heredoc, heredoc, heredoc

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 escape all the double-quotes.

More info over at PHP on the Strings page.

Once again, repeat after me. heredoc is <<<.

By the way, did I mention "Go Tigers"

<the todd />

March Madness Epiphany

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 at a Health Science Center. The students here have long given up on their athletic dreams. Because let's face it, if they could really shoot a basketball, they wouldn't here.


• UTHSC and UT (Knoxville) aren't the same. So don't suggest rooting for the Volunteers. My Mom and Dad raised me better than that.

Oh well, I can live vicariously through the tweets and blogs of my fellow higher ed web folks that work at institutions with athletics. And I also always have my alma mater, even more so during this time of year.

So... Go Tigers! and what a raw deal. 3 years in a row now we are stuck in a bracket playing a lower seeded team in their backyard. 2006 as a #1 seed and playing UCLA in Oakland. 2007 as a #2 seed playing A&M in San Antonio. And now 2008 as a #1 seed possibly playing Texas in Houston. Maybe the ole' ball coach is right with all this conspiracy talk:)

<the todd />

Ode to Collage

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 believe its safe to say this has moved its way down my priority list, at least until it gets hashed out what will happen to the product. If it is just left to die, then there is no sense in continuing to implement it. If it is sold to someone, then it should retain its usefulness.

Anyway just gonna sit and wait on this one. It's not like I don't have plenty of other stuff to keep me busy.

<the todd />

My funnel cloud pictures

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 or so and I was elated the rain had stopped. Then I happened to look to the north from where I was (between the Sycamore View and Whitten exits heading east) and saw the funnel cloud that was reported that day in the Whitten and Yale area. The pictures are a little blurry as they where taken while driving (please spare me the safety lecture). Despite the picture quality the clouds are still quite ominous. My understanding is that this one that I pictured never touched down. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families that lost loved ones during this round of storms, and to all the people who had their possessions ripped out from around them.

<the todd />

keeping line feeds in textarea from HTML to RTF

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 documentation, and from this gleaned that the \par denotes a new paragraph. Yea!

I then just did a string replace (using PHP) and searched through the user submitted textarea to replace all occurrences of chr(10) with "\par " - don't forget the space.

I now have line breaks in the final RTF. And a happy customer.

<the todd />

Teddy Bear Parade

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 a cardboard race car, here goes.

And yes to all the Jeff Gordan fans, I know the flames on the door are backwards, that is a slight design flaw on my part.



The car is essentially made up of 4 parts. The front (engine) is a long piece of cardboard bent to form the cone. Then two sides were cut out and fastened to the first piece by brass paper fasteners.

The middle part (doors) is the bottom and two long sides of a computer box. The rear of the car was essentially the opposite of the middle. The rear of the car didn't have a bottom until the very end. That and the hood were the last things that I added. Two things that I wanted to add but ran out of time: 1. a roll cage built from styrofoam. 2. Support for the car "roof." It sags just a bit and I think a center support on each side would have helped that.

All the painting was done with a spray paint white primer and then regular spray paint. The flames, numbers, and letters were all done with stencils.

If anyone wants any more info just let me know and I will try to help.

<the todd />

kindergarten is hard

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 to explain the concept of rhyming???

<the todd />