Latest 5 Mini Blog Entries
PHP and Binary Maths
Category: Web Development
If you are looking for snippets of code examples then generally PHP is great but some areas of the language are not as commonly used as others.
One area I was not very familiar with until I started studying towards Zend certification was bitwise operators. As I began reading up about it, the binary math concepts came back to me - I’ve got no idea why or when I learnt about binary math concepts but it was buried away in my brain for some reason!
Anyway, this little tutorial does a great job of explaining PHP and binary operators and also has an example why you may use them.
www.litfuel.net/tutorials/bitwise.htm
Category: Web Development
Date published: 03/07/2008
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Open Uni course TT280
Category: Career
I received my grade for TT280 (Web applications: design, development and management ) this week, the last course I had to complete for the Certificate in Web Applications Development. I received 86%, making it a pass with distinction. This is the fourth distinction I received in the six courses that make up the certificate, which is pleasing especially as two dealt with ASP and PHP coding.
I should soon receive notification that I have achieved the certificate. Although I only completed the course a couple of months ago, it feels a lot longer because I have been caught up in studying towards PHP certification. This is proving to be quite a challenge for a few different reasons (finding the time being just one) but I am getting there...
Category: Career
Date published: 03/07/2008
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Good PHP Security Guide
Category: Web Development
Whilst researching security issues for the PHP developer certification I am working towards, I came across a very readable and clear overview of the areas PHP developers should be concerned with.
The PHP Security Guide @ http://php.robm.me.uk by Rob Miller covered some topics I was familiar with but also introduced the idea of salting, a concept I had not previously come across.
This is where an extra piece of information is added to the data being hashed, therefore making a dictionary attack much more difficult even if the attacker has the users hash.
Edited @ 8.44 p.m 06 June 2008:
Another good URL I found http://phpsec.org/projects/guide/.
Category: Web Development
Date published: 06/06/2008
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PHP OOP
Category: Web Development
In the past I’ve struggled to see the benefit of using an Object Orientated Programming approach. To me it always seemed more complex than using procedural functions, especially when all the problems I faced could be solved using functions.
Now that I’ve started to study towards PHP certification, I have to understand OOP whether I want to or not! Like most people who are not very familiar with OOP, understanding the concepts can be quite intimidating. My approach has been to try to understand why I should use OOP and to find a couple of tutorials that would introduce me to the basics.
This tutorial does a good job of explaining the benefits and shows how
classes can be used to create multiple instances of an object:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/rod19990601.php3
I also found this tutorial a good way of following it up:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2005/07/28/oo_php.html
I think this area of the Zend syllabus is definitely going to be the most challenging for me. Now all I have to do is understand the advanced methods behind OOP...
Category: Web Development
Date published: 13/05/2008
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Wubi installer for Ubuntu
Category: Computing
Ubuntu 8.04, aka Hardy Heron, has a cool Windows installer called Wubi that lets you install the Linux operating system in Windows. In other words, you boot up Windows and install Ubuntu just as you would any other program. When you next reboot, you are given the choice to start Windows or Ubuntu. You have been able to run Linux from a bootable CD for some time and that is great for users wanting to try Linux without wiping their Windows install but Wubi has the benefit of allowing you to run both side by side. To remove Ubuntu, you just boot back into Windows and uninstall it like you would any other program.
Under the bonnet, Wubi modifies the Windows boot.ini file to add a line that points to a virtual hard disk file that contains the Linux installation. Admittedly, performance is better if Ubuntu is installed outside of Windows but this is still a great way of using Linux if you are not sure about removing Windows completely. I have used VMWare a lot to run more than one operating system and whilst this great for testing purposes, its not so good if you want two operating systems for real life uses. I also run Fedora Core as a dual boot system with XP (each OS is installed on a different hard disk) but compared to setting that up, Wubi is as simple as it could ever be.
Get it: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
Category: Computing
Date published: 07/05/2008
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