Ken Marks

Ken Marks has been working in his dream job as a Programming Instructor at Madison College in Madison, Wisconsin, teaching PHP web development using MySQL since 2012. Prior to teaching, Ken worked as a software engineer for more than 20 years, mainly developing medical device software. Ken is actively involved in the PHP community, speaking and teaching at conferences.

twitter: @FlibertiGiblets

Articles

Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi – One Final Slice

By Alexandru Pitis, Ken Marks

Welcome back to the final installment of How to Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi. At the end of this article, your Raspberry Pi will be able to send you a text message, letting you know that your clothes dryer cycle has finished. You will need to start from the beginning of this series if you want to build this project yourself. by Ken Marks

Published in One Last Slice, May 2022

How to Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi – Part 4

By Ken Marks

Welcome back to another installment of How to Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi*. At the end of this article, you will have an accelerometer data plotting application running on your Raspberry Pi. You will need to start from the beginning of the series if you want to build this project yourself.

Published in Testing The Core, April 2022

How to Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi – Part 3

By Ken Marks

Welcome back to another installment of ‘How to Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi.’ At the end of this article, you should have a Raspberry Pi running a full LAMP stack that can serve up web pages to any browser on your home network. So grab your Raspberry Pi and a beverage of your choice so you can continue this journey with me as we install some more software!

Published in World Backup Day, March 2022

How to Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi – Part 2 – Installing the LAMP Stack on your Pi

By Ken Marks

Welcome back to another installment of ‘How to Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi.’ At the end of this article, you should have a Raspberry Pi running a full LAMP stack that can serve up web pages to any browser on your home network. So grab your Raspberry Pi and a beverage of your choice so you can continue this journey with me as we install some more software! by Ken Marks

Published in Parallelize Your Code, February 2022

How to Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi – Part 1

By Ken Marks

In September of 2017, I gave a talk called: ‘Hack your Home with a Raspberry Pi’ at the Madison PHP Conference. It was a half-day tutorial, walking participants through the process of configuring a Raspberry Pi, installing a LAMP stack on it, connecting a sensor, and ultimately having it send a text message to their phone. by Ken Marks

Published in Domain-Driven Resolutions, January 2022 —Available for Free

Mentoring and Teaching PHP

By Ken Marks

Hiring a new developer is a risky endeavor. What if they don’t work out? What if they get bored? What if our organization’s needs change? In this article, we’ll discuss what it takes to foster a learning environment for your tech team, why you should encourage learning, what it takes to be a good mentor, and what you’re looking for in a mentee. In particular, we’ll look at resources and practices for encouraging new PHP developers to grow.

Published in Deep Dive Into Search, July 2021 —Available for Free