Just Let It Flow!

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“