the todd's thoughts

Firebug Series - Part 1: Getting it Installed

2008-04-18T08:20:00.000-05:00

I've been using Firebug for some time now and most techie folks will already know about Firebug, so you fellow computer nerds may ignore this series. However, feel free to let me know if I have missed anything...Firebug is quite possibly the best reason any web developer should abandon IE for Firefox. It's a small little extension that packs quite a big punch. I have found that after developing a

heredoc, heredoc, heredoc

2008-03-20T16:18:00.000-05:00

For whatever reason I can't remember the PHP heredoc syntax. It's simple, I know. But my problem is I always do greater than (>>>) instead of less than (<<<). My reason behind this post is to hopefully ingrain it into my head.In case you are unfamiliar, this is great for copying and pasting a bunch of pre-existing HTML with double quotes into PHP. The reason being is that you don't have to

March Madness Epiphany

2008-03-19T23:18:00.001-05:00

As I was looking over my bracket, I noticed something that I hadn't realized for a few years now. I don't get to go crazy for my work.Some quick notes:I work in the higher education industry, and just in the past year have started paying closer attention to what other higher ed web persons are doing. So naturally many of them, especially those with teams in the tourney, are quite excited.I work

Ode to Collage

2008-03-12T13:03:00.000-05:00

So the grapevine turns out true again. It seems as if Serena has decided to drop it's content management system, Collage. It just so happens we decided to buy the product just about a year or so ago. That being said I really feel for the folks that I had the opportunity to meet at Xchange 2007 that are fully invested with the product. Not to mention doing some pretty cool things with Collage.I

My funnel cloud pictures

2008-02-08T09:18:00.000-06:00

As I left work from downtown Memphis on February 5th, the nearly black sky was filled with intense rain and lightning. I was beginning to think that I had left work a little too late while the traffic was moving slower and slower and the rain was getting harder and harder. However, about halfway home (the 240/40 junction for those familiar with it) the rain just quit.The time now was about 4:45

keeping line feeds in textarea from HTML to RTF

2008-01-23T11:04:00.000-06:00

Hope this helps someone not named Shawn.I want to keep the formatting when a user hits the "enter" key inside a textarea on a form. My problem is further deepened by the fact that I don't just return the results straight back to a HTML page. My results get merged with a rtf file that then gets emailed to someone who can open the file using Word.I found this site which gives the RTF v1.5

Teddy Bear Parade

2007-11-07T08:26:00.000-06:00

My kindergartener had a Teddy Bear parade recently. Every kindergartener in the school made a "float" for their teddy bear to ride on while they pulled the float around the school. It was done on a Monday to kick-off a week of learning about bears.We asked my son what he wanted his float to be and without hesitation he says "Jeff Gordon race car." So just in case anybody out there wants to see

kindergarten is hard

2007-08-31T21:50:00.000-05:00

I am now 2 weeks into Kindergarten and I believe it is much harder on parents than the children. My child loves it and is excited everyday about going to school, so that is a welcomed sight.But I had no idea how much work the parents do for kids in school. I'm also sure that as the next levels of school hit and tests begin that schooling will become even more difficult. Who knew it was so hard

technorati... woo hoo!

2007-08-27T16:44:00.000-05:00

Technorati ProfileThis is my technorati ping post. I have hit the mainstream and fully expect people to start flocking to read other peoples wisdom that I link to.

FERPA and electonic ID's

2007-08-21T08:53:00.000-05:00

First off, I would like to apologize to my loyal readers for going so long without a post.I wanted to post this here because this recently came up for discussion here. Also I probably never would be able to find it again if I didn't. This article does a good job of explaining what is public, private, directory information, and just when an electronic ID can be released as

testing in old browsers

2007-07-24T09:18:00.000-05:00

I came upon this post today http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE?page=1 that allows installation of IE browsers back to v3.In the same spirit I thought I would also put out the URL's for the location of some other stuff.Mozilla Firefox - http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ - this used to go back quite a bit further but I don't know where anything older is at this

exclamation mark (!) showing up in emails from PHP mail() function

2007-07-09T11:11:00.000-05:00

I ran into this problem and this is the solution that worked for me. This post helped out http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php#53231It references RFC 2822, and look at section 2.1.1. "Line Length Limits" for the explanation of the 998 char limit. Anyway the solution at php.net worked for me minus the rtrim.The php code for mine is $message = chunk_split(base64_encode($message));Then also

TIOBE programming index

2007-06-14T08:29:00.000-05:00

Not 100% how useful this information is but it is still interesting. The following is taken straight from http://www.tiobe.com:The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search

coolness from microsoft

2007-06-11T09:22:00.000-05:00

Photosynth from Microsoft is amazing to me. I can't wait for this to come out to the public and be able to play with the software. I'm sure it will be pricey, but I hope not.General premise is it takes a ton of photos of a single item, and then puts them all together in a seamless fashion. It allows you to zoom and fly through the pictures. There are a few available at their site now, with

what's so cool about this?

2007-06-06T13:19:00.000-05:00

I just don't get this...maybe it's b/c I don't have a lot to say. Maybe I will get the hang of posting my thoughts but right now it's just to see how this stuff works in case I have to build one.Edit: not gonna build one since there are already many that do the trick. Falls under something about not reinventing the wheel concept.