Translating PHP error constants

Posted by Frank - May 12, 2009 - For techies

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I wanted to log all the errors thrown out by Fwd:Vault processes to ensure that any bugs I don’t catch myself bubble to the top very quickly. To get started, I replaced PHP’s default error handling with a custom error handler function, which simply logs the error in a MySQL table before passing it along [...]

Do the upfront planning

Posted by Frank - April 2, 2009 - For entrepreneurs, For techies

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Since announcing my work on Fwd:Vault, a few friends have come forward expressing interest in being angel investors. From what I’ve read, most entrepreneurs have to seek such people out, so I’ll take it as a compliment that these friends either (a) really like me, or (b) really trust my technical and prowess. I’m leaning [...]

Xenocode Browser Sandbox – Web designers rejoice!

Posted by Frank - February 27, 2009 - For techies

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Update: Xenocode has decided to eschew usability in favor of…well nothing really. In order to use the browser sandboxes now, you must “initialize” them from the site, which amounts to downloading the files you need in order to execute the sandbox. You can circumvent this genius decision by downloading the browser of choice, then open [...]

Smash bugs, don’t treat symptoms

Posted by Frank - December 12, 2008 - For entrepreneurs, For everyone, For techies

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I previously discussed why certain “automagical” features can sometimes facilitate the creation of crappy code. However they only create a possibility of crappy code. Today I want to warn you against a practice that will create crappy code 100% of the time. First a scenario – you have written a program in your language of [...]

Get number of message parts in an email using PHP

Posted by Frank - November 14, 2008 - For techies

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Alright, I admit up front that this is a pretty specific problem, but hopefully some Googlers will find it useful. I recently had need for a small side project to read e-mails. Every e-mail is split up into parts; each “part” represents every separate piece of the e-mail. The plain text format, rich text or [...]

Why include_once and require_once may make you a crappy coder

Posted by Frank - November 8, 2008 - For techies

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Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that the PHP community has, in general, started to favor include_once() and require_once() over the more standard include() and require(). For the uninitiated, the “_once” version of each function will check to see if a file has already been loaded. If it has, it will safely bypass loading [...]

How focused is your startup idea?

Posted by Frank - November 7, 2008 - For entrepreneurs, For everyone

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As developers, most of us are always mulling over ideas for potential new services to bring to the world. Who wouldn’t want to say they came up with something Digg, Wikipedia, eBay, etc? And every day, many developers take the plunge on their ideas. Good for them! However, sometimes I look at new ideas, and [...]

Downtime and a new find

Posted by Frank - October 27, 2008 - For entrepreneurs, For everyone, For techies

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For the twelve people who subscribe to my feed, you may have noticed that it had gone bye-bye while I migrated the site. We’re back on track now, and I apologize for the downtime. If you unsubscribed, please don’t hate me and give me another chance. I’m a huge follower of the Signals vs. Noise [...]