More Of Less

The one where I realise I've been suffering from premature session-itis

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:29:54 +0000

Back in 2010 Google said, “Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal

No tail call optimization in PHP (yet)

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 20:26:22 +0000

In a previous post about functional programming in PHP I used an example of reading a text file to show how a functional style of programming is different from ‘normal’ PHP coding. The

Using WordPress transients API to speed up plugins and themes

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:00:39 +0000

WordPress has a transient storage API that is perfect for caching data that is used in plugins and themes. It can be used to temporarily store often-accessed data from the database or slow external

Apache HTTP server uses far less memory than you think it does

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:33:41 +0000

This post is about the memory consumption of Apache’s HTTP Server (v2.2) using the prefork MPM configuration. Apache does not use as much memory as many people think; I’ve seen a good

Wordpress performance: Simple ways to speed up your website

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 16:39:39 +0000

The speed of your website is very important; not only does a fast website make for happy users it can also improve your ranking in search engines. The faster your website is the happier your users

Functional programming in PHP - anonymous functions, closures and tail calls

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 22:09:46 +0000

This post gives a brief introduction to functional programming with PHP. It doesn’t dive into the details of functional programming but it does try and show how the functional style differs

Using Smarty templates with CodeIgniter

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 21:53:54 +0000

This post explains how to integrate the Smarty templating engine with the CodeIgniter MVC framework. CodeIgniter ships with its own templating system, which is nice and simple to use, is fast and

Adding a bit of color to your linux shell commands

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 08:27:42 +0000

Unix command shell output can often be hard to read. If you are running commands that produce lots of output text it can be hard to read and hard to find the strings in the output that you are

SQL Server and Java JDBC connection

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:10:32 +0000

This post shows how to connect (and read from) a Microsoft SQL Server database using a JDBC driver. It doesn’t use Hibernate or any other ORM. The driver I used to connect to the SQL Server

Curse of the devpreneur, or: why I'm still only making $285 a month

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:21:06 +0000

I love programming. I love learning new languages, trying out new JS libraries, improving my code, optimizing it, coding things to see how they work, making stuff, I love thinking about language

Why I released a crappy todo app that no-one will ever use

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:54:24 +0000

The last thing the world needs is another todo app, so, uh….., here’s mine. I wanted to build the simplest possible todo list, I wanted nothing more than a paper-and-pencil list in my

It’s the only good fight there is

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:06:03 +0000

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days.

Adding PHP build system to Sublime Text 2

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:55:04 +0000

Sublime Text 2 has the concept of build systems. This basically means that if you are editing a Python file then you can run the Python interpreter on the source file your are editing and see the

Getting in the zone versus cranking out the easy work

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 10:34:12 +0000

To do our absolute best work we have to be in the zone, concentrating fully on that task at hand and ignoring all other todos or distractions. We have to be immersed in the work, we have to know

My 2 cents on whether you should use Smarty/Twig/etc in view templates instead of raw PHP

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:04:34 +0000

It’s up there with the big questions of our time: How do we stop global warming? What happens after we die? Do we have free will? Can we cure AIDS? How do we bring peace and stability to the

Keeping at it

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:18:32 +0000

You see, startups are like fire. They need oxygen to fuel them. You can’t build a roaring fire by blowing a little air over it once a day. You can’t succeed when every day you return to find

Pink Martini - Hey Eugene

Tue, 29 May 2012 20:54:08 +0000

The programmer who went up a hill & got stuck on a mountain

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:31:51 +0000

I’ve got no end of projects sitting unfinished on my hard drive, most of them are 80-90% finished and one or two evening’s work would see them out the door. So why don’t I just

Hidden Orchestra - Wandering

Mon, 21 May 2012 22:54:24 +0000

Why shouldn't be a self-closed tag

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:26:49 +0000

The HTML tag is self-closing, meaning that you write it likes this and not like this