This evening's ride

I'm working on riding my way up to Crafers from work - I got further than last time, but was still stuffed (I probably could have made it, but... willpower failed me)


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For those of you not from Adelaide, that whole Mount Osmond bit is pretty much... up.

Moving House on the Internet

I've recently decided to shift houses; and am simply amazed at just how easy it is now.

I found Share-Accomodation.net - just one of the many sites in this market space.

I really like the above - it's obviously thrown together by people without much English (typos abound); but the approach they have taken works like a charm.

You can post your ads and message for free - but you pay ($5 / 1 day membership or $20 / 1 month) to read your messages. By the time there's an inbox with several messages in it, it's much easier to justify spending the money.

It feels completely inoffensive, compared to the typical pay-before-you-can-message approach other sites take.

Highly recommended site

A phone

I finally caved and got myself a mobile phone. Shoot me an email if you want the number.

Eventually, I might even get the skype features working. Rrr.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

What do you get when you drink too much coffee?

You get to see awesome movies in the middle of the night.

How to customise PHP_CodeSniffer (writing custom coding standards)

PHP_CodeSniffer is a PEAR package which detects potential coding problems and enforces your style guide.

The default is the PEAR coding standard, but you can easily change that.

First,

pear install PHP_CodeSniffer

and

pear install PEAR_PackageFileManager_Cli

.

Second, create a new folder somewhere -

PHP/CodeSniffer/Standards/Foo

Third, you'll want to make a

FooCodingStandard.php

in that directory.

It should look somewhat like:

<?php
if (class_exists('PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_CodingStandard', true) === false) {
    throw new PHP_CodeSniffer_Exception('Class PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_CodingStandard not found');
}

class PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_Foo_FooCodingStandard extends PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_CodingStandard
{

    public function getIncludedSniffs()
    {
        return array(
                'Generic/Sniffs/Functions/OpeningFunctionBraceKernighanRitchieSniff.php',
                'Generic/Sniffs/NamingConventions/UpperCaseConstantNameSniff.php',
                'Generic/Sniffs/Metrics/NestingLevelSniff.php',
                'Generic/Sniffs/PHP/DisallowShortOpenTagSniff.php',
                'Generic/Sniffs/PHP/ForbiddenFunctionsSniff.php',
                'Generic/Sniffs/PHP/LowerCaseConstantSniff.php',
                'Generic/Sniffs/WhiteSpace/DisallowTabIndentSniff.php',
                'PEAR/Sniffs/Files/IncludingFileSniff.php',
                'PEAR/Sniffs/Functions/FunctionCallArgumentSpacingSniff.php',
                'PEAR/Sniffs/Functions/FunctionCallSignatureSniff.php',
                'PEAR/Sniffs/ControlStructures/ControlSignatureSniff.php',
               );

    }//end getIncludedSniffs()


}//end class

Spend a little time searching for the sniffs you want to use - some can be a huge help, or a huge pain.

Next, use the CLI tool

pfm

to create a package.xml in

PHP/

. You want to set the base install directory to PHP/; and you want to watch out for case senstivity and the like.

Once you have your package.xml; you just want to type

pear package

in the same directory - if it works, you should have a new .tgz with you can install -

pear install PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_Foo-0.0.1.tgz

Testing it:

phpcs -i

should show your new coding standard listed here if everything is working correctly.

To set it to your default coding standard:

phpcs --config-set default_standard Foo

What next?
You could set it up to run via Cron across your entire project, or you could integrate it with an SVN post commit hook.

How to extract useful OWL from Freebase schemas

So, I like Freebase a lot, but the biggest stumbling block for me was the MQL abbreviation.

It was immediately shuffled off into the too hard basket; and neglected to read the "its just JSON" bit.

Today, I went back to Freebase and started creating my own ontologies; which is actually pretty neat - the authoring tools, though a little slow, are clearly the exact kind of thing needed to make the Semantic Web a reality.

(As a side note, the importing tools for lists coupled with having slow internet is a horrible experience - I want that bit of my life back please!)

After finishing all of that useful schema authoring, I've been a bit glum: I can't use this outside of Freebase easily - There are no Freebase to OWL tools that exist, so I
decided to write some.

To use it you'll need:

• PHP
• Net_URL
• HTTP_Client
• To read some documentation!

It's a first run, and doesn't deal with errors at all. Later on, I'll actually throw a web frontend to it perhaps.

Using it is pretty easy:

// 1. Show me all of the types (Classes) in the Music domain (Ontology)
$domain = new FreebaseDomain('/music');
print_r($domain->listTypes());

// 2. Show me the details of all types (classes) in doconnor's mortgage industry domain (ontology)
$domain = new FreebaseDomain('/user/doconnor/mortgage_industry');
$types = $domain->listTypes();

foreach ($types as $key) {
    $type = new FreebaseType($key);

    print $key . ":\n";
    print $type->toOWL("http://www.freebase.com") . "\n\n";
}

Making the papers again...

My workplaces made the industry news as a part of The value of valuation.

ValEx gets a mention with

While traditional valuations continue to play a large role in the loan application process, the valuation industry is undergoing some very significant technological changes that make the valuation process faster, much to the benefit of both brokers and borrowers.

Three big changes have altered the valuation landscape in the last few years: the establishment of LIXI standards, the introduction of exchanges and the growing acceptance of automatic valuation models (AVMs).

The introduction of web services technology that will enable lenders and valuers to exchange information in XML format has slowly been making inroads into the industry.

LIXI, the Lending Industry XML Initiative, has been actively promoting this method of communication. While valuation organisations seem keen to implement the standard, lenders have been slow to come on board, says Andrew Duerden, national sales and business manager at LoanWorks Technologies.

"There seems to be a bit of pull and push at the moment," he says, adding that legacy issues for lenders may be impeding their participation.

"They're running systems that are 10 if not 20 years old and to change this stuff to support new standards that are based on new technology is probably not a small task for them."

The second big change sweeping through the valuation industry is the establishment of valuation aggregators or exchanges.

Exchanges house a number of smaller valuation firms that have a broad geographical reach. Exchanges are advantageous to lenders in that they allow them to deal with one entity using the same automatic process.

The Valuation Exchange, which was formed in 2005, grew out of Megaw & Hogg National Valuers.

"We saw in Megaw & Hogg the need to change the way that valuations were being delivered to mortgage lenders, because mortgage lenders were looking for a much more streamlined approach," says Andrew Robertson, Valuation Exchange CEO. "So we saw [this] as an opportunity to provide valuations back to the lenders still from a wide variety of different valuation firms but on a consistent streamlined technology platform that would be much closer to the goal of straight through processing."

Individual valuation firms, particularly the larger, national companies such as WBP and Megaw & Hogg have spent considerable amounts of money on IT to speed up processing.

"We have to as an industry," says Megaw & Hogg's Guthleben. "We have to stay in touch with our client's requirements and change with them otherwise we become irrelevant to our client. So you need to adapt and continue to invest in IT and stay absolutely focused on quality and compliance - that's where my money's been going."

Sweet; job security!

Previously:
ANZ invests in ValEx.

Get your debugging on

xulrunner plus spectator plus xdebug equals debugging neatness.


Give it a whirl and file your issues!