After we had lunch, the next presentation continued:

iHack Competition 2007 by FTMSK

This is an interesting area where web security is involved. Last year, I went to International Hacking Competition 2006 and see how hackers do their job.

This year, FTMSK is organizing International Hacking Competition 2007 on the 17th to 19th August 2007. RM6500 is up for grab. If I were a programmer, I might have tried my luck and participated in that event.

Oh well, if you can’t reach that level, you can always become a blogger right? Being a blogger has its own advantages.

Looking at their event programme, there will be a lot of interesting talk mainly on the topic of computer security. Just by reading those geeky stuff just made my geek inside of me wanting to jump out and get back to school.

The next speaker is someone who a lot of the audience were anticipating. He is known for his ability to hack.

Web Threats by 3xb055

If you are wondering how a computer hacker looks like, you are looking at one of them. Armed with a 12 inch display laptop, 3xbo55 presented how a hacker can penetrate into your website especially when you are using any PHP based Content Management System (CMS) such as PHPBB, Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress and a whole lot more.

3xboss explains a little on why do hackers do what they do, HACK! The most popular kind of hack is called ‘defaced’ which is basically changing the front page of a website. There’s actually a difference between ‘crack’ and ‘hack’ but we all know that a hacker is someone who can penetrate a computer or IT system and do whatever he/she wants.

The best advice 3xboss gave the audience is to check your web hosting log and look at any irregularities that is happening. If you use Linux based web hosting, your web host might use Cpanel as their dashboard management. Here’s where you can check your error log:

From the log file, once you can view them, you can actually know what’s going on with your web server, who’s accessing and from where. It doesn’t give you a lot of understandable details but 3xboss recommended we look for strange links that might have give an opportunity to be infiltrated by hackers.

The idea of sharing this information is to make a web a better place because the web is getting more of a lifestyle rather than just a tool.

Basically, computer security can become a significant issue if something happened to your computer or your password or identity got stolen. Once your confidential information is leaked out, you are prone to all kind of problems. Make sure you secure yourself because “prevention is better than cure”.

You can visit 3xb055 - Bandar Baru Bangi Open Source Software Group if you want to know more about computer security and web threats.

PHP Based Web System in A Government Agency by Amin007

Amin007 works in a government agency in Muar as a PHP programmer part time. His slide is a bit different than the rest of the speaker because he revealed something rather unusual yet informative. Here’s one of it “Did you know that in Muar, there is a shop who sells frog?”. Amin007 confirms that its true, he even called up the shop and asked about it. Amazing what we can do with the web.

Unfortunately, a lot of his work is still offline so most of us can’t really look at some of his sample. Anyway, it was good to know that PHP is useful and is used in numerous field.

The Integration of Phyton and PHP by tunbendahara

tunbendahara is a freelancer specializing in Phyton programming. His background is in C++ which makes other programming languages seem like a piece of cake to him.

I like his motto “As people, we are all lazy so we need to relax. Why work hard for yourself when you can have machine work for you”. Very true indeed and that what he does.

From his talk, what I understand was he uses Phyton is for a SMS system where information is pulled from a local telco provider. He then uses PHP as the front end that will display the information in HTML viewpoint.

Object Oriented in PHP 5 by sameon

sameon works for AIST. He manages a lot of web projects for government agencies and private companies. He is also a partial owner of PHP.net.my and the organizer of this event. According to him, the food served at the event is sponsored by their first Google Adsense cheque worth about RM360. Anyhow, the talk is worth more than that despite of the free entrance.

In sameon talk, he showed the audience the differences between PHP5 and PHP4. As we all know, PHP4 will be discontinued for support by the end of this year. So, what’s new on PHP 5? You can read all about it on PHP 5 Change Log.

Well, that’s wrapped my report for this event. If you are interested, you can download some of the presentation here. Overall, it was a very exciting and informative event. I look forward to attend the next meet up.

Last Saturday, I attended PHP Meet Up 3.0 at FTMSK UiTM Shah Alam. It was my first time I went to that faculty eventhough I’ve actually passed by the faculty everytime I went to my classes during my university years. The meet up has 9 presentations altogether with various interesting topics.

The talk is done in my mother’s tongue which is in Malay but only one speaker who is much more comfortable presenting in English. So, let the showcase begin:

PHP Meet Up 3.0 Location

PHP Meet Up 3.0 Audience

Drag & Drop Demo Using script.aculo.us by zam3858

The first presentation was done by zam3858. He made some introduction on what’s under the hood of script.aculo.us, what it can do and some demo of how it is implemented.

Other stuff that was shown is he used PHP with Scriptaculous and how to style the published page using some CSS.

Basically, javascript isn’t a bad thing. It’s getting more and more useful plus the big boys are using it extensively with the rising popularity of AJAX.

Want to see some script.aculo.us action, script.aculo.us demo page provide interesting demos for you to appreciate.

PHP vs Ruby On Rails by Aizatto

I’ve mentioned previously that only one speaker doesn’t made his presentation in Malay. Aizatto is 21 years old, still studying in Monash University Sunway and he just wowed the crowd with his English speaking accent ;-)

Although he speaks English, he can actually understand Malay language so don’t simply say some nasty things in Malay to him unless you speak really fast to him. I wonder what shampoo he is using since his hair looks like a male hair model.

His presentation was really interesting. He compared PHP with Ruby on Rails and made out some really interesting points. His slideshows were simple yet interesting and he really knows what he was talking about. He then showed some of his current projects to the audience and it was really cool. I now have a better understanding of what and how Rails is compared to just reading what it is all about on Rails website.

Basically Rails web programming in Malaysia is still small but I can see the benefit of learning about it. If you have programming language background, you have a better chance of learning Rails more quickly than I do. I wish I had learned computer programming before this rather than having an engineering background. Still, some people say that if you have engineering background, your chances of going into technical stuff is half-way there. I’m starting to think that might be true.

Anyway, Aizatto showed the audience some demonstration on how Rails is utilize. He also talked about meta programming, the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP and why Rails is the future of of web programming. His fingers just dances on the keyboard while writing the command lines. It’s just mind boggling, simply because I don’t know the language yet.

Aizatto maintains a domain with 3 sub-domains which is relatively his Aizatto Personal blog, his Rails blog and his Developer blog. You can download one of his slideshow here.

ACL in PHP by Crynobone

He is the owner of Chronosight, one of the blog that I’ve subscribed using my Google Reader. He is the only person that I know off before I attended the meet up so it was good to finally meet face to face with him. Apparently, his former colleague was a friend of mine and correct me if I’m wrong, I think he is a friend LadyAzurt.

I have never heard of ACL before. I then learned that it stands for Access Control List. Basically it’s a function that allow certain level of users access to certain functions. It seems like a simple thing but it is really not. In my previous job, I had to really study about user level access for the software that the company is deploying for a client. A lot of documentation were involved and it was really pain in the a**.

I just want to say kudos to Crynobone for revealing his work. It’s not that often a person who developed a system from scratch and took like years to build it and share it with other people. BTW, Crynobone is a Javascript expert. His presentation can be viewed on his blog.

Baking Cake Using CakePHP by Sumardi

Sumardi just graduated from UiTM recently and now works as a freelance web developer. He is a big fan of Open Source with his proud Debian powered laptop.

Sumardi talks about CakePHP and showed the audience how to develop a web application using CakePHP framework. I must say after I’ve seen how it is done, I think I can understand how the process works. He then showed some of his projects that is done and a project of his that is still on going.

Sumardi also shared some tips on how to beautify your developed website built using CakePHP by using CSS and why it is easy to use CakePHP. At the moment, I think I’ll just stick with Wordpress and make my way up from there.

Check out Sumardi’s blog.

Having Lunch With The Speakers

Because of the overwhelming attendance, the food that were served cannot accomodate the numbers of people who came. We decided to head over and look for outside food. I managed to squeeze in and had lunch with the speakers and the organizing committee. I had a nice chat with Aizatto where he shared some interesting stuff about himself and also some web industry scenario in Malaysia. The rest of the people were friendly and shared a lot of information with me.

Proceed to part 2 of PHP Meet Up 3.0 coverage.

I have always loved Microsoft Events. I’ve been to Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon (MEDC) both 2005 and 2006. Looking at their event page, I don’t think this year they are going to organize MEDC 2007 here in Kuala Lumpur since MEDC 2007 Singapore was over. Anyway, other Microsoft events that I’ve been to includes:

• Microsoft Office Day Out and Microsoft .NET Drop In Day (March 2005)
• Microsoft KL Ready Worldwide Launch 2005 (November 2005)
• Microsoft Partner Infrastructure Roadshow 2006 (April 2006)
• The “WOW” Windows Vista Launch (April 2007)

I could have been to a lot of other Microsoft Seminars and Events but I decided not to because I’m not going no where career wise last time plus a lot of them are not free. If there are free seminars and events I would definitely go because I love freebies! Hehe..

So, what is Microsoft Tech.Ed? If I am not mistaken, it stands for Microsoft Technology Education. If you are a tech junky, you’ll definitely know about this program. I’ve heard of it many times but after looking at the price, it turns me off. I know that the education is valuable but I’m not going to use it anytime soon so why bother, right? Besides, you can always search for information and test out new stuff that Microsoft has come out for free online especially if you are a developer. Well, that’s only true if you treat it as a hobby and not for business purposes.

In business, these kind of programs are treated as an investment to add more value to their employee’s skill set. If I were to look for a job that requires a lot of Microsoft product knowledge, I would have invested in learning all the Tech.Ed stuff. So far, I haven’t done that yet because I get overwhelmed and confused so often when deciding on this. Have you ever had the feeling of wanted more and more but you can only do so much. In the end you’ll get back and do the stuff that you are really comfortable and good at instead of the one you’ve discovered that really interest you. It’s all come down to knowing what you are good at, don’t you think so?

The company that I work with at the moment has already bought a few tickets for their staff to attend, so I might be going. I still love freebies though.. ;-)

Resource link - TECH.Ed SEA 2007: Turn “doing your job” into “making your mark”

This Saturday, 21st of July 2007, I am going to attend a meet up that is going to be organized the Malaysian PHP Community.

It’s been a while since my last attendance to any technology related seminars. Since the venue for this event is at my former university, I think I will have no problem finding the place. Apart from that, Laadvamore stays at the hostel just behind the faculty which I go there almost every weekend to see her but of course, she has to wait for me finishing the entire talk if she wants to ask me to go out.

I don’t have any formal web programming qualification nor education about server-side scripting but I do have basic PHP knowledge which I’ve learned from W3School myself. The only PHP scripting I know is limited to Wordpress blogging software but I have a few plans of developing my own modified Wordpress plugin and themes later on.

Highlights from the program agenda which I’m looking forward to is:

• PHP in the business world
• Scriptaculous Drag and Drop Demo
• PHP vs Ruby
• PHP system in Government Agencies

I guess ZeMMS might be interested to listen about How To Bake Cake using PHP afternoon talk. I had download CakePHP a while ago but I had no idea where to start or even understand what the package is all about. I think I would rather stick to Wordpress for now. I’ll try and network with the people I’ll meet up over there and see how things go. I’m guessing it would a be very eventful day for me.

If you are interested to join, register yourself here and I’ll see you there.