Like most languages, PHP allows developers to accomplish the same tasks using several different methods. I think most of us stick with whatever habits we fall into without really ever …

Continue reading “Bleeding Every Last CPU Cycle from PHP”

It’s been a short while since I’ve updated this blog. I spent almost a week camping in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I go every year in the autumn to take in …

Continue reading “Changing WinXP’s boot screen to look like Win 3.1 in two minutes flat.”

A case study One of the most interesting projects I’ve been involved with was developing and managing a site for an online automotive accessories retailer. At it’s peak, the site …

Continue reading “The secret to making a “contact us” form that gets used.”

(This article is Part 2 in a series about Apache’s loadable modules. The previous topic was mod_ext_filter). As former Microsoft-ite who made the leap to OSS, one of the things …

Continue reading “Using Apache’s mod_speling to catch unneded 404 erorrs caused by mispelligns”

Programmers use a lot of tools throughout the day. Some of them are pretty obvious: a fast PC, wide monitor (or three), a robust IDE, and good coffee. Other items …

Continue reading “Picking the perfect font for writing code.”

Google is always coming up with cool little widgets and technologies. A lot of their ideas sit dorment in their labs, seemingly because they haven’t yet figured out how to …

Continue reading “Using Google Sets to find related terms”

I’ll occasionally see SQL code that looks something like this: UPDATE products SET in_stock = CASE WHEN in_stock = 1 THEN 0 ELSE 1 END; Or sometimes the developer tries …

Continue reading “A simple method to toggle a bit column (MySQL, SQL Server, and others)”

I recently discussed mod_ext_filter, a loadable module used with Apache. It allows you to easily process your content through an external program before it’s passed onto the user’s web browser. …

Continue reading “Using Apache’s mod_ext_filter to automatically add watermarks to website images”

PHP is simultaneously the most infuriating and joyful languages I’ve ever worked with. I say “infuriating” primarily because the function names are so inconsistant. Despite the fact that I use …

Continue reading “10 things you (probably) didn’t know about PHP.”

Almost every experienced web developer who works with Apache is at least vaguely familar with mod_rewrite. It’s most frequently used to reformat ugly URLs containing a lot of query values …

Continue reading “mod_ext_filter: mod_rewrite’s red-headed step sister.”