Ben Ramsey @ramsey@phpc.social

I’m Ben, a web dev, author, & speaker. I’ve been at this for >20 years, & I’m always eager to help. If you have questions about the Web, FOSS, PHP, or APIs, ask.

I advocate for decentralization, open source, open standards, & the Commons; I believe good UX is the key to mass adoption.

I’m active in the PHP community. I founded Atlanta PHP & co-organize @nashvillephp, & I authored the popular ramsey/uuid library.

I’ve spoken at many conferences. If you see me at one, say “hi.”

#introductions

Some of my favorite Doctor Who episodes are the ones with James Corden. I wish he had been a regular companion for a while.

I’ve been having trouble lately figuring out what to post here and what to post on #birdsite. I’m still unsure how I want to engage an audience on Mastodon.

‪I have to learn that it’s okay to toot your own horn sometimes…

‪My ramsey/uuid package is currently the 40th most-starred PHP package on GitHub.‬

‪https://github.com/search?l=PHP&q=stars%3A%3E1&s=stars&type=Repositories‬

I have no need to buy expensive pens and replacement ink cartridges. I’ve found that these cheap Bic ballpoint pens are my favorite.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00PF5T6R8/

Boost if you are not a robot.

Humanities folks: are there any open source software libraries/packages that you consider good and reputable for analyzing English grammar and structure and offering hints/suggestions for improvement? Ideally, I’m looking for a library I can embed or link against from another program.

Take part in #hacktoberfest! If you’re looking for a project to help, please consider my PHP collections library. I’ve put together a list of issues you can work on, and I’ll add more throughout Oct. https://github.com/ramsey/collection/milestone/1 https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com

It looks like I screwed up that thread and it got branched. Oops! Here’s the start of the other branch, so that you don’t miss all my posts.

https://twitter.com/ramsey/status/1045060469319512064?s=21

I spent the first half of this week at the #apistrat conference, and I spent all my time on #birdsite talking about it. In case you missed all my posts, they’re all captured in a single thread, so if you’re interested in API Strat, you can read through the thread here:

https://twitter.com/ramsey/status/1044298492804501504?s=21

Joaquin Pheonix as the Joker looks amazing. I usually don’t like DC movies, but this one looks like it could have all the darkness and grittiness of the Dark Knight films, and I like that.

I am very wary of open source software libraries that purport to check your spelling and grammar. Most of the ones I’m finding appear to be written by developers with no background in language or literature, and much of the documentation is riddled with grammar errors and awkward sentence construction.

Pro-tip: if you’re going to write software for a specialized domain, either consult with experts in that domain or become one yourself.

Fuck the @chest_bot