Even though I’m still quite a PHP novice, I’m fairly sure having “echo” and “print” statements in functions is a bad idea. A better idea is to use a return variable containing all the text which would be output by the echo/print statements. This allows for much more flexibility in working with the results of the function. Now if only more of the PHP books I bought had mentioned that…

Wow, I just got an email from Dave, he’s in Ulan Bataar, in Mongolia.

Earlier this evening: Cleaning the dishes, I put a pot in the sink and started filling it with hot water. In the meantime I clean the counter with the kitchen sponge. Then I run the sponge under the extremely hot water. The sponge absorbs the water for a second or two, then it hits my hand. “Yeow!” Hand removed from water stream, water turned off. Then, I squeeze the sponge out… “Yeow! $@^%!” The sponge, of course, was full of the extremely hot water. Ok, that was dumb, back to the dishes, the pot specifically which was just filled with excruciatingly hot water. Yep. Three strikes, I’m a moron.

“The pages were very prankish and immature. They were very poorly written, obviously phony news reports,” said USA Today spokesman Steve Anderson.

Sure, criticize their writing. They still made a mockery out of your web site’s security. But then what is he supposed to say?

It shouldn’t be too long before someone posts screenshots.

The Fifty Words of Green Eggs and Ham

Numbers indicate how many times each word appears in the text.

This comes from a posting I originally made to Everything2, two years ago next week.

Lila was completely entralled by the Ultrasaucer (and another just like it) while visiting friends; hers should be here next week. Considering how long it kept her entertained, my productivity will likely benefit as well. I would feel guilty about that, but there isn’t really any place in my office to put her and she was really, really happy playing in it. And we’ve still gotta pay for it somehow…

After reading this page about Secure Programming in PHP, I realized that my automated PHP archive solution had something of a security hole. It’s been fixed and the original posting was updated.