personal.jeremyvaught.com

Not long ago, I created a Jib Jab video for Suzanne, for today, Saint Patrick’s Day.

This is a bit after the fact, but I’m posting it anyway.

Problem is I can’t post it as my blog software is preventing me.

So please check it out by clicking the image below:

Today is also my daughter’s birthday! Happy birthday, Jaida!

I went in an interview with Robert Half Technology yesterday. I took a test of my PHP5 prowess and failed it miserably.

The problem? Not my PHP skillz I assure you. The problem is the test asked questions about stuff in the language I never use. I never learned to do it that way 8 years ago, and just did things the way I already have. If you write PHP, I’ll help you out with some examples.

strstr() - I’ve never used this. Apparently you can do something like, $a = ‘jeremy@jeremyvaught.com”; echo strstr($a, “@”); you get ‘jeremyvaught.com’. The problem is, I’m not on 5.3 yet, so the inverse isn’t true, and why would I use a function that only goes one direction? I’ve always done what I know, which would be something like,

$email = ‘jeremy@jeremyvaught.com’;
echo $name = substr($email, 0, strpos($email, “@”)); //jeremy
echo $url = substr($email, strpos($email, “@”)+1, strlen($email)); //jeremyvaught.com

Obviously strstr is a bit easier, I admit. But until PHP 5.3, I will still have to write the 1st line to get the first part.

The second issue is this. When I’m writing software, and there is something with tricky functionality, I test it thoroughly. Thus I didn’t know off the top of my head that the following is 7.
$a = 1;
echo ++$a * $a++ + a;

I never take the time to ponder that out, I have just, dare I say, stumbled my way through it. Thus I went over this and went over it this morning and disected it until I figured it out. And then I was embarrassed I couldn’t figure it out when it counted. It’s pretty simple in the end.

The answer then if you are like the old me? The obvious is the order of operations, so the multiplication will take place before the addition. (++$a * $a++). Next is the ++. The ++$a increments the variable before the action, and the $a++ after the action. So $a becomes 2 because of the ++$a, and you multiply 2*2, which is 4. But because of the $a++, $a immediately become 3. So when you + $a, you are adding 3 to the already established 4.

Nobody would program like this of course, but it’s cute for testing purposes.

Ok, enough talking about what I just learned, back to learning more.

UPDATE: I forgot the whole reason I wrote this is I was going to paste in here what I responded with back to the Account Executive who interviewed me. Here is what I said,:

Hi [Account Executive],
I just wanted to take a moment and report something back. After I took the PHP5 test yesterday and was shocked how much was in it I didn’t know, I’ve been going through some of the more rudimentary syntax of PHP5 and am remembering how much I have forgotten. I’ve been programming for years, and the stuff I know, I use all the time, and the rest slipped my mind unless I really needed some specific functionality and I looked it up. Long story short, this has been an eye opener as to some of the baser and nuanced workings of the language. And it’s kind of exciting to come back to some this which I haven’t used in years, and probably only read about in a book 8 years ago.

That being said, the test is still very skewed toward this nuanced functionality, but just having taken it is going to make me a better developer because it has forced me to investigate PHP again.

Have a great day!

And I mean every word. The test really has forced me to check out some functionality I’ve been missing out on.

It gets really interesting at the 10 or 11 minute mark, but the rest still wants for nothing.

It’s only a Christmas puzzle because it was part of our Christmas present to each other. We enjoyed putting it together, together.

I love this custom logo. It is Google’s logo for today, March 2nd, 2009, Dr. Suess’ Birthday.

Not that I care that much, but it still bothers me that so much focus on Second Life is on the seedy bits. There is a whole world in there, and all anyone can talk about it sex which portrays SL in a poorer light than it deserves. The jury is still out on how bright that light should be, but at least a tiny bit brighter than it gets.

I’m talking about this video clip and forthcoming book from someone who should know better, Wagner James Au.

Just watched this on a blog here. Pretty fascinating I thought, worth a look-see. Apparently from CrisisOfCredit.com.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

I met Pam originally at Podcamp AZ this last year. She had some great things to add int he Q & A portion of my talk I gave on Saturday morning. I then chatted with her again briefly at the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference. She is a really great person who is very knowledgable in her field. She agreed to meet up with me but I have just not made the extra step to make that happen. (Mostly because I live in the far west vally, and she is in the far east valley)

So I say all that to say that I saw she was highlighed in the Arizona Republic a couple of weeks ago. Suzanne, my girlfriend, reads the paper every day and cuts out things for me she thinks will be helpful or interesting to me. So imagine my surprise when I looked at one of the items she cut out for me and there looking back at me is a person I know! (kind of know anyway)

So I saw Pam tweet today, and dropped a note that I enjoyed the piece in the paper and that I saw it, and in the process I reread it. You can read it online, but what you will miss is a juicy tidbit, fortunately for you, that tidbit was highlighted on another blog.

What’s the juicy tidbit you may ask? It is this, the author’s name in the paper, under his picture, is “NAME HERE”. I grabbed the image from the ValleyPR post that talked about this hilarious mistake. The best part is the comments. Please read and enjoy.

Eric Rice pointed me to this Facebook link where it shows people around the world and what their family eats in a day. Really very interesting to see not just the volume, but the types of food.

A couple of examples:

Chad

USA

Ecuador

Fascinating, there are only 10 or so, but well worth the look.

This AP story in the Buffalo News is kinda silly to me, but all too realistic.

When is a baby called a baby? Well, the short answer is it is always a baby. But even pro-abortion peeps are all up in arms because this one was born, inhaled, and was put in a waste bag.

Was it less than a baby before it inhaled?

Nope. It’s just killed inside the womb rather than outside of it.