Anna Filina

I ran into a problem this week when testing PayPal’s API with recurring payments in the sandbox. I kept getting a “DPRP is disabled for this merchant” response. After reading dozens of blog posts and forum threads, I did not find any useful answer.

I dug deeper and understood that DPRP (Direct Payment Recurring Payment) is only available to Website Payments Pro accounts. So my test account needed an upgrade. I hoped to find something in the account Profile but did not find anything. Event PayPal’s search did not yield any results. I finally found it through an obscure navigation path.

Here it is in 5 “easy” steps:

First, find the My Account Tools box on the bottom right of your dashboard. Click on My Business Setup.

Read the rest…

After reading “Most Influential People In Open Source” and completely disagree, I decided to conduct my own research.

Please read the post mentioned above. Then, write 3 names, in order of importance, of the most influential people in Open Source. Please include one short sentence for each to justify your choice.

I will compile the results later this week.

Now that I’m back from ZendCon and recovered from the jetlag (and the partying), I’m ready to share my impressions of ZendCon 2009. The conference took place in San Jose, California, on October 19th – 22nd.

Use ZF or die!

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PHP-Québec, Montréal-Python, Ruby Montréal, W3Qc, and OWASP Montréal are organizing the first edition of the ConFoo.ca conference, which will be held in Montreal on March 10th through 12th at the Hilton Bonaventure Hotel.

With over 500 expected attendees, Confoo.ca is the largest Web development conference in North America.

We are looking for the best speakers willing to share their experience and skills with programmers, managers, marketers and decision makers.

The conference is divided into two major parts:

1. A technical part, encompassing different aspects of Web development: PHP, Python, Ruby, security, project management, CMSs and frameworks, databases, systems administration, Web standards, accessibility and agile methods.
2. A decision-making part: referencing (SEO), Web marketing analysis and social networking.

Presenters can decide to present in English or French. Presentations are roughly one hour long. These may be recorded for later broadcast in digital format.

All relevant details concerning the conference are available on the confoo.ca website.

See you there!

I’ve been supplied a 2D sketch of what my 3D world (PaperVision3D) will look like. The hardest part was matching the perspective by carefully positioning the camera. Having no other way than trial and error and a total of 7 different parameters, I quickly went nuts. This is a time consuming task: changing the values, recompiling, testing.

I wrote a tiny utility that allows you to position/rotate/zoom the camera visually, saving hours and possibly days of tweaking.

How to code it

Easily. Pass the camera object to the constructor and add the whole thing to your display list:

var cameraControl:pv3dCameraControl = new pv3dCameraControl(_camera);
addChild(cameraControl);

How to use it

Click and drag the desired text field and your camera will move, updating text field’s value. Once satisfied with the result, write down the numbers!

Also position objects

A second, similar utility I wrote allows to position objects in the viewport.

var objectControl:pv3dObjectControl = new pv3dObjectControl(viewport);
addChild(objectControl);

Click on an object in the viewport, then drag the desired text field.

Have fun.

pv3dCameraControl.as
pv3dObjectControl.as