BiggieStylin

Well, I’m finally doing it. I’m rewriting my voodoo code that makes reloadable modules or plugins in PHP. I’ve always toyed with the idea of rewriting my original work for PHP_Modules and making it work with classes; now the time has come. I have started work with my SiTech library to make SiTech_Plugins. It will be the same concept of PHP_Modules, but not only will it work with functions, it will now work with classes. This is something that was never really possible before because when PHP_Modules was written, it was written for PHP 4.

I haven’t gotten very far yet with code, but the theory of it is to create a base class with a __call() method. That’s basically all the base class will consist of. When a plugin is loaded, the class read from the plugin file will be created to extend this base class. From there, all methods found within the class will be stored as lambda functions inside a special class variable. This then makes it easy to reload code, by recreating the lambda function when the code is reloaded. Therefore, the class itself never needs to be redefined, it just needs all the functions reloaded. So, in theory this is entirely possible with PHP 5 and the use of the magic __call() method for classes.

Some of you may wonder why I don’t use runkit from PECL. While it would make things a ton easier, I wanted more of a code solution that might work for everyone without extra requirements. I might look into creating it to work both ways though. I can imagine runkit would be a lot cleaner method of doing such voodoo, but I’m also unsure if runkit will even compile with 5.3.  I’ll have to do some research into that and find out for sure. Of course, there will be more to come as I make progress even if its good or bad progress.

Well, its been a bit since my last post and I think its time for another update. I’m still looking for a job, haven’t had any luck finding much yet. Might have a part time job lined up until something else works out though, so that’s good On the other hand, I’ve had some time to work on dev.php-oop.net So far its been mainly backend work, so there’s not a lot more to show for it, but I’ve taken some time to implement a new password hashing using crypt and blowfish. I’m also trying to work on the password reset form to make it work better. Currently it just resets the password, but I want it to e-mail the user, then the user must click a link before the password is actually reset.

On the other hand, my jogging is going well. I’m not keeping up with it as good as I would like, but I have managed to go as far as 3 miles in one time. I also went this past Sunday and jogged with my friend, we both ran to see how fast we could do a mile and half. I managed to run it in 12 minutes and 51 seconds! I just hope I can keep doing it and keep running further. I would like to participate in a marathon sometime soon as well. I’m also, starting this week, lifting weights with the weight set I just got moved in. I’m hoping between that and running, I can make up for the last few years of my life that I just haven’t tried anything to get into shape. Hopefully I’m making up for lost time at this point

Well… things have been changing in my life lately. I’ve had to move back to my home town and look for a job in the Kansas City area. I’m currently living in a house my parents own until I can get a job and a place of my own. Kelsey had to move back in with her parents for the time being until sometime in late January or early February of next year. Its hard on both of us, but we’ll make it through it. I’m currently looking for employment in the St. Joseph, MO or Kansas City area, so if anyone knows of anything, please feel free to let me know.

On another note, with the lack of work I’ve had lately, its given me time to work on php-oop.net again. I’ve actually been working with the dev site to get things going. I started with a total rewrite because I wanted to take a totally different approach to the back end of the site. I didn’t want to use a framework, but I wanted the same structure. I wound up using my own SiTech library for the back end to make it more MVC like. I think the approach is working wonderfully. I’ve learned new things and made tweaks to SiTech to improve functionality and how it all ties together. If anyone is interested in participating with either SiTech or the development of php-oop.net, please let me know. I could always use some extra help.

A couple of other things I’m trying to do more/better is writing in my blog, and jogging each day. This is the first post after a while, so we’ll see how that part goes, but the jogging is already going great! I started Monday (the 19th) by jogging almost 3/4th of a mile. I can say that Tuesday, my legs were so sore that it killed me! Wednesday I went jogging again, but I’m not really sure how far I made it. Thankfully after that my legs weren’t as sore, but still hurt Thursday. Yesterday (Friday) I went jogging again and actually made it a full mile! Since we ran on a track, I also did a lap of sprint/jog where I sprinted the straight parts, and jogged through the corners. It was really great, and I’m happy to say today my legs don’t hurt at all. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to push it up to where I can go every day instead of every other day.

Well, here’s to hoping things go as planned… I’ll update again later this week.

For all of you that know I keep a bot miniE, I would like to announce his death. I have somehow through the art of moving files around, lost his old working source code. I have been trying a rewrite, but just haven’t gotten enough there to replace him. I’ve been down a bit lately and just haven’t really spent the time on re-writing the source code for it yet. I’ll see what I can do soon enough though to get miniE going again.

IF anyone has the source to the old miniE bot, I’d greatly appriciate you letting me know. I wouldn’t mind getting the source back until I take the time to rewrite him.  Until then, miniE will be no more… so hopefully I can get it done soon.

Well, I’ve been tagged by Lig to write seven things about myself. This should be interesting… Here’s my seven things:

• I’ve been coding for about 10 years now. I started when I was about 15 by learning HTML and Perl. Shortly after though, I picked up on PHP3 and the journey began. I used to love being an admin on the EvilWalrus website, and actually gained most of my knowledge while coding on the site. Now I enjoy languages such as PHP, Python, C/C++ and C#.
• I’ve been with my girlfriend Kelsey for over four years now. She is my everything, and I plan to spend every minute of my life with her. I want to travel the whole world with her and see everything we possibly can. She is the most amazing person and the most amazing thing to ever happen to me. I honestly can’t wait to make her my wifey
• I’m actually adopted. I love my parents who adopted me very much, and I’m also so happy that they were able to give me more than I ever expected as a child. I don’t know my birthmother at all and I don’t have any desire to. I have a paper with her name and her mothers name on it, but there is no name or any information for my birthfather.
• I’ve been to over twenty states during my childhood while traveling with my parents. I’ve also been to Cancun Mexico three different times, to Hawaii four times and Pearl Harbor twice. I’ve been able to ski in Colorado, snowmobile in Wyoming, and watch hot air baloon show in New Mexico. The thing I remember the most from all the traveling though is in Hawaii when we went downhill mountan biking. We had to get up at 4am in the morning and take a bus ride to the top of a mountan where we watched satallites orbit above us, and then the sunrise.
• I don’t get along with my family very well. I’m very close to my parents and grandparents, but not at all with any of my aunts, uncles or cousins. It’s partially because I’m the second youngest out of 25 cousins and partially because I feel like an out cast and not accepted into my family.
• I was home schooled from 7th grade all the way through high school. This was for a couple of reasons, one is because of all the traveling I was doing with my parents. Another is because the kids at the private school I went to loved to pick on me and I hated it. While I enojyed home schooling, I feel like I missed out on a lot by not going to high school.
• I actually know how to do a lot more than use computers and program. My dad is a developer, so while growing up I learned a lot from him. I can operate several types of equipment like tractors, backhoes, loaders, bulldozers, and skid loaders. I’ve also had to lay sod, pour and curve concrete curbs, and do lots of odd jobs for him. My favorite thing is when he would get new land and there would be buildings that we had to tear down and destroy. I’ve seen some of the hottest and biggest fires from burning the debris. My dad has shown and taught me a lot of things that I’m very thankful for.

Well, there’s my seven things.I hope its been as interesting of a read as it was for me to write. Now for my seven people… ok, only five, but I’ll add two more later.

• Adam Ward – Because he’s been an awesome friend over all these years.
• Joey Smith – Because he’s been an awesome mentor and friend, and he’s given me my start into Linux.
• Cody Brocious – He’s always been there to talk and help. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere in Python without him.
• Philip Olson – Because we still need to get that windows site done!
• Graham Christensen – I know he’s been tagged already, but I haven’t seen anything yet and would love to.

Last but not least… the rules to pass on!

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

So, as most of you haven’t noticed, since no one really reads this thing… I lost my server over a week ago. Now I’ve finally gotten everything back and setup on a virtual machine, thanks to my friend Adam. Even though I was a wee bit (heh) behind on payments, he was still a good enough friend to hook me up with something that works for both of us. So now I can post all of my ramblings again that you probably won’t even read.

Nothing real exciting has gone on lately… I’ve caught a cold, that’s really it. I guess on another side note, I have been working on somewhat of a new exciting project. It’s a custom gallery I’ve built for myself. As it is currently it doesn’t really do much, but I have been working on the admin side of things to get everything going the way I think it should. Right now it adheres to a current directory layout parsing images and spitting out thumbnails. While I was developing, I figured… hey, why not do movies too? So I did… it also makes thumbnails for all kinds of movie files. I even added embeded HTML to allow for playing the videos, though I prefer the FLV method.

I’m not really sure when I’ll have a good preview available… I just kinda work on it when I’m bored. Anyway, I don’t have much to say besides that, so I’ll let you all get on with not reading this. Will post again soon, I hope.

Well, I’m sitting here today trying to think of new subjects to do a new tutorial. A few ideas are coming to mind, but if there’s anthing that anyone would like to see, please let me know. It’ll probably be a few weeks before I have anything ready, but I’d like to start on something!

Well, now that Zend has released Zend Studio Neon, I’ve taken the time to download it and give it a try. I have to say, they’ve done a pretty decent job with it. The feature set is very robust and integration with the Zend debugger is very nice. It uses PDT plus some extras to provide excellent PHP IDE support. It’s got all the good stuff of Zend Studio and Eclipse combined in one. Out of the problems I noticed in the beta’s, most have been fixed, but there’s still a few lingering.

One issue is mainly an issue with Eclipse itself, there’s no way to convert spaces to tabs or vice-versa. There’s also no way to make it trim spaces on the end of lines. This is a feature that Zend Studio has had itself in previous versions. An easy fix to this is a plugin made by Andrei Loskutov called AnyEdit. It’s made for Eclipse itself, but since Zend Studio Neon is Eclipse, it installs easily using the directions provided on the page.

Another issue, which was really the show stopper for me, is that the building of the workspace will sometimes “freeze”. I say “freeze” because Neon continues to respond, however, you can no longer save any files, close the workspace, or close Neon itself. I must note that I only experianced this issue twice within the few weeks that I used it. It’s annoying enough of an issue that I don’t care to deal with it. Both times I had the problem was when I went to save a file and it wouldn’t save, therefore loosing the work I had just completed. I have noticed that sometimes it does take a while for the project to build the workspace, but I gave it plenty of time to continue each time and it did not make any progress.

Other than those two problems, Zend Studio Neon is a very solid PHP IDE. I haven’t gotten around to testing every little feature, but I enjoyed working with it and would reccomend it with caution. Be aware that there are still issues that I’m sure Zend is working on solving, but for the most part it’s a very stable editor. Happy PHPing!

I’ve started on a new series of tutorials that I plan on writing over the next few weeks. They’re pretty simple subjects, but I feel they need to be out there! The series is titled “What you should know about: X“. My first subject in the series is Dynamic Includes. This is based on my previous tutorial that is here, but is completely rewritten.

I’ll start working on a new tutorial when I get the chance. As the tutorial says in the conclusion, it will be about input filtering to prevent injection attacks on your site. I hope someone who reads these will learn something they can put to use! If you notice any problems or errors, please just let me know. Happy reading!

Hey all. I just thought I’d take a few minutes to write a post. I know, it’s been a while again, but I’ve been pretty busy as of lately. I’m currently reading a new book, working on php-oop.net and working full time. This week I’ve also come down with a bad cold. Yesterday before getting off work I started to feel pretty crappy, so I went and layed down after work. Wound up falling asleep around 7 last night and didn’t make it back out of bed until 8:30 this morning. So far it’s just a head cold, but my whole body aches and I’ve got a slight fever. Nothing I can’t deal with though.. start popping the cold pills and I’ll be ok. Right now I just feel groggy because my whole head is clogged up.

On the programming side of things, I have been working on php-oop.net. Not much has been done recently, except I got my friend kuja to help me out with a new design. I don’t have it active on the dev site yet, but I plan on doing so as soon as we iorn out a few things with the design. Just take note that the dev site might not always work as it’s updated from SVN and could break. However, it’s given me new motivation to actually want to work on the backend of the site now. Currently, there’s only some basic user stuff implemented, which leaves a lot to be desired. At least it shows a base system that’s somewhat functional. The SiTech backend that runs the site also needs work too, so I’m sort of maintaining both projects at once.

As far as progress with SimpleIRC, I haven’t really touched it in a couple weeks. I’ve kept myself busy with other things. I really need to get back to SimpleIRC though as everyday miniE is showing more and more issues that I don’t want to take the time to fix since I am writing a new bot. Things with my new server are going smoothly. I’ve since setup a lot of new stuff like SSL, virtual e-mail addresses, and a Call of Duty game server. I admit, I don’t have a lot of time to play Call of Duty, but that’s my own fault. It’s at least nice to have a server up and running.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll update later this week (or weekend) when I’m feeling better.