An entire Calculus 1 course in 20 minutes. I even vaguely understood some of it as well…

Part 1, Part 2

PHP 5 included a new error reporting directive, E_STRICT, which according to the manual allows PHP to “suggest changes to your code which will ensure the best interoperability and forward compatibility“.

Basically it catches things that have been deprecated (such as call-time pass-by-reference) or are technically incorrect (such as calling a static method in a non-static way, and vice-versa).

I have this enabled on my development and production servers. Mainly because I want to know when I do something stupid like call a static method incorrectly, but also because I’m a PHP purist and believe the PHP error log shouldn’t contain anything unless explicitly put there by the application.

Recently I’ve noticed that numerous PHP applications and libraries emit all kinds of E_STRICT notices. Offenders noted so far are ADOdb, Smarty, WordPress, Plogger and Gallery v2.

All of these are fanastic projects but the fact the code within them emits E_STRICT notices means they’re harder for me to implement and use. I usually end up having to globally search replace something, or call error-reporting() to set a lower error reporting level. The latter is made a lot harder when the application has multiple entry points (e.g. WordPress and Plogger).

The reasons behind these E_STRICT notices are usually due to the project remaining backwardly compatible with PHP4. Especially with regard to call-time pass-by-reference, as this was used extensively in PHP4 to speed up code execution when passing objects around. However the incorrect calling of a static method is a different story, it’s just sloppy OOP in my opinion. Simply testing with E_STRICT turned on would highlight these and fixing them would save a lot of headaches for those of us who run servers with E_STRICT turned on.

Alas, for that to happen we’d need projects to forego the backward compatibility with PHP4, and that is extremely unlikely. No large project with any sense is going to tear their community in two because of people like me harping on about E_STRICT.

Our only hope is for new projects to spring up focused solely on PHP5 and “proper” OOP…

Yesterday saw the release of my latest project, 1343 (East Grinstead) Sqn, a website for my ATC squadron.

Seeing as there are already a ton of sites that provide information on the Air Training Corps generally (not least the main Air Cadet website), I wanted to go for a more local approach and concentrate on what we do as a squadron.

The aim is to post on the activities and events the squadron attends, along with general squadron related news and announcements, and the occassional general interest piece.

The site won’t win any design awards but then that’s not the aim. Content is king, and the simple, clean design will allow that content to shine through.

The finishing touches will be going in over the next week or so. Primarily adding a few pictures to break-up the text, along with a photo gallery for a more visual representation of what the cadets get up to.

After three years of stagnation and neglect, and a week of designing, coding and writing, the new website is finally here.

A showcase for me, my projects and my opinions on the hot topics of the day.

Now all I need to do is think of something interesting to say…