Are you wondering what Ray D’Arcy looks like with a beard and after a shave, with a moustache? Take a look. Sorry Ray, doesn’t suit you at all!
Development , PHP
PHP Optimization and Security tips and rant
Andrew van der Stock’s criticism of PHP’s security model. What security? Global request arrays go some way to making applications safer but there are obscure functions and settings which can trip up developers. (via) PHP Optimization Tricks from Ilia Alshanetsky has one gem I didn’t know about – the ctype extension. It’s somewhat limited but would be faster and less resouce intensive than a regular expression to do simple checks. While I’m blogging development stuff, here’s mention of a vector drawing library in Javascript! Yes, newer browsers have SVG support but this will work in older browsers and newer. Cute.
When-in-Ireland
Surfers finally beat the giant wave of Moher
Surfers have ridden and beaten the huge waves off the Cliffs of Moher in Co. Clare. A film is being made about the event, and a preview is available because of the interest in it! I wonder was Peter anywhere nearby with his camera?
Web
Useful Uses Of RSS
Rich Ziade has listed a number of ways to use RSS more creatively than just reading news headlines from blogs. One of my favourite non-blog rss feeds is the Flickr Interestingness photo feed which isn’t listed, but I’ll have to look up the comics feed mentioned above! 🙂
Linux , Movies
My Linux Webcam
When I bought me PC last year it came with a small little webcam which never worked for me until today when I plugged it in and Ubuntu Linux detected it using the Spca5xx driver. This is what the kernel reported: “USB SPCA5XX camera found. SONIX sn9c102 + Pas106” Easycam made it easy enough to install new drivers, and Camorama is a useful tool to control it. (via) Unfortunately this isn’t very exciting for a number of reasons: It has a manual focus and doesn’t handle changes in light very well. I can’t get it to capture more than 176×144 […]
Movies , When-in-Ireland
The TVArk – television museum
Ryan found the TVArk! Ryan has linked directly to a few ads such as the old Kia Ora one from 1984 and remember the Trebor Soft Mints one set in a strange and soft world? That’s from 1987! Lots more on the TVArk site itself, Yes Ryan, I’ll have to have a good look around this site tonight!
Health
Cancer chemical found in coffee
A cancer causing chemical has been found in coffee. Acrylamide is the drug in question and “only chips and crisps are responsible for greater quantities on average.” (That’s fries and chips to US readers) Yet again, I’m glad I gave up coffee! Unfortunately the chemical is produced during cooking, “particularly high-temperature processes such as frying and roasting” and so bread and biscuits have high levels of it. Damn.
When-in-Ireland
Jack and Jill Mobile Phone Appeal
This morning on Ian Dempsey’s show a representative from the Jack and Jill Childrens Foundation was on asking for mobile phones to be sent to them. This is a really good cause, the Foundation helps “babies born with severe developmental delay. Usually that means that they can not function at birth and require 24 hour care.” You shouldn’t send SIM cards or battery chargers, just the phone. Details of where to send the phones are available but if you have an old mobile phone, pop it into an envelope and send it to “The Jack & Jill Inkjet Appeal, Freepost.” […]
C64
c64ize An Image!
Justin has coded a c64ize script which will convert an image in modern formats such as jpeg or gif into what an 8 bit Commodore 64 would display! Ah yes, you had to be there…
Development
2 for the developers
2 links for the developers around here: Quick Lookup is an online dictionary of PHP,MySQL, Javascript and CSS commands and keywords. As of this moment, “55% ish of MySQL is done, JS is NOT finished yet” but it’s still useful if you haven’t got the PHP manual handy. Regular Expression Checker – regexes are an arcane science. Everyone needs all the help they can get when working with them! (via) Later.. Here’s another AJAX powered regular expression checker via Matt.