpecialist will also be taking monetary donations, 100% of which will be given to the Conservation Foundation of DuPage County and the National Resources Defense Council. The minimum donation will be five dollars. Each person who donates will be entered into a raffle to win a green iPod Nano. You do not need to be present to win.
In addition to the raffle donations, a portion of the day’s profit will also be donated to the Conservation Foundation of DuPage County and the National Resources Defense Council.
Reboot will also feature free seminars on various topics with speakers from MacSpecialist, The Conservation Foundation of DuPage County, Apple and Canon. Concessions will be available courtesy of Sweet Baby Ray’s from 11:00am until 1:00pm and Q101 will be broadcasting live from 12:00pm until 2:00pm.
Got old electronics and/or media you want to get rid of, but you don’t want it to end up in a landfill?
Free Electronics Recycling Event
Saturday, April 19, 2008
SIMS (formerly United Recycling Industries)
1600 Harvester, West Chicago
8:00 am – 2:00 pm
What is accepted?
· Computers and computer systems
· Printers
· Ink jet cartridges
· CDs
· Diskettes
· Data cartridges
· Cassette tapes
· Video tapes
· Cell phones
· TVs (no consoles)
· Small home appliances
· Scrap metal
· Telephones
· VCRs
· Fax machines
· Scanners
· Answering machines
· Electronic games
For more information call Sara Hochhauser at 630-231-6060.
On April 14, the Fox Valley Computing Professionals group is giving a two hour Joomla install and setup class. The class starts at 7pm in Batavia, and is BYOB/Wine/soft drinks/snacks.
Joomla is a popular content management system rising out of turmoil in the Mambo community and an Open Source land grab by the original sponsor. Not to be denied the Open Source community revolted and forked into Joomla.
Chris will show us around the Joomla Project with a hands on site building demonstration and overview. There are lots of community support and resources around Joomla, and many extensions.
If we have time we might talk over some differences between Joomla and Drupal and maybe go into something deeper with Drupal as well.
There is plenty of time for discussion and interaction, this is a fun group with a broad range of experience, come join us!
Learn valuable coding skills…from the folks at Google, for free through Google Code University.
A blogger named Mike Willbanks has started a series of posts on PHP performance. His first topic is caching, which was coincidentally the topic at our February meetup.
He covers many of the same topics, but in much more detail. Check out PHP Performance Series: Caching Techniques.
The next PHP Meetup will be March 6th at 7:00pm.
This month, Christian will be giving a presentation on mod_rewrite. That’s the Apache module that makes “friendly” URLs possible.
We’ll be meeting at the “other” Panera, off Butterfield Rd. It’s at 25 Rice Lake Square in Wheaton.
See you there!
The annual php|tek 2008 conference will be held May 20-23 at the Sheraton Gateway Suites Chicago O’Hare, just minutes from the airport.
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Eric Michalsen, a regular at our meetup and others, will be giving a presentation on “Image Magic for non-magicians” February 11 at 7:00pm.
Spend a couple of hours learning about creating and manipulating images with Image Magic. For examples I will be using some dynamic barcoded coupons and a neon sign order system for Miller Brewing.
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The National Association of Government Webmasters is looking for speakers at their annual conference. Do you have some insights to share? See their press release for information on submitting your proposal.
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CDMUG, the Chicago Drupal MeetUp Group, is hosting Drupal Install Night 2.6 on February 11 @ 8pm. Registration is currently full, but that might change with last minute cancellations. Keep an eye on the site just in case.
Here’s my presentation for tonight, in case you don’t feel like going out in the snow…
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