Sometimes, after numerous reboots of the httpd daemon I’ll see lingering processes when I look to see what’s running. Here’s a useful terminal command to get rid of them.
> ps ax | grep http | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill
This is a very cool little JQuery / Prototype plugin to handle select form elements. Really slick implementation.
Source net.tutsplus.com
Twitter, it seems, has released a pretty robust CSS framework. Definitely worth looking into further.
AT&T is dropping the 1000 text-per-month plan and forcing most into an unlimited plan. Total bullshit.
Cellular carriers have been trying to make up dwingling voice plan interest for years by price gouging uneducated consumers on SMS rates. This is getting a little silly though and only goes to show they see the writing on the wall. Bang out customers now before they start to turn to non-SMS based Internet messaging via apps. Then, when that becomes the prevelant method of communication, you start really jacking up the data-plan rates to make up for people not taking the overpriced unlimited SMS packages.
Someone really needs to start up a purely cellular data provider so that people can have an alternative down the line. People will jump ship and hop on before the cellular carriers are willing to drop prices (they just don’t learn) and, by that time, you’ll have a heafty subscriber base.
Update: TechCrunch gets it right …
Source 
“Operation Varsity - Crossing the Rhine”
From the artist’s website:
This highly detail depiction of the operation shows Canadian Typhoons attacking AA installations near the Wesel. The town of Wesel is burning in the distance and the railroad bridge has been blown out by the German army. Typhoon pilot Harry Hardy in Pulverizer IV was on his 96th and final mission and his signature can be found on the prints and original. Typhoon pilots Angus Scott, Robert Spooner and Ted Smith were on the same mission and have also signed the artwork.
Jim Wallwork is a famous glider pilot and airborne soldier that participated in 4 major operations including Normandy and Varsity. He was one of the very first soldiers to fire a shot in the Battle of Normandy to capture the Pegasus bridge. Varsity was his final mission in a glider. His glider can be seen in the top left and his signature is also included.
The four Typhoons in the foreground are strafing gun emplacements, four more are dive bombing in the distance and cluster bombs can be seen bursting on an 88 AA gun. Four more Typhoons on the right have circled around after their initial bombing and strafing attack and are on their final strafing run. Tracers were only used in the final rounds of ammunition to let the pilot know he was running low.
Thanks to the Typhoon actions, the gliders overhead had a chance to cross with minimal casualties and make a successful assault.
Source actionart.ca
“Animo libre dirigimur, a B-25 Ramrod under attack”
From the artist’s website:
Animo libre dirigimur translates as: “We are guided by the mind of liberty”, the squadron Motto of 320 Sqn (Dutch), 2nd TAF. Around D-Day, 320 Squadrons main targets were communication centres and enemy airfields, one of those Ramrod missions is depicted here. The escort of Spitfires is already engaging Focke-Wulf 190A-8s and the top escort is streaking down to assist.
Source luijken.com
This looks really interesting. I’ve lost count how many times our front-end developers have bitched about having to add yet another social networking interface to the layout.
So just what are Web Intents? Well, the easiest way to understand them is by example. Take the sometimes overwhelming proliferation of buttons on web pages that allow you to do something with the current page, whether it’s Like, Tweet, +1, Read Later, Add to Instapaper and so on. Rather than adding a dozen little badges to your site, Web Intents creates a bridge that connects your site to any website your visitor wants to use. Web Intents define an API for your site to use and another API for the receiving site to use. Plug them together and transferring data becomes a quick and easy process, both for users and developers.
Source webmonkey.com
This is a very well written post about the CSS background property. It details what has been added in CSS3 through some really easy-to-understand graphics and a step-by-step walkthrough of each configurable value. Worth the read.
Source sitepoint.com
In the past, I have run into problems when coding CSS layouts. There was always some kind of issue with margins, padding or float clearing that just made the whole process, while ultimately successful, a frustrating pain in the ass. This time around, however, I decided that it was time to see if a CSS framework actually could succeed in making the whole process easier.
I might be a little behind on CSS frameworks but I finally got a chance to use one in my latest project. I chose 960 over some similar frameworks (namely Blueprint and, to a lesser degree, Baseline) mainly due to the fact that it doesn’t try and take on the world. It has the modest goal of assisting you in generating a layout and it succeeds; 960 is in my work-flow to stay.
The ease with which 960 enabled me to move around layout sections without breaking everything really was amazing. 2 column layouts were a breeze. Nested child columns? No sweat! The framework just works as intended. It’s small, easy to use and conceptually easy to understand.
If you’ve been on the fence about a CSS framework, I suggest taking a look at 960 for use in one of your next projects.
Source 960.gs
Things look like they may get interesting in the Taiwan strait.
… they clearly show what appear to be Active Phased array radars similar to those found on Aegis ships …
Source defensetech.org
Today, while working with SimpleXML, I noticed some odd behavior while attempting to type-cast an XML attribute. Since the attributes() method of the SimpleXMLElement object will return another SimpleXMLElement object, you must type-cast it in order to save it.
$id = (int) $simplexml->attributes()->Id;
While this worked on my OSX development machine, my co-worker’s Windows 7 Zend Server development environment wasn’t seeing the same result. No matter what we did, we always saw the $id being returned as 2147483647 even though the actual XML was something totally different.
After banging my head against a wall for a bit, I found out that Zend Server for Windows comes with 32-bit PHP. This poses a problem as the IDs we are dealing with are much larger than that. As the PHP documentation notes:
The size of an integer is platform-dependent, although a maximum value of about two billion is the usual value (that’s 32 bits signed). 64-bit platforms usually have a maximum value of about 9E18. PHP does not support unsigned integers.
… which meant that our larger IDs were being dropped to the upper limit of the 32-bit integer cap which is 2,147,483,647.
So, if you’re type-casting large integers while using Zend Server, be careful. Even if your OS is 64-bit, your PHP version (as of this post) is 32-bit. You can double check by typing this at the command prompt:
> php -r "echo PHP_INT_MAX;"
On the Zend forums, I found this post detailing why…
We do support all of these we just don’t support 64 bit version of PHP on Windows or Mac. This is intentional because unless you really need a 64 bit integer for some reason the 32 bit version run much much faster than the 64 bit version on these platforms.
I also stumbled on this detailed explanation while trying to figure out what was going on. Hopefully, this post helps cut down debugging time for someone out there as this one can be a bit annoying to nail down.
