Make an Impact
Recently, it has come to my attention that not all developers have the ability to make an impact.
But that begs the question, what does making an impact mean?
Making an impact.
It's coming out the door - swinging. So much of a developers role, especially in a start up, is determined by their first 3 days. Day 1, yes, come in, settle down, welcome aboard. Day 2, start asking all of the questions you had from day 1, and for heavens sake, do something besides look busy.
Day 3, you better have your shit together, and you should be swinging for the fences.
Don't ask for something to do, demand a project. And while you're doing, don't ask questions the very second you think you don't know something.
Look for the answer first.
It's this mentality that I find so damn frustrating - all of the answers should be in the code base. Run a damn grep on your project base, and find an answer. There's no excuse for any mid, to upper mid level programmer to be asking stupid questions. By stupid question, I'm refering to in the inabilty to traverse the code base in search of functions, methods, answers.
Make an impact, 3 days.
Someone Failed to Inform Me
Someone apparently failed to inform me that the video game industry is freaking crazy.
And I love it 
I've recently started working at Zynga , and I couldn't be happier.
What this mean though, is that there will be fewer and fewer blog posts about programming related issues. Instead, I'll try to focus on theory rather than implimentation.
Until then, everyone should feel free to head over to zynga and try some games
Modrewrite and Short Urls – What you really want to know.
I recently opened up an old .htaccess and I was struck with the memory of how much it sucked trying to Google search for some real, working, answers on making short urls.
So here you go, my quick tip on what you really want to know about mod_rewrite.
Professional PHP
It's important to remember what sets a professional PHP developer apart from the pack that floods your average help channel.
Too often I run into reviewing or helping a "professional" developer, and I can't help but mutter "you're doing it wrong..."
Google Speaks on Net Neutrality and Benefits of caching
In this post on the google blog,http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/net-neutrality-and-benefits-of-caching.html , Google speaks about how people are confused on the net neutrality and the use of edge caching.
I find it interesting that someone could take the usage of CDN's as an act of an un neutral web.
The act of handling certain traffic as more important than other traffic is the act of an un neutral web. Developers should consider these words carefully.
Screen Scraping made too easy
Recently I had some free time and I decided I wanted to automate some common tasks of mine. And let me tell you honestly, I hate having to do screen scraping. It's an annoying, tedious task. Making regex for this, and for that, and then to find out my hours were wasted as that regex won't work on another site.
That's a thing of the past.
Search Engine Spam Videos
Some some tweets come in and I headed on over to IM Broadcast saw some Search Engine Spam videos come up.
I thought they were pretty interesting to watch, and it was nice to hear from MSN, Google, and Yahoo. It does make me wonder if black hat SEO really does have a chance? 
Anyways, here are the direct links to the vids:
http://www.imbroadcast.com/video/53/Search-Engine-Spam-Part-1-Overview
http://www.imbroadcast.com/video/55/Search-Engine-Spam-Part-2-On-The-Page-Issues
http://www.imbroadcast.com/video/54/Search-Engine-Spam-Part-3-Link-Spam--Paid-Links
Hope you all enjoy.
PHP Reference Card – Failed?
While taking a look at my 'Tech Blogs' tab in NetVibes I saw the headline for a reference card available for PHP. So, I hopped on over to dZone.com, got an account (it's free), and downloaded it.
I'm not really impressed.
I believe the beginner may benefit from this, but there's just so many gaping holes in the reference card... Like what about the GD library? Or perhaps cURL? File handling? XML?
Honestly, how could you call a reference card a PHP Reference Card without the most common uses listed? I think the card may be off to a good start, but please, release a new more complete version soon.
Final Verdict:
While it may be great for beginners, it's still lacking for the rest of us. I'll pass and keep php.net as my reference card.
Breathalyzer for your Gmail
Personally, I think this is a pretty neat little gizmo. Basically, in a blog post at: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html
All you have to do is answer a few simple math problems, and boom, off it goes. I think the idea here is it gives you a second chance to reconsider your email. And, if you're too drunk to think of an answer, perhaps you should wait till the next day to send it.
I think it's neat, and of course, you can turn it on and off, so if anyone is complaining about that, well, they're just silly.
New Version, New Theme
I went ahead and updated wordpress, so we'll see if this version stays stable.
Also, changed themes, until I finish with my own. Hopefully this will be the last time before I settle on my own.