Today I'd like to give a big shout out to PHP's stream wrapper functions . I was listening to the PHP_Abstract podcast recently and they interviewed Manuel Lemos, the guy who started PHPClasses.org , and he was talking about "Stream Abstraction" in PHP. Stream wrappers basically let you treat any kind of stream as a regular file that you can read and write to using the standard file handling functions such as fopen. During the interview Lemos mentioned some cool stream wrapper classes they had at PHPClasses.org and mentioned several cool stream wrappers including a Microsoft Excel stream wrapper class written by an overachieving Aussie named Ignatius Teo. Basically it lets you take associative arrays in PHP and save them directly to Excel spreadsheet files with keys as column names....how cool is that!? Scarecely 24 hours later I had a request from a client to export some x-cart data to an Excel spreadsheet and thanks to this stream wrapper class it was a breeze (I might even say FUN) instead of an annoyance. So thanks PHP , PHP_Abstract , PHPClasses.org , and Ignatius Teo, for making my job as a web developer that much easier today!
Get Your War On: The Definitive Account of the War On Terror 2001-2008
My favorite comic is getting ready to be relased as a single volume. You can preorder now. If you hate the war and love to laugh, do yourself a favor and order this. You can also read all the GYWO comics online for free here.
BBS The Documentary
This is by far the most comprehensive and entertaining documentary I have ever seen regarding the early BBS system. If you're serious about knowing your internet history, or you just want some extra geek-cred, this is your new favorite documentary.
The Nada Chair "BackUp"
The best alternative I have found to overpriced ergonomic office chairs, especially for very low pain around the sacral joint. Works better than my Aeron chair ever did. Also, it comes in navy blue and black, in case you're not into the whole pregnant woman aesthetic (pictured).It's really not meant for sitting on the floor, it's really better for seats that offer poor back support, and works great at sporting events to make sitting in bleachers much more comfortable.
Antec Quiet PC Case
At just under $120 including a 500 Watt power supply, this "quiet pc" case has worked great for me for over 2 years. In fact I now own two great Antec cases/PSUs. For the money, it's hard to beat this combination.
