Yesterday I mentioned an interview with Stig Saether Bakken - well, today there's more with a "part 2" interview with him detailing PEAR and Stig's management of it. This one's a good informational interview, with lots of questions like: What are the current achievements of PEAR? and What made you start PEAR?, but it's still a nice read, just for that. The origins of PEAR is kinda neat to read - it evolved pretty much like any other script out there - out of necessity.

And, once again, according to the latest Netcraft and ESoft stats for this past month, the usage of PHP has dropped jus ta little bit for 05-2002. Not very much, but enough to be noticable. I imagine a lot of it has to do with people migrating over to 4.2 and having their scripts "suddenly not work" or something similar, and the just giving up and going with something "simpler". You can see on this graph (thanks to DynamicWebPages.de) that the trend, even when usage dips, is to come right back - and quite strongly too. So, keep the faith and don't let numbers get you down. We still need to try to expose PHP to the masses for the wonderful, easy-to-use web scripting language that it is...

And, lastly, on a more serious note - I'd like to ask for the prayers of you, my viewers, out there. I found out yesterday that my best friend in this world has cancer and will have to have chemotherapy. She's only in her early 20s, and already has to deal with all of this - so, I'd appreciate it if you'd keep her and everyone that knows her, especially her family, in mind. At least they caught it early...