The End of a Successful Week in California

Last night, my colleague/manager and I returned from a week at PlayPhone's head office in sunny San José, California. I figured I should try to put together a bit of a writeup whilst it's all still fresh in my mind, but I'm still somewhat running on Pacific Time so this will probably be a bit garbled.

PHP Closing Tags Considered Harmful

It may be obvious to some, but this is a mistake I still see being made a lot, and I think it's high time we got over it.

Stop using PHP closing tags. It really is that simple, and here's why.

Beelzebub Crossword Solutions on Fifteensquared

I've recently been enjoying the Independent on Sunday's "Beelzebub" crossword, so I'm pleased to have today posted Fifteensquared's first Beelzebub solutions for some time - number 989.

I'll continue to blog the Beelzebub solutions each week for the time being, alongside my usual Independent slot. It's a great crossword, but perhaps a little obscure, so I'm secretly hoping this post may help generate a bit of search engine traffic, and a few people will drop by and help me out in the comments!

Syntax Highlighting with GeSHi

On this very site, I've recently started using GeSHi, to implement the rather nifty code syntax highlighting you see in posts like this and this.

I had previously been using PHP's built in highlight_string() function, but that function is only of use for highlighting PHP code! As I often seem to need to highlight other languages, it was time to turn to GeSHi.

Since I did, a couple of people have asked about ease of use, implementation and so forth, so this post is my attempt at answering those questions.

More Mono: mod_mono and Apache

In Getting Started with Mono on Linux I mentioned that my next plan was to get Mono integrated with Apache HTTPD by way of mod_mono.

This turned out to be a bit of a wrestling match. The process itself is remarkably simple, but the poor - or at least outdated - documentation combined with a few minor teething problems made it all much harder than it could have been.

Getting Started with Mono on Linux

I've recently had cause to look into various strategies for integrating PHP and .NET (on which subject, pointers will be most welcome), which led to a brief investigation of Mono. For the uninitiated, Mono is a "a cross platform, open source .NET development framework". In short, it allows you to compile and run .NET code on a Linux server.

Mono is fairly straightforward to install, although the process isn't terribly well documented, so I figured I'd run through the steps here in case it might help somebody. As a bonus, we'll have a look at something called XSP once we're done.

Look Back at 2008

I really hate those "lookback" blog posts that crop up at the end of each year, don't you? Good. That being agreed, here's mine.

A Second Cheat Sheet: the Sine Rule and the Cosine Rule

More adventures in MST121: Using Mathematics. B3: Modelling with Vectors took an unexpected turn into matters of triangle geometry - and not the more beginner-friendly right-angled variety either - which left me getting to grips with the Sine Rule and the Cosine Rule.

Much like my experiences with Sigma Notation, the principles are straightforward, but I kept failing to spot which equations to apply.

So I've knocked up a further cheat sheet. Here are the files:

• PDF Document
• LaTeX Source

My First Contribution to Fifteensquared

I'm pleased to mention that earlier on today, I posted my first contribution to Fifteensquared.net. The post in question is Independent 6,912 by Dac.

For the uninitiated, Fifteensquared is kind of like a blog for cryptic crossword enthusiasts. Several invited bloggers post solutions and explanations for some of the day's main crosswords, and then we all have a bit of a natter about it.

It's gratifyingly nerdy, and is quite high profile within the cryptic crossword world, with many of the setters and editors visiting and commenting regularly.

So I'm pleased that my first post wasn't roundly jeered by the regulars. I'll be posting Independent solutions about once a week from now on, and I'm sure there will be tougher mornings to come!

Copyright/License Comment Blocks Considered Harmful

Rant alert. You know what really grinds my gears?

It's those epically long license/copyright notice comment blocks with which some developers, particularly those behind open source PHP projects, insist on prepending source code files.

You've all seen this kind of thing. I'm using Wall4PHP to illustrate my point, but they're by no means the only offenders.