Nifty hack, but doesn't ncftp only upload changed files by default? ISTR running into this exact problem a few years back trying to deploy CakePHP apps to cheapo hosts.
No, I moved to Rails; Cake was a short lived endeavour. Cake was actually what got me there. I liked the things it did but hated the way it was written. Then I found out they were basically trying to clone Rails in PHP, so I gave Rails a shot.
Funny enough, I even did a blog post about it, though it was more about being able to do the equivalent of Rails environments than about the FTP thing: http://ertw.com/blog/2007/11/05/pushing-a-cakephp-app-from-d...