Archive for February, 2011

February 4th

How to Auto Create Issues in Jira From PHP

Good morning again everyone, in an effort to always increase productivity and reduce friction I have a new weapon in my workflow arsenal. To gain some context regarding this post here is some...

Archive for January, 2011

January 9th

DailySrc.com released to showcase article extraction

This week I was happy to get up a little project called http://dailysrc.com which shows you the 20 most viral sports articles right now. It used a combination of technologies behind the scenes...

Archive for December, 2010

December 21st

Goose - Article Extractor now open source, same as Flipboard/Instapaper

Today I'm releasing a project I worked on for http://gravity.com . It's an HTML Article Extractor ala Flipboard / Instapaper style. It will take an article, run some calculations on it and give...
December 6th

This Blog is moving! to JimPlush.com

Created http://jimplush.com to use for my blogging articles from here on out. The old software was just too much of a pain to maintain so I started out from scratch with CodeIgniter.

Archive for November, 2010

November 30th

Why you should never read comments on blogs

Here is an article from 2005 on techcrunch: 85% of College Students use FaceBook http://techcrunch.com/2005/09/07/85-of-college-students-use-facebook/ And here are some insightful...

Using the Python NLTK Bayesian Classifier for word sense disambiguation - 92% accuracy

Today's article will be going over some basic word sense disambiguation using the NLTK toolkit in Python and Wikipedia. Word sense disambiguation is the process of trying to determine if you...
November 8th

New Twitter Account

So I created a new twitter account should you care to follow: jimplush http://twitter.com/#!/jimplush

Archive for September, 2010

September 13th

Fix when compiling the Redis php extension on OSX - mach-o, but wrong architecture

If you happen to get the error: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/Users/jim/Downloads/owlient-phpredis-2675d15/modules/redis.so' -...

Archive for July, 2010

July 22nd

This is one reason I quit corporate coding

I got this instant msg from a buddy today at Panasonic: MyBud 1:07 today i got spanked for putting out issues of rolling stone that i was done with; apparently some female around here...

Archive for May, 2010

May 21st

Example of Hadoop Python Streaming job script

here is a sample job script I got running to test out some hadoop mapreduce jobs for our new cluster. You can put this in the same directory with the map/reducer files. the -file parameter will...

Hadoop and Python Streaming

I've been starting to write some hadoop and python streaming jobs and there isn't all that much documentation regarding it out there. Things like, how do I pass environment variables, how do I pass...

Archive for December, 2009

December 9th

Super Secret Invites are going out!

Exciting times at the new job. We're releasing a handful of super secret invites to the new site. Crazy days to come. Wish I could say more at this time.

Archive for November, 2009

November 13th

Farewell Panasonic

After 5+ years at Panasonic I've decided to accept a new position with Blue Rover Labs. It will be an exciting change back to start up life and I'm looking forward to getting started. I bought a...

Archive for July, 2009

July 31st

If Zend Form was a girl I'd marry it

So a few months ago I took the leap and spent some time getting down and dirty with Zend_Form. The elements, decorators, display sub groups, validations, filtering, etc... In our new project we...
July 29th

I'll be speaking at ZendCon 2009

I'm currently set to speak at ZendCon 2009 on the topic of "How to run an enterprise PHP Shop" ( http://zendcon.com/ ) I'd love to see what people may be most interested in talking about. I've...
July 22nd

Rethinking Zend Models Part 4 - Create new user

I've gone ahead and added the createuserAction to my indexController to illustrate how we could reuse all the code previously written to validate and save creating a new user. If you want to view...
July 21st

Rethinking Zend Models Part 3 - Validation

I've gone ahead and added validation to our test project: http://code.google.com/p/plushcode/source/browse/#svn/trunk/ZendModel/application/default/models If you take a look at the...
July 16th

Followup on rethinking Zend Models with DDD - Framework code included

As a follow up to my previous post I'm going to post some live examples of model layer with Zend framework based on Domain Driven Design concepts. I've spent the past few days studying up on domain...
July 14th

Rethinking the Zend Models

I'm currently in requirements mode for an upcoming project that should prove to be pretty complex. The current active record/table gateway patterns just aren't going to cut it for the complex...

Archive for June, 2009

June 8th

I believe I'm a MySQL Certified Developer Now

I just passed the 2nd test over the weekend for the MySQL developer certification. It was definitely harder than the Zend Certified developer test. There is no way I could have passed without some...

Archive for April, 2009

April 22nd

The Right MySQL Engine for High Capacity Servers

As you may know there are many storage engines in MySQL MyISAM, InnoDB, Falcon, CSV, Blackhole, Archive, etc...There is a storage engine that comes with the MySQL Max Download called the "Blackhole...
April 16th

All this just for some MySQL training?

So I had a little wiggle room in the budget and one of the things I wanted to do was to improve the team's knowledge level. I contracted out training and consulting with several firms the first of...
April 8th

Why Your PHP app NEEDS a Circuit Breaker

More and more websites these days are relying on external resources for data and functionality. Each one of these services introduces a stability hole in your application. You're now relying on the...
April 7th

Yet ANOTHER opening for Zend Framework Developers here at Panasonic

We now have yet another opening for Zend Framework php developers here at Panasonic. To be clear this is the Avionics division of Panasonic, there have been ZERO layoffs in our division. We're...
April 6th

Rebrand your web app just like AIG

By now we've all seen that AIG has removed their logo from their main corporate headquarters in New York. The name is tarnished and they will be forced to re brand themselves to attempt to gain...
April 1st

Fix for Zend_Session output headers issue and Phing

Came across this issue while writing a Phing build script to run my Unit Test Fixtures "BUILD FAILED exception 'Zend_Session_Exception' with message 'Session must be started before any...

Archive for March, 2009

March 25th

Why I chose Zend Framework for Enterprise

Why I went with Zend Framework for Enterprise At Panasonic like most large companies we have a plethora of websites ranging from little one off reporting sites to full scale applications. A...
March 18th

Panasonic looking for PHP/Zend Framework Developers

hey all! We're looking for one or two solid Zend Framework developers to work onsite in our Orange County offices for a 3-6 month contract, possibly leading to full time work. Skills...

Archive for February, 2009

February 18th

How to manage web projects successfully

In a previous posting I discussed what separates a professional php developer from a scripter. This post goes more into how to successfully manage web projects. I've been in software for almost 15...

Archive for July, 2008

July 23rd

Programmer commutes to work on bike! with tips

So I've started biking to work 4-5 days a week for numerous reasons. It's actually been great and I was compiling a list of the benefits I've seen so far. I'm lucky enough to have showers at the...

Archive for March, 2008

March 16th

My two ladies have arrived, I'm officially a father now

The two ladies arrived tuesday. We just got out of the hospital yesterday and ohhh what a first night of no sleep :( anyway, here are some introductions to the twinkies...

Archive for January, 2008

January 16th

How to find the right operating system for you

1. Linux - Linux is for people with lots of time on their hands that want to spend all day trying to make something work 2. Mac - Macs are for people who just want apps to work so they can get...

Archive for June, 2007

June 18th

How to Install the MyBic Firebug PHP Debugger

I did a quick little screencast on how to get rolling with the MyBic 2 Firebug PHP Debugger. SCREEN CAST!
June 13th

MYBIC GOES 1.0! (yes, yes with firebug debugger!)

I'm proud to announce to official 1.0.0 release of the MyBic AJAX framework. MyBic has been stable in production for months now with 0 memory leaks and 0 outstanding bugs known to date. MyBic has...

Archive for April, 2007

April 15th

My company... ideas for life or lazy ass programmers?

I tried accessing my intranet this morning at work. Since I'm on a mac I'm kinda screwed eh?
April 8th

Seal Hunt in Canada starts....270,000 seal pups are set to be slaughtered

Pure ignorance I suppose, led me to believe seal clubbing was banned years ago. I had foolishly thought mankind had done something positive by banning the practice of clubbing and skinning seals...

Archive for March, 2007

March 15th

What separates a professional PHP web developer from a scripter?

I've just interviewed probably my 200th php/web candidate during the past three years that I've been involved with staffing. I've come up with some criteria that I look for to get a real "senior"...
March 9th

Irony is a bitch

I'm heading out on a trip tomorrow on my boat to Catalina island off the California coast. The official website I was checking out was very nicely laid out. Everything was nice and clean. So you...
March 6th

PHP Meet Mr. FireBug - PHP Debugging for Web 2.0

PHP Meet FireBug - PHP Debugging for the Web 2.0 World I put together a couple pieces of technology to give the PHP community a debugger/profiler that should make life easier in the "web2.0"...

Archive for February, 2007

February 28th

The Problem with Big Companies Summed Up in One Paragraph

A guy at my work was noticing my comfortable footrest I had under my desk. He had recently hurt his back and need to improve his comfort level at work. He then went on to request a footrest from...
February 25th

PHP and Firefox, 30,000 Feet Up and Thriving

I now have code running on planes somewhere in the world at 30,000 feet in the sky. Please don't be alarmed, I can't crash your plane ;) Although, I should put some easter eggs in that the php...

Archive for January, 2007

January 25th

Video Tutorials on how to use the Firebug Extension

Firebug is a must know tool for web developers now. If you've heard of it but haven't had time to play around with it please look at these videos to see what you're missing out on. The first...

Farewell my dearest Zend Studio, hello Komodo!

I recently got an upgrade from work to an intel macbook pro. So there I go, starting to set up my favorite programs when all the sudden WTF? Zend Studio Server doesn't run on intel macs. Huh?...
January 24th

The future of the web browser?

I was just checking out a post over at Doug Turner's blog (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/dougt/archives/017470.html) and what he mentions has been something on my mind for a while. The power of...
January 9th

Apple iPhone - Enough Diggs to break the layout

The countdown was on as I awaited to see if the developers off digg had prepared for 10,000 diggs. I guess not. http://www.litfuel.net/temp/diggbroke.jpg you can see the top 10...

Archive for December, 2006

December 21st

How Borat Broke Our Software

I'm in the business of making In-flight Entertainment systems for airlines. We let you watch movies, play games, check the news, etc from the back of your seat. I was listening to a conversation...
December 11th

Top 10 Reasons YOU Need an AJAX Framework

You've all seen the tutorials. Make an AJAX application in 20 lines of code! All you need to to is get a request object and send! Now you're ajaxified. Well, not so fast. If you're making a serious...

Archive for November, 2006

November 28th

Web 2.0 - coming to a resume near you!

I have now received two emails from recruiters who have clients looking for php, ajax, dhtml and Web2.0 experience. Web 2.0 is now officially a resume buzzword, great. I can't wait to interview...
November 21st

Ajax and Unit Testing Part Two, The Wrath of Mock

I've started the task of Unit Testing the MyBic Ajax / PHP Framework. I know I know I should have used Test Driven. Bad me. If you're unfamiliar with getting a Unit Test system created for testing...

AJAX Applications have a bright future thanks to Mozilla's "TAMARIN"

If anyone has been paying attention to Mozilla you would have noticed alot of focus going towards the new Tamarin Project. Tamarin will integrate with Mozilla's JS engine "SpiderMonkey" to allow...
November 7th

Stop Fluffing Me! You resume fluffers you

Seriously people, stop fluffing your resume with technologies you know next to nothing about. You're going to get called on it. You think if you add more buzzword/keywords you'll get more...
November 6th

MyBic surges to #145 on Sourceforge.net out of 100,000+ projects

As the title says MyBic has jumped up the sourceforge rankings to #145 on the sourceforge.net website. This is out of 100,000+ projects listed. Thanks everyone for helping push the 1.0 release with...
November 3rd

Best Change Log Entry Ever

So I open up my favorite editor on the MAC -> TextMate to see a nice change log message this morning. "[2006-11-02: REVISION 1324] [REMOVED] TextMate no longer pays tribute to human...
November 1st

MyBic AJAX/PHP Package 0.7.0 released. Next Stop 1.0!

Today MyBic version 0.7.0 was released. The current version contains no known bugs, or memory leaks. In 15 days from now if no bugs or major issues come up MyBic will officially go to version 1.0....

Archive for October, 2006

October 29th

Firefox Memory for AJAX Desktop Apps demystified?

My job is simple. Write desktop-like applications in javascript/php on firefox that might not be restarted for weeks. Ohhh and you have no access to the servers so it will all have to be self...
October 19th

Damn Mac's dot-underscore (AppleDot) problem

So it seems OSX likes to add ._ (dot-underscore or AppleDot) copies of files when transferring files between operating systems. This can get pretty annoying when you see a ._copy of every single...
October 5th

2006 Worldwide Donate to Open Source Day - October 16th

We all have at least one open source project that we can't live without on a daily basis. That is why I'm calling for October 16th to be the Worldwide Donate to Open Source Day. $2, $5, $10, $25,...

Zend's PHP Toolbar for Firefox2

Again, I can't wait any longer for people to update firefox2 extensions. Here is a download link for the Zend Toolbar Extension for Firefox 2....

Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox2

Firefox 2 is out now for downloading and I'm very happy with all the new features of the browser. The one thing that was driving me nuts is I didn't have my yahoo toolbar because it's not...

Archive for August, 2006

August 17th

Do you use debug statements in PHP? Speed them up by 85%

For many of us we have a configuration file for our web applications. In that configuration file there is usually a DEBUG constant that we can turn on to print out helpful debug statements on the...
August 4th

How to script multiple telnet sessions

I have a problem. A pain in the ass in my day when I need to deploy code to testing racks. Here's the situation.... We have multiple testing racks in the building to test entertainment systems....

Archive for July, 2006

July 29th

Seriously people, stop outsourcing customer service

So I just had a birthday recently and got some gift cards. One of the gift cards was to boaters world, which sell marine supplies. There isn't one all that close to me so I was hoping to be able to...
July 28th

PHP Socket Tutorial Part 1

I always want to try and write great tutorials but damn I'm wordy. I'm aiming to write the defacto papers on PHP Socket Programming however I'm 8 pages in already and all I have is a basic socket...
July 6th

MyBic Ajax/PHP 0.6.5 Released - minor bug fixes and enhancements

Version 0.6.5 of the MyBic PHP/AJAX framework was released today on sourceforge ( http://www.litfuel.net/mybic ). It's been 3 months since the last update which shows that MyBic is quickly...

Archive for June, 2006

June 23rd

I'm officially a Baker with CakePHP

I've always dreaded frameworks. Ususually it takes longer to learn a framework than to actually code the project in the first place. Over the years I've checked out various frameworks and all fell...
June 5th

Cyclomatic Complexity for the Test Driven PHP'er

It's one of the most common questions you ask when you first start using Test Driven Development or Unit Testing in general... When am I done? :) It's the point you feel confident when all...
June 1st

The Event Driven Mobile Application on Minimo

I put together a little demo of getting an event driven/server push application running on Minimo. In the video clip below you'll see that I have my PDA resting on my laptop and on my laptop I have...

How to get your Firefox Extension working on Minimo

One of my fun upcoming tasks is to get a fully event driven desktop like application working on a handheld device like an IPAQ. Ideally, I was hoping to reuse my firefox extension that acts a...

Archive for May, 2006

May 25th

It's hard to work with tech dogs

Apparently my tech dogs either don't want me to work or they're trying to pick up a little laptop and ajax time. Note the big dog seems to like AJAX books and the little beagle dog seems to go...

Dumping Google - Made for Adsense Sites

I'm about to do something I didn't think I was going to do... dump google. Google has become a crap hole of "made for adsense" search results. It seems half of the sites in the results are just...
May 24th

Event Driven Desktop Applications

First of all, sorry to all those who I haven't emailed back in a while. I've been out of commission the past month with Pneumonia. suuuuucked let me tell you. I'm just now starting to feel...

Archive for April, 2006

April 27th

The Soon to be PHP Boom

You can almost feel it in the air. You can almost sense that PHP hasn't even come close to hitting it's peak in the world. Jobs man, I'm talkin jobs. I remember 3 years ago getting my daily emails...
April 22nd

MyBic goes Charitable - Work an hour for the kids

I recently put a donations link on the MyBic sourceforge website as well as start a cafepress site selling tshirts with programmer slogans. Since I'm doing well and PHP has givin me so much I'd...

PHP Podcast Interview with Marcus

I had the pleasure of doing a podcast interview for PHP Architect's Pro PHP Webcast series yesterday. It was hard being on my game with a 101 fever yesterday but I think it went well, although I...
April 18th

Dear Zend Studio... oh how I hate and love thee

Dear Zend Studio, thank you for giving me a remarkable debugger to use which saves me countless hours during the day. Unfortunately, I hate that you make me wait 2 seconds before rending text to...
April 13th

My-Bic Ajax Framework Video Tutorials Online

4 new video tutorials have been put up on the My-Bic website that cover topics such as: Getting your HelloWorld script up running in 30 seconds, Using the Debugger, Using the Network Down...
April 10th

MyBic AJAX/PHP framework in top 1% of SourceForge projects in 4 days!

I'm happy to say the My-Bic AJAX/PHP framework has been well accepted by the SourceForge community. Of 117,000+ projects on SourceForge MyBic has jumped to #1000 in just 4 days and is climbing each...
April 4th

The End of alert() - MyBic 0.6.2 AJAX Released

Greetings fellow developers, some exciting stuff going on in the MyBic AJAX/PHP world... 1. MyBic is now on sourceforge. http://sourceforge.net/projects/mybic/...

Archive for March, 2006

March 31st

MyBic 0.6 PHP/AJAX Released! Client Side JSON encoding and Network Down Handling

Last night marked the significant release of the My-Bic AJAX/PHP Framework version 0.6. The two major features added are JSON client side encoding and network down handling. Client side JSON...
March 28th

Google Bombing for Adsense?

I'm suprised I haven't seen any sites dedicated to "adsense bombing" yet. As I was looking at my adsense stats today I noticed it was particularly higher than most days as far as clicks. Which lead...
March 23rd

A Very PHP Lunch with Marco, Dietrich and Jim

I had the pleasure of having lunch with the man behind PHP Architect Marco Tabini and NuSOAP creator Dietrich Ayala today at the "Anti-Mall" in Orange County. Although we didn't have enough time as...
March 4th

MyBic AJAX 0.3 released with EASY FORMS & Debug!

My-Bic Ajax Framework hits 1500 downloads in its first week! http://www.litfuel.net/mybic - DOWNLOAD My-Bic 0.3 was released today adding two major features... 1. EASY FORMS Submitting...
March 1st

New My-Bic AJAX Tutorial written

A new tutorial covering a "notetaker" application has been written on the My-Bic AJAX site. http://litfuel.net/mybic/index.html?page=notetaker This tutorial covers how to fetch notes from...

Archive for February, 2006

February 19th

New AJAX/PHP framework - My-BIC is LIGHT and TASTY!

After trying a bunch of bloated ajax frameworks I decided to write one that is lightweight and just takes care of the bare essentials to get things rolling. It supports XML, JSON, and TEXT formats....
February 14th

FIREFOX IS BACK!!! bye bye 250MB of ram, hello 54!

After reading a post here: http://www.weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html Ben, the lead Firefox engineer posted on why firefox consumes memory at an increasing rate when browsing...
February 13th

AJAX and Unit Testing - it's time to mingle

I've decided to write a little two part introduction into unit testing your AJAX applications with JSUnit. AJAX applications now are adding a new complexity into our development lives. Introducing...
February 12th

Grouping PHP classes = faster by 24%

Out of sheer boredom I wanted to see which was better, including one big file of classes or splitting your classes up into multiple files. I'm going to use nusoap as an example. The NuSoap package...

Arrays of Objects not noticeably slower than native arrays?

As I'm going over how rails uses the active record pattern I was looking at php on trax's framework which is an interpretation of rails in PHP. One thing that bugged me was when you get a record...

New URL shortening site - URL.VG no frills, just works

I created a new Firefox extension for http://www.url.vg that is a no frills, "copy this shortened link to the clipboard" type deal. You can mouse over an HREF link and select Send Link to...
February 9th

This is it, the future of user interfaces.. WOW just wow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-y3ZNaCqs Watch this little video of the future of user interface designs and touch screen technology allowing multiple fingers to be read at once. Its...
February 8th

Moving on... gots me a new job with Panasonic

I officially gave notice today to McAfee that I will be leaving next week for a new start at Panasonic as a senior engineer in the Avionics division. I'm going to be working on the in-flight...
February 7th

Another PHP Framework that falls flat - PHP on Trax

A rails alternative in PHP? Sounds great, I dont have to spend my weekend learning Ruby. That's what I hoped when I came across PHP on Trax which dubs itself as a Rails alternative for PHP. At...

Archive for January, 2006

January 27th

The Zend Encoder Fiasco Part Deux - The Personal Attack

This story just keeps getting better. Some of you may recall I posted a story a few weeks back when to my SHOCK I found that websites were offering to decoded Zend Encoded files for $5. There...

The Day Has Come - Switched To Apple

I finally wound up taking the leap last night and got myself a new Apple Powerbook G4. 15" 1.67Mhz 1Gig Ram, 80Gig Hard Drive. This thing is sweeeeet. The backlit keyboard alone makes me drool when...
January 26th

JSON extension to be bundled into the PHP core?

Rasmus made a posting on the php internals list regarding rolling Omar Kilani's JSON Extension which serializes/deserializes datatypes into Javascript Object Notation and vice versa. Since this is...
January 24th

FireFox Extension for DIGG.com - popTart releases V0.2

I was suprised the popTart extension made it to the front page of digg yesterday, thanks to all who dugg it! I took everyone's suggestions in the comments on digg and on my blog and tried to...
January 22nd

New Firefox Extension for DIGG.com - popTart

I was bored this weekend and wrote a little firefox extension called "popTart" that I plan on expanding upon. Its only 5K at the moment, very small. The first two features are: 1. When you...
January 19th

Honestly People Where Does It End?? Suing over fatty TV Ads?

Just got wind of this... A lawsuit is being put together against Kellogs and Viacom for showing TV ads promoting high sugar foods. You have to be F'ing kidding me???...

AJAX Greasemonkey Debugger fixed for Firefox 1.5

Julien Couvreur just made a change to his handy Ajax Debugging script for greasemonkey that should allow it to work with Firefox 1.5 and Greasemonkey 0.6.4. This tool is one of the MUST HAVE AJAX...
January 18th

YO Los Angeles, BarCamp is coming here

Looks like some folks are putting on BarCamp in LA similar to the one thrown in Palo Alto. Looks pretty sweet. I'll be there with bells on. http://barcamp.org/index.cgi?BarCampLosAngeles...
January 15th

Answer for Error: Error in parsing value for property 'width'. Declaration dropped.

Firefox 1.5 has introduced a whole panel of pain in the ass headaches lately. One of which was the msg Error: Error in parsing value for property 'width'. Declaration dropped. or Error: Error in...
January 13th

New AJAX ancronym? Move Over XML...JSON puts the J in AJAJ

AJAX, Asyncronous Javascript and XML. A phrase we're all too familiar with these days. I was pointed down a road to JSON land from a fine developer named Owen. In JSON land things are serialized...
January 5th

Holy Shit Batman - sites popping up to decode zend encoded files!

I have yet to find a response by anyone from Zend on this matter but it seems sites are popping up all over the place that can decode Zend Encoded scripts. Since my company is a customer of this...
January 1st

AJAX, PHP and Javascript Errors - How to get more data

Javascript is a powerful tool in the web programmers toolbox however, it's also one of our greatest headaches. Dealing with browser inconsistencies is always a source of great pain. You test on...

Archive for December, 2005

December 24th

An open letter to the recording industry

Thank you allofmp3.com for doing things right. What are your choices for "legal" online music these days? iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody to name a few top players. How do they like to deliver your...

Archive for November, 2005

November 23rd

Digg Experiment

I'm willing to bet if I post the right words in the title of a story that is submitted on digg that it can make it to the front page without anyone even reading the story. Lets try shall we. Please...

Why does DIGG like to be tricked for RSS feeds?

I was adding my digg feeds to my RSS reader I wrote in PHP and noticed file_get_contents wouldn't let me connect to the RSS feed. Turns out they want to be tricked and have you set the user agent....
November 15th

Where are the GOONIES now???

Someone wrote up a great little article on where the Goonies have landed in their lives. Worth a read http://kiddo78.blogspot.com/2005/05/goonies-20-year-reunion.html

The End of MD5? broken in 45 minutes!

New code sample released today shows its possible to find a collision on an MD5 hash within 45 minutes on a P4 1.6 GHZ machine. http://www.stachliu.com/collisions.html code sample:...
November 2nd

Security Focused PODCASTS with Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Came across this site on Digg and it seems to be a pretty nice little listen if you have some spare time to listen about computer security. They have a new episode each week where they focus on a...

Archive for October, 2005

October 28th

Ever Skateboard on a friend?

If not check out this gif on how to do it correctly, this guy shreds on the board! http://indyskate.com/kickpopmike2.gif
October 27th

I now own the sweetest headphones ever

check these puppies out, I upgraded from my in ear SHURE E2C's to the new BOSE Quiet Comfort 2 headphones. The noise cancelling is amazing and the sound its ridiculous. So much bass. They are...
October 26th

Top 10 Dom Com Flops Ever

CNET compiled a great list of the Top 10 Dot Com Flops of all time. Brings back some memories doesn't it? :)...

Externalized PHP Strings Performance for Internationalization - SQLITE Anyone?

I just got started down the road of interationalizing our core enterprise product and I have to admit, I'm scared shitless. :) After getting training for 4 days on everything you must take into...
October 24th

MYSQL 5 is out of the bag!

Its the release we've all been waiting for! http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_976.html New Features * Stored Procedures and SQL Functions -- to embed business...
October 22nd

The handiest of all Microsoft PowerTools - Alt-Tab Replacement

This has to be one of my favorite "why didn't they put that into windows" apps that should be included by default. If you're used to using the ALT-TAB function to move through open applications,...
October 17th

How Samy broke myspace - DETAILED!

Here is the man himself explaining step by step how he got passed the myspace security checks and implemented his magic javascript. Nothing amazing but very clever!...

The art of a blog

I've spent the last two weeks probably reading 400+ blogs from local individuals and I've come up with a revelation. Wow, they suck. Considering how much weight google gives blog in search rankings...
October 14th

Craziest lady I've seen in a long time - trading spouses

I guess this loon was on a recent episode of the tv show Trading Spouses. She's is insane, you must watch and watch over and over again http://www.big-boys.com/articles/tradingspouses.html...
October 13th

My best photoshop work yet -> Photo Retouching

Yesterday's Photoshop class was about photo retouching and I went home and tried to put my skills to use.. not bad for the first shot I think. I'll post a tutorial up this week on how I was able to...

Quite possibly THE coolest homepage ever

http://www.vrmag.org/ check that shit out. Using the same technology that real estate agents use for showing 3d models of the houses this company shows you what might be the wave of the...
October 12th

The Magic of Photoshop

Soooooooooo we have a guy at my work doing photoshop lessons during lunch this week and yesterday was photo retouching. Photoshop CS just rocks. I learned a few new tips and tricks that will...
October 6th

Great site on Spam Stocks

How many emails have you gotten telling you about the next great stock tip? This guy compiled a list of every stock he's gotten in a spam email and lists how much you would have lost if you...
October 4th

ohhh you crazy carnival cruise lines!

Ohhh how nice that carnival cruise line was, donating 3 ships for the Katrina victims… http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051010/10hurricane.htm They’re getting $236 Million...

Archive for September, 2005

September 28th

Google Adsense Firefox Plugin

Are you addicted to logging into your Google Adsense account like me? Well let firefox take care of it for you. I came across this sweet plugin that shows you the current adsense stats of your...
September 27th

Search Engine Optimization - How deep can nested tables go for Google?

Interesting post I found here http://seo.anthonyparsons.com/forum/thread423.html which describes a test they did with a website that had 20 levels deep of nested tables each with a unique...
September 14th

Good use for AJAX without much punishment for public sites

One big problem with AJAX is that you don't want to incorporate AJAX into your webapp if it might endanger your google ranking. For example you wouldn't want to use AJAX to fetch searchable content...

Laugh of the day

thought this was funny: one of my children? Joe was in line at the supermarket yesterday when he noticed a rather dishy blonde in another check-out line. Their eyes met; she raised her...

Set up an apache virtual host in 30 seconds for windows

If you're a developer working with apache and have multiple folders in your web root for clients project you really need to make use of virtual hosts. A virtual host allows you to type in...
September 13th

Windows XP hacked in 8 seconds

Just saw an interesting video and article on how fast it takes for a windows XP system with no firewall or virus scanner to be attacked. The result... 8 seconds. Video included...
September 9th

Why trusting in a site that passes your session ID around is bad

Just started reading Ilia Alshanetsky's new PHP Guide to Security book found over at http://www.phparch.com and I must say this is a must have book for any serious php developers. The session...
September 8th

Delving into the world of online advertising

I've decided I need some supplemental income so I registered several websites today in hopes to turn them into semi-filled content/community sites with cashflow from local and affiliate ads. I've...
September 2nd

Spam Be-Gone - Defeating the evil spamwhores

I made a post a couple weeks ago about comment spammers littering my blog with gambling links, every day I'd have to delete a few dozen spam comments, then they really started pouring in. I had 40...

Archive for August, 2005

August 19th

Interview with a Link Spammer

interesting read from jan 2005 in case you missed it http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/31/link_spamer_interview/ Basically an interview with a link spammer who spams blogs and why he...

The once mighty SHA-1 hashing is now no more

News of the day http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/19/sha-1_attack/ "Crypto researchers have discovered a new, much faster, attack against the widely-used SHA-1 hashing algorithm....
August 18th

More undocumented PHP5 Soap Extension goodness

Had to dig to find the undocumented connection_timeout parameter you can use in the soapclient and thought I'd share it here for anyone doing a search in the future: setting a connection...
August 16th

People go nuts for laptops

Geez people they're 4 year old apple laptops. What the fuck is wrong with you? http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/16/computer.frenzy.ap/index.html "RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- A rush to...
August 15th

Office Pranks

Anyone out there have some sweet office pranks to share? here is one I just read and put into practice here at the office " Microsoft Word has an autocorrect spelling function in...

Paros Proxy - Cool tool to add to your arsenal

Last week I downloaded the free HTTP Proxy tool called Paros Proxy after a recommendation from the WebHacking book by Stuart McClure and I'm pretty darn satisfied with it. Testing SOAP applications...
August 12th

Coolest keyboard yet!!!

Ok this takes the cake so far as the coolest keyboard I've seen yet.. programmable LCD keys! I'll let the images speak for themselves http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/
August 11th

Are you a master typer?

Can you type without looking at the keyboard ever? This could be for you! http://www.daskeyboard.com/ a keyboard with no writing on it, no letters or numbers :)
August 9th

Zend Certification Case Study

Just saw the new writeup Zend did on an interview I did with them about the ZCE program. http://www.zend.com/company/customers/mcafee.php
August 6th

You know who I hate?

The people I hate worse than spammers? The stupid dumb motherfuckers that buy products spammers sell, the dumb hillbillies who click on links in spam emails. Ohhh and lets not forget the rocket...

Archive for July, 2005

July 23rd

Better ways of Tracking Projects? RSS The answer?

As my development team grows and grows I'm curious at what point things get lost. Management has to keep track of more and more individual developers trying to keep up to date with them on project...
July 13th

PHP5 Soap Extension Woes again

Apparently the soap ext does not support stream context. So you cannot use some of the nice SSL features such as the ones listed here: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/transports.php#transports.inet...

Foundstone Releases new Web Services Penetration Tool

This could turn out to be pretty handy! WSDigger is a free open source tool designed by Foundstone to automate black-box web services security testing (also known as penetration testing)....

More PHP5 SOAP Extension hidden goodies

From the files of "undocumented features of SOAP" You can also set object properties like: _proxy_host _proxy_port _connection_timeout _client_cert   $soap_options =...
July 12th

PHP5 Soap Extension

Ok as you've seen below I have been working with the new PHP5 SOAP extension and its a frightening mix of undocumented features, crashes and bugs. I'm getting scared to deploy this in an enterprise...

PHP5 Soap Extension - Going over SSL with custom PEM File

This is an undocumented (at the moment) piece of functionality that is critical if you're trying to use the SOAP extension over SSL. In addition to making sure the open_ssl.dll extension is...

Fatal error: Exception thrown without a stack frame in Unknown on line 0

For anyone using the PHP5 soap extension and trying to write your own wrapper class around it, you may come across this error "Fatal error: Exception thrown without a stack frame in Unknown on line...
July 11th

PHP SOAP Extension Addition

I made a post a while back about the new PHP5 Soap Extension not supporting dynamic locations for web services. It appears to be fixed and in the 5.0.4 version. You can now do something like:...
July 10th

Really cool gadget! SlingBox - Get your TV shows anywhere

I was watching a TV show today that had a product on it called the slingbox. Basically you plug a video source into it TV, DVR, etc and it hooks into your router and will let you watch you tv show...
July 9th

Little NuSOAP tip - looks like we got no XML document

This is for people searching on google for this error message when using nuSOAP "looks like we got no XML document" if everything looks right check to make sure there is no space at the top of...
July 8th

A trip to the funny side... FeedLindsay.com

Stumbled across this site from Fark.com Hilarious, someone made a site to encourage lindsay lohan to eat something... Theres even an online petition. http://www.feedlindsay.com/ :)

PHP and AJAX - Punish your clients less

From working in the PHP Enterprise world I know two things... big companies have ALOT of data and they want it displayed fast. If you can give them alot of data in a website, fast and correctly...
July 3rd

Test Infected

After a month or so of driving code with tests I can say I'm officially "test infected". I completed my little PHP web services project, also it wasn't just fiction it was for a real client. I can...

Archive for June, 2005

June 24th

Test Driven Design with PHP from the Bottom Up

Lately I've been deep in the world of reading Unit Testing, and Refactoring books and articles, namely Test-Driven Development by Kent Beck, and Refactoring by Martin Fowler (both great books)....

Archive for May, 2005

May 24th

AJAX - new term for old tricks?

I've been deep in the world of AJAX lately (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) and as I read articles I see people bitching about how someone just gave a name merging several technologies together CSS,...
May 22nd

PHP Design Patterns: The FACADE Pattern

The first pattern we'll be taking a look at is the "Facade" pattern. (how to pronounce in audio format http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=facade&x=0&y=0) Its basic job is to...

PHP Design Patterns

One of my favorite sites seems to have been neglected.. PHPPatterns.com, which was a great resource for learning how design patterns can be applied to the PHP/Web World. I'm going to try and define...

Archive for April, 2005

April 29th

Officially Zend Certified

I passed my zend certification exam this morning, whooo hooooo. Had the standard 70 questions, and I can definatley say if you don't study for this test its unlikely you'll pass. You have to...
April 28th

The Future of National ID Cards?

Dietrich Ayala just sent me this funny link the ACLU made up regarding national ID cards, make sure to have your sound on! Its what could happen in the future when you order a pizza :) funny.....
April 27th

Limiting how much someone can steal from your credit card

I'm sure anyone reading this page has ordered something from the internet if not many things. Everytime you make a purchase you're exposing your credit card to strangers, you might think its just...
April 26th

Looking to learn more about PHP?

This resource has been helping tremendously during my PHP studying... he's got information on pretty much everything you need in php. Its probably the best free resource around for PHP that I've...
April 24th

Getting Ready for the Big Zend Test

I've been studying for the zend certification test for a little more than a month now, in practicing for the test I've also taken and passed the experrating.com php4 test and the brain bench php4...
April 18th

I made the front page of Zend.com

Logged on to zend today and noticed they had a quote from me right on the front page.. pretty cool stuff :) (click for full size)
April 16th

PHP Bitwise Tutorial - Bits, Bytes, Binary Math and Use Cases

I created a tutorial on PHP's bitwise functions and how they work. Its a helpful tutorial for anyone who is looking to understand any part of bits, bytes, binary math or the PHP bitwise operators...
April 15th

Cool Drag and Drop with Javascript

Dietrich sent me this link to a javascript drag and drop sample. Its quite amazing how smooth it is. Really opens up your eyes to the possibilites of DHTML with XMLHTTPREQUEST for processing data...
April 12th

Great Localization Tip - Pig Latin!

I just got a great tip from listening to a podcast interview with Joel, from "Joel on Software" who remembered a company who needed to create a program that needed to be localized in different...
April 11th

Podcast interview with Rasmus

I haven't listened to this one yet, but I wanted to put it here so I don't forget :) http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail58.html summary: Rasmus explains why this easy-to-use...
April 10th

Security for the world - Bruce Schneier

I just got finished listening to a Bruce Schneier interview on a podcast feed I downloaded and he had some interesting if not common sense thoughts on security. He talked about security not in a...

Podcasting... ways to go

So I decided to finally dip into the podcast world, if you're unfamiliar with it you basically subscribe to an RSS feed that downloads MP3 files of radio shows to your computer. Sounds great until...
April 5th

Security Alert - Phishing Scams work even when you type in the URL

just read this in PCWorld http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119262,00.asp It explains how when you use HTML preview when reading your email a piece of javascript can be executed...

Archive for March, 2005

March 30th

For all those home wireless users with WEP enabled

FYI WEP keys can be gathered in seconds using thousands of packets now not millions as previously needed http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1814

BBLOG PHP Syntax Highlighting Tutorial

I'll quickly describe how to get PHP Syntax highlighting using BBCode in your BBLOG application using GESHI (you can apply this same technique to any application). What we're going to do is enable...

SimpleXML and RSS Grabbing

With PHP5 comes the easiest XML tool yet.. SimpleXML. Here is an example of how to print out information from an RSS feed (v 2.0 + 1.0)   <?php // lets set our default to...

Joining up with the PHP Security Consortium

I had the honor of being invited as an associate member of the PHP Security Consortium ( http://www.phpsec.org ) last week. For those of you unaware this group seeks to increase the programmers...
March 24th

Man Finds His Tax Return on Internet

YIKES! check out this story http://www.wtoctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3117022&nav=0qq6XpfR "No doubt computers and the internet have made filing your taxes easier. But it can also be big...
March 22nd

Regular Expression Magic! Pattern Naming and Comments

I wrote up a little tutorial last night on some advanced but EASY and HELPFUL features you can add to your regex arsenal. I focus briefly on Pattern Naming and Commenting your regular...
March 19th

Sweeeeeet Database Modeling Tool

I just popped over to http://www.fabforce.net/dbdesigner4/ to see their latest DBDesigner4 modeling tool and its quite lovely. For example you connect to your mysql database of choice...
March 18th

How much security do you need?

I was recently involved in what turned out to be a security flame war about encryption and what fields to encrypt in a database. To me my name, address, and phone number are just as important...
March 17th

PHP5 - foreach's new addition :)

As you may or may not know the FOREACH construct used to loop through PHP arrays works on a COPY of the array and not the array itself so when working with a large array that is accessed by many...

Tutorial: HTML Email with JPG Attachments

I wrote this handy tutorial over the weekend after studying for the zend exam and realizing there aren't many easy to understand tutorials regarding how to send HTML email with JPG/JPEG...
March 16th

Zend Studio 4

I'm about 22 days into my 30 day Zend Studio trial and must say there is no way I can live without this tool. I've dabbled in previous versions are there was always something that kinda bugged me...
March 11th

Funny Joke

Mr. D forwarded this to me: An old Arab lived close to New York City for more than 40 years. He would have loved to plant potatoes in his garden, but he is alone, old and weak. His son...

Smarty not so great?

I've checked out a few smarty template packages and noticed that you'd really have to be a programmer to be able to use this thing.. example: ---------------------------------------------------...

The PHP5 Soap Extension

I had the chance to start playing around with the new PHP5 Soap Extension the other day and was dissapointed on a couple fronts: 1. If you use a WSDL file you cannot manually set an endpoint,...

Google ToolBar pushing links to your website

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20050310.html google is launching new functionality in their toolbar ala "smart tags" of microsoft old. It will basically scan for information on your...