Thankfully, times have changed and while you can still pay as much money as you want for the high quality DSLR cameras there are affordable entry level options now, too. So what do I think is the best digital SLR for the money right now? On sale today (Not a refurbished DSLR)  is a Canon EOS Rebel T3 budget DSLR for the rather amazing price of $439.99. It even comes with a lens. I’m not a photography pro, so I don’t expect you to just take my word for it. Instead, watch this video and see what a professional has to say about this entry level DSLR.

Now that you are properly advised that this is not the camera of choice for professionals, but a solid entry level DSLR, it is up to you to decide if this is the best budget DSLR camera or not. I’ve looked around a lot recently and over the past several years and this is as good a price as I’ve seen on refurbished DSLR cameras, and refurbished DSLR cameras seem to be fairly difficult to come by.

If a budget DSLR isn’t what you are looking for, there are some other great deals on a variety of point and shoot cameras as well, with the lowest price reasonable for stuffing a stocking for only $49.99. From best budget DSLR camera to semi-professional DSLR and then back to very low priced point and shoot, there’s a camera to suit most budgets and needs here.

I immediately knew what needed to be done, and a good percentage of how to do it, but some amount I knew to be new territory to me. The sum of the work would be to have a query sent to a database that includes zip, city and state data to request the latter two portions when the former portion is filled out on the form and populate the city and state fields on the form based on that. Setting up the database and inserting the data has proved to be trivial. The unknown part is using AJAX to connect to a database and insert the appropriate values in the appropriate areas of the form.

I have had a hate/hate relationship with javascript for a very long time, for very good reasons. That time has past and those reasons no longer exist and it is up to me to step up and learn javascript/AJAX. This is where a book I received not too long ago, JQuery: Novice to Ninja, comes into the picture. If you are new to AJAX, as I am, and want to learn, I highly recommend starting out with this book.

Now it’s back to reading and working on getting this project together. If all goes well, I expect to write up a how-to document explaining everything that went into developing this project. I also plan to look into how best to make this available for Codeigniter. I am not sure if it is better suited as a plugin, helper, library or some other form, but I expect it would be a useful pursuit, regardless.

I could definitely talk about exercise, diet, what I am doing for my kung fu at the moment and such, but really, I’ve talked a lot about in the past handful of posts and I feel kind of silly rehashing it. Some of that comes with me quite simply not having done near enough as of late. So, instead I want to talk about PHP. If you don’t know what that is, that’s fine. You can probably move on at this point because that’s the more common acronym I’m going to toss out here, which is why I’m going with Technical Stuff as my category. Don’t worry, I won’t be offended.

As you may know, I am a web developer and I work primarily with PHP and MySQL databases, preferring a Linux OS and Apache web server environment. Even some of the people out there who don’t have a clue what that all means know that about me. I have been doing exactly this in a full time capacity for a variety of companies over the past ten years now. Prior to that I had some amount of web programming experience, mostly with Perl CGI scripts, much of which I honestly just took on faith to work as expected and knew little about. In all of this, my experience has been primarily Procedural Programming.

While job hunting, recently, I began to realize that though I may love and defend Procedural Programming, Object Oriented Programming has become the industry standard. This, along with a realization that my SQL experience leaned toward the elementary, certainly put a damper on my job search, and I genuinely do not wish to find myself in that difficult position again. Thankfully, I did secure employment, and I hope my job with this new company will prove to be one that I can continue to do well in for some time to come. Regardless, I have decided it is time to catch up. After all, even staying with this company, I should do what I can to be sure they are also current.

So, the items I have noted out there that seem to be desirable include the following:

• OOP PHP
• Familiarity with MVC
• Familiarity with PHP Frameworks
• AJAX

It just so happens, that often this list also includes mention of Codeigniter as a framework. Codeigniter happens to be a PHP framework that is based on the MVC model of application design, built with OOP PHP in mind. It is an Open Source project, so there is no cost to pick it up and work with it. Making use of this leaves only AJAX as the odd bit out, but let’s face it, AJAX is everywhere these days, so it’s not like I will lack any opportunities to use it. Really, I have picked up a little bit of JQuery anyway, and that seems to be one of the preferred libraries. I will just keep with that.

So the question then was what to do. How can I get to work on a reasonably difficult project that will allow me to use Codeigniter with JQuery both to be able to learn and show proficiency. The answer hit me tonight, after several ideas I really didn’t care for that I had mulled over for the past couple weeks. Some ten years ago I accepted my first full time web development/management job working for a fantastic company that sold stock and custom home plans and also offered consultation services with home plan designers to help choose the plan that is right for the customer and do modifications as necessary. They were a great company to work with and I owe a lot to them. I made great friends there, and at a later date, a new company was born and these people asked me about doing web design work for them. I did them the disservice of saying yes. I say this was a disservice because some years later, I have yet to actually give the web site the attention it needs and launch for them. As we are still at that starting point, I feel like this is the perfect time for me to make amends and build them the best home plans web site ever.

So, with Codeigniter at the ready, I’m stepping up to finally creating this site. I already know most of what will need to be done and this week my to do list is filled with various planning tasks to make sure I have a good road map for the weeks ahead of me. Hang on, Jack and Rik. It’s going to be a wild ride, but I will get us there!