All entries of my technical and business blog

Ode to a MySpace Layout

Oct 4, 2008 news
sigh Things change… and so does MySpace. I had once written an article about how to create a great MySpace Layout - but it is somewhat out of date. I’m not sure if there is any interest in an updated article. In case there isn’t, and I decide to just remove it, I have a picture of what the original design of mine was here…

PHP SPL autoload: 3 simple rules you must follow

Sep 29, 2008 php

While working on a larger site that I may need to use many external libraries, I realized I need to come up with a better __autoload() function (for example, I think it was DOMPDF that had its own autoload function as well. Last time I used that, I had to hack my own autoload to use their code as well to locate files). I researched into SPL autoload functionality, and I’ve found what I need.

CSS incompatibility finder

Sep 25, 2008 css php

This is more of a proof of concept than anything else - as most of my scripts are ;) But, let’s say you have some files that have css in them, either external stylesheets, internal one with style tags or even style attributes - and you need to update the browser support. Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool that could look through these files and point out that there are incompatibilities?

SVN Pre-commit duty: Lint your PHP

Sep 21, 2008 php svn

We’ve all been there before, committing code - and then realizing that it was broken (hrm - our unit test didn’t catch it? or… “what unit test?” if you’re in another environment). Well, there is a solution.

dtemplate: dynamic template system for static designed files

Sep 16, 2008 misc-web php

One of the biggest time wasters I deal with is parsing out static web designs given to me by designers. They don’t know programming, so they design it with static HTML in mind. Even if you’re using a tool like dreamweaver, updating static pages can be a hassle. Then, a lot of times, they have to remove their ’lorem ipsum’ text and send it to me - and then I continue to chop it up. Now, I’m talking about smaller 5 to 10 page sites here, not huge sites like JEMDiary or something. However, that idea birthed…

Automatic Backup with SVN on Windows

Sep 12, 2008 scripting svn windows

A while ago, I decided that I needed to have a better backup solution for my file server. After doing some research on various systems, I let my inner programmer take over - in addition to my desire to NEVER LOSE ANYTHING - and I defaulted to use SVN.