Just Let It Flow!

Using Windows XP and keep getting the prompt to restart your computer, after downloading Automatic Updates?

I do, and it annoys me to death.  It happens to pop up at the most inopportune times, watching a movie, playing a game, developing a website, etc.

For those of you that are lazy, I have created a simple .bat file to kill the annoying windows update restart popup.  Simply download the file and open it.  A black box will appear, and then go away.  You should see the windows update box go away.

I originally found this post on LifeHacker

If you are getting the error: PHP Warning: Module ‘tidy’ already loaded in Unknown on line 0

The issue is *more than likely* that you have ‘tidy’ loading in your php.ini file.

If you are using version 11 of cpanel, tidy is optional and you can now compile it into php. However, before version 11, you needed to compile this yourself.

Well, a while ago I posted about some goals I wanted to meet before the year was over.  None of which I’ve met 100%, however, I’m improving/attempting to still do.

1. Being employed at a company/corporation - I’ve went to a few interviews, felt they went well, but apparently someone wasn’t expressing their exact thoughts.  When I inquired about whether or not I was invited back for another interview or even got hired, I got the run around.  Anywho, still trying to be optimistic about things, I’m still looking for employment elsewhere.

2. My goal about finishing things on time, not quite on time, but atleast I’m getting the finishing down.  Kind of hard to get things done between all the distractions, having a normal life, working a real job, and trying to keep yourself motivated.  I feel I have improved in this area dramatically.  I still feel that the main reason I lag on things is due to interest and the fact that I know it’s not my primary source of income.  If it were my ONLY source, I’d have no choice or just be homeless.

3. Learning a new development language.  I think that I’m pretty much done learning new development languages.  I mean, as of now, I see it like, “what’s the point?”.  I’m not employed and my skills are useless.  Regardless of what I know, places that want developers, want college educations.  I find it completely irrelevant to the position, but hey, their money, their choice.  WHEN I get a job that requires or atleast seems like it’d benefit from me learning a new language, then I’ll atleast try.  Until then, my brain is locked.

–

The four sites that I had listed.
1) poetrycircle.net - Halted development completely on it until I had a better base and idea of what the site should be.  A very broad idea of the site was in my head at the time.  I’m reworking my ideas for the site and the old designer is wanting to redesign the layout.

2) babetemplates.com - I don’t think this site will ever be back to ‘life’, so to speak.  It went from having a forum with 1k+ members, to being completely dead in no time.  Though, I’d like to bring it back to life, I sit and think…”Who actually wants babe templates anyhow?”.

3) mystorytime.net - The current site contains OLD exploitable code from when I first began developing in PHP.  I redid the site using CakePHP, it’s not 100%, however only a few pages are left to design.  I had got sidetracked by some paid work, and forgot all about it.

4) oceanempires.com - I’d still love to complete this game, I just have this feeling it won’t ever happen.  While chatting in the #cakephp channel, I met someone who was interested in developing it with me.  We created a project page and that’s all that happened.  The other guy’s computer messed up and he fell behind in work.  From that day forward, he magically never had time anymore.  Funny how that works, eh?

My next issue is, creating a portfolio with all my work in it.  I do graphic design and web work.  I’m not sure whether I should separate the two or just keep them in the same portfolio or what.  Blah, stress.

When I began developing in PHP, I remember needing a complete random string, for passwords/verification emails. The code for it went a little something like this:

$letters = array('A', 'B', 'C', ... etc);

Being a novice programmer, I used to ask people for help and let them see my code. Anyhow, to make a long story short, I met Peter Harkins on Freenode’s #php channel. He showed me the range() function, which helped shorten my code, and make it look cleaner. Below is a simple function that can be used, may be useful to some, that can shorten the process.

<?php
function range2($start, $end, $length)
{
$str_array = range($start, $end);
srand((double) microtime() * 1000000);
$text = '';
for($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++)
{
$text .= $str_array[rand(0, count($str_array) - 1)];
}
return $text;
}
?>

Example:
<?php
echo range2('A', 'Z', 5);
?>

How it works:
Creates an array of letters from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ using ascii characters. Check out www.asciitable.com for the ordering of them. Afterwards, it selects a random letter from the array and assigns it to the $text variable.

Not too hard, just something I feel is simple and useful. Since I tend to see alot of developers still doing it the “hard” way.

While reading one of my favorite blog sites, LifeClever.com, I came across an interesting article. In short, it basically gave tips on how to be more productive, while reducing distractions.

How many of you check your email every 10 minutes, IM while working, have people distracting you in many ways, people calling you, and overall, feeling overwhelmed by all of these distractions? I know that these things tend to happen to me when I’m trying to complete a site or a design.

A bad habit of mine is chatting on IM’s rather than working on what I KNOW needs to get done.

If some of these things happen to you while you’re attempting to get work done, check out the article on LifeClever.com - “10 quick and (almost) painless ways to kill distractions“

I happened to take a look at my site’s stats and realized, “gee, quite a few people from phpclasses.org visit my blog”.  Noticing that the hits were referred from my Server Status class, I decided to rewrite it, after establishing that the code was simply garbage.

Some may find it useful, others may find it garbage. I some how managed to place 2nd in a coding competition phpclasses.org entered me into at php-editors.com. You can get more information here.

As those of you that read my blog know, I posted that I want to be hired on this year being a web developer. Here is my attempt at that.

You can download my resume in Microsoft Word (.doc) format or Adobe Acrobat Reader (.pdf) format.

MS Word - Resume in .DOC format

Adobe PDF - Resume in PDF format

Not much to it, but it’s a start.

Lately, I’ve just been in touch with my creative side. I was asked to make a couple business cards. One for a t-shirt printing and pressing company called ‘Positive Reaction’. The other business card was for a recording and production studio called ‘Heat Muzik Studio‘, which is affiliated with Street Team Entertainment.
Positive Reaction (click image for larger picture)

Heat Muzik Studio (click image for larger picture)

If you have any comments or suggestions, leave them, they will be appreciated.

I don’t claim to be a graphic guru, however, I was bored and made a business card the other day. Check out the preview below:

It’s been literally years I’ve been working on this site. I’ve literally rode the wheel around and around several times on this. The site has been released with basic functionality needed for the site to grow. As the weeks continue to pass, I am going to be adding functionality to it. Some of those being: commenting, messaging, icons, contests, and activities.

I now need to work on the promotion of the website, touch the design up a tad bit, and get a more official logo.

Check it out: http://poetrycircle.net/ 

If anyone reading this can help, please feel free to comment.

Now, that the site is done, I have more projects to work on. Though, one has jumped into the mix, ahead of all others. I will update when I complete that one as well.