I am a web application programmer, Search Engine Optimization Developer and all-around Geek.
Mental Ramblings of a Self-acknowledged Geek.
Posted: October 3, 2009
I have recently signed up for the National Novel Writing Month Challenge! (NaNoWriMo). NaNoWriMo is an annual, month-long challenge that takes place during the month of November. The idea is to write a 50,000 word long novel in exactly one month.
Posted: October 2, 2009
I used to be one of those ‘He-Man’ coders. Why do I need to use libraries or frameworks? I’l just code it all by hand and it’ll be leaner and more efficient. Why would you bother to have an extra 15k download? That’s an extra server call! You get the idea.
While there certainly are some libraries or frameworks that are too big or that run slower, that’s more a sign of a poorly made library than anything else. JQuery is no poorly made library.
Posted: September 11, 2009
So just to clean up and simplify things, I’m merging my old wordpress.com blog with this one. I’ve imported some older posts over here and am making my wordpress-hosted abandonment official. There weren’t a lot of posts imported, but if you were browsing the archives and found some older ones from waaayyy back, that’s why. Just FYI.
Posted: September 11, 2009
I haven’t gotten a chance to mention this yet, (see last post) but I got to see Bill Nye in person a couple months ago. Bill was giving a talk at nearby St. Louis University on environmental sustainability that was free and open to the public. Given such a bargain-basement price, of course we went and got there plenty early.
The coolest part about all this is that I wasn’t the only one who was excited about this (nor probably the most excited). My 7 year old stepson Johnny just about imploded with excitement when he found out.
Johnny’s a huge Bill Nye fan. He watches the Bill Nye videos and reads Bill’s books from the local library like a lot of kids his age play video games (he really likes video games, too). So Isa and I decided that it would be a good surprise to take him to this talk…of Science!
Posted: September 10, 2009
Well it has been a while since I’ve posted anything here, as you well know by the ear-shattering sound of nothingness coming from over here the last couple months. Not an excuse but it has been pretty busy here lately.
To catch you up on the goings-on, here is the official Cliff’s notes version of the last few months of my life, with full version to follow shortly.
First up, I got married. After a year up planning the Big Day finally arrived. The ceremony was great, the church was beautiful and everything went off without a problem. The reception afterward was very elegant, everyone said so. And–very importantly for us–the photos came out great.
Well getting married was a lot to plan, but a few weeks before the wedding I found out I got an excellent new job at GoDaddy. In Arizona. So in the last couple weeks before the wedding we also had a move to plan. Fortunately Isa’s the plan ahead type and everything went smoothly.
When we got down here of course we needed to find a place to live, and then here was settling into the new job. Then, just about a month ago, my Dad found out he was going to need bypass surgery. I flew back and my brother drove home from school to be there. Fortunately the doctors found his blockages before he had a heart attack, and they’re getting really handy with heart surgery nowadays. It’s almost become a routine thing. Still it is a pretty big event and can really make you worry.
Finally, just this week, Isa and I made the switch and got iPhones, on which I am composing this post.
Anyway, that catches up most of the major events that have been occuring lately. Hopefully things have settled enough that I’ll be able to keep connected more, and maybe be able to get back to working on my movie reviews site.
Posted: March 2, 2009
Conditionals basically allow you to tell PHP what to do, depending on certain conditions. This is where you really start getting into PHP programming. This is where you’ll find the ‘If…Then’ you may have seen before in programming.
Conditionals aren’t too hard. The most basic form of a conditional is the ‘If’ statement.
If something is true…
Then do something else
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 28, 2009
PHP has built-in math functionality for most of your mathematical desires. Here are a few of the common math operators and what they do:
+ adds numbers
- subtracts
* multiplies
/ divides
% modulus (the remainder of a division)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 27, 2009
PHP is a pretty good language to work with text. Some programming languages have separate types for single characters (chars) and strings. With PHP it’s pretty much all the same. Some languages (I’m looking at you C!) don’t allow strings at all, and only have characters. So, with as much as PHP keeps out of your way, strings aren’t that bad. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 24, 2009
Programming languages all support different types of data, such as numbers or text. But to the programming language, it gets even more specific. There are many different kinds of numbers, for example, depending on whether it has a decimal or not.
Some common datatypes:
int – an integer, or whole number without a decimal
float – floating point numbers, basically a number with a decimal
double – same as a float, but more specific. It can hold longer values and more decimal places
bool – Boolean values. Basically true or false
string – strings of text
array – a special type of variable which can hold a whole set of other variables inside it. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 20, 2009
One great way to use PHP is to use web forms to get data from visitors to your site. You’re all probably familiar with the standard HTML forms:
<form method=“post” action=“page.php”>
Please enter your name: <input type=“text” name=“username” />
<input type=“submit” value=“Send” />
</form>
See those extra attributes in the form tag, method and action? Those are how you can send things to a PHP script on another page.
The shortest distance between two points is a wormhole. #