PHP Variable Test reference

I thought I'd post a link to this PHP Variable Tests reference page. It's a great reference that's kept up to date with the current version of PHP. I use it sometimes when I'm waffling over what function to use to validate a variable. Something I've noticed lately with the newer versions of PHP is that ctype_digit no longer returns true when you give it an empty string (ie. ctype_digit('')). This...

Ten PHP Best Practices Tips that will get you a jo...

The last couple of weeks have been quite the experience for me. I was part of a big layoff at my former company, which was interesting. I've never been in that position before, and it's hard not to take it personally. I started watching the job boards, and a nice-looking full-time PHP position caught my eye, so I sent out a resume and landed an interview. Before the face-to-face portion, I chatted with the owner...

Mounting UFS/ext2/ext3 filesystems on Windows XP, ...

After cleaning out the garage, I came across an old box that had been sitting in the corner for many years. The bottle recycling depots in my area now take old computer parts (Canada put in a small environmental tax on new electronics, so now the recycling places take old stuff for free!), so it's pretty convenient to get rid of this stuff now. However, I knew the hard drive likely contained old checked-out code that...

Build a CentOS LAMP server

I finally finished re-building a development CentOS LAMP server. More importantly, and the primary purpose of the whole exercise, is that I finished my guide to building a CentOS LAMP server. I am happy to now post said guide on this blog (under Articles), for everyone to read and abuse as they please! So here you go… may I present Blake's CentOS LAMP Server Guide, single-page edition, and the perhaps friendlier...

PHP 5.3 – Namespaces and Late Static Binding

Work on the Mono machine continues. For reasons as yet undisclosed, I'm rebuilding the Mono test box from scratch. I'm not expecting this to resolve the previous issues I experienced while benchmarking Mono, but it is allowing me to tie up some loose ends. More on that soon. In the meantime, I noticed a new article over at Sitepoint about the upcoming PHP 5.3 release, slated for later this year. Apparently some...