LegHumped.com

LOLCode is an "awesome new programming language" for MySpace kids everywhere. It uses familiar vocabulary and with a fast growing list of functions, could soon over-take more traditional languages like PHP.

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A VAR
IM IN YR LOOP
     UP VAR!!1
     VISIBLE VAR
     IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHXBYE
IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE

Read more at LOLCode.com

An interesting idea from Microsoft. The report says we can expect to see them in retail stores by the end of 2007.

[Via: SchrankMonster]

I always thought batch scripts were only really useful in linux. I didn't realise windows supported the FOR command. This quick tutorial from Daily Cup of Tech shows you how to recursively search all subdirectories for a particular type of file, then perform an action on every file found.

<strong>for /R %1 in (*.zip) do unzip "%1"</strong>
 
for - indicates that we are going to be using the for command
/R - recursively searches all sub-directories within the active directory.
%1 - the variable that will contain the filename that is found. This can be any number but it is case sensitive. If you want to use the for command in a batch file, you will need to use %% (e.g. %%z) instead of just %.
in (*.zip) - the search pattern that will be found. The portion in parenthesis uses the same wildcard scheme as the dir command.
do - indicates that the string following is the command that should be executed on each file found
unzip “%1” - the command that is executed for each file. The %1 portion is replaced by the name of the file found. So, for example, if the file found was archive.zip, the command that would be executed would be unzip "archive.zip".

DailyCupOfTech

I've covered remote virtual desktops in the past, but another one has sprung up and looks alot more promising. DesktopTwo is a desktop which runs in your web browser. The whole interface is coded in Flash, and it offers some interesting features. 1GB of free storage, an RSS reader and an impressive flash implementation of OpenOffice. It’s still in beta at the moment, but it’s free to sign up.

DesktopTwo [Via: Hongkiat]

This futuristic looking LED watch actually tells the time. The conecpt seems pretty simple, but to get the cool guy effect, you have to be able to read it without pausing to work out the time, which I don't quite have the hang of. At $125 (£65), it's a pretty expensive gimmick.

I've just released iZeit v1.7, a calendar written in PHP. One of the things I added to this version was JavaScript forms created on the fly to replace image links. There was a problem recently with Google Web Accelerator, which preloaded all links on the current page so they'd load faster when they were needed. That might sound like a good idea, until you get a page full of delete links that use variables passed via the GET method. Creating a form on the fly and submitting it using POST looks nicer, is alot more secure and isn' subject to Google's interfering web accelerator. Instead of using the href of an anchor, you use an onclick event in the anchor instead.

‹a title="Delete Category" onclick="var f = document.createElement('form');
f.style.display = 'none'; this.parentNode.appendChild(f);
var h = document.createElement('input'); h.type = 'hidden'; h.name = 'act'; h.value = 'admin'; f.appendChild(h);
var h2 = document.createElement('input'); h2.type = 'hidden'; h2.name = 'setadmin'; h2.value = 'delcat'; f.appendChild(h2);
f.method = 'POST';
f.action = 'index.php';
f.submit();
return false;"›
‹img border="0" src="delete.gif" alt="Delete category" /›‹/a›

I've been developing in PHP for a while now, mostly iZeit, my PHP calendar script, but also the odd smaller script and I've picked up a few things along the way.

Quotes vs. Double Quotes

Anything in double quotes is parsed by PHP and variables are replaced. So if you’re concatenating things, use single quotes instead:

$name = 'Bob';
echo 'Name is '.$name;   // Name is Bob
echo "Name is $name";   // Name is Bob
echo 'Name is $name';   // Name is $name
echo "Name is ".$name;   /* Name is Bob, but wastes processing
time because the non dynamic part of the statement is parsed for variables. */

Check whether a variable's set first

There are times when if you try to use a variable that isn't set, PHP will throw an error at you.

$param = isset($_GET['param']) ? $_GET['param'] : NULL;

Using shorttags

I have no idea why they even added shorttags. Using <?php ?> instead of <? ?> will make your scripts run on alot more servers which don't have short tags enabled in php.ini.

Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at his Macworld keynote speech today, rumored to exist for the last year, it'next big thing from Apple. It has a widescreen multi-touch screen, which isn't a touch screen but a "revolutionary user interface". It’s anyone's guess what Apple mean by that, but it certainly looks interesting.

The iPhone has an impressive specification and runs a slimmed down version of OSX, so it’s sure to offer plenty of eye candy. It has built in WiFi, Bluetooth and EDGE aswell as a 320×480 screen and a 2Megapixel camera. Two versions will be available, a 4GB for £257 and an 8GB for £309.

Pictures at Gizmodo

I've been running Vista and XP side by side for a few months now, and what I designated as a small partition has slowly got bigger and bigger until there was no space left on my Vista partition, so today I decided to re-jig my partitions. No problem, but due to the lack of partition managers for Vista, I had to boot back to XP and fire up Partition Magic. The problem started when I tried to boot back to Vista, which gave me loads of errors about files not being found before refusing to boot. I was pretty baffled by this point, because from XP I could see that the files that Vista was complaining were missing were right there where they were supposed to be. To fix Vista, I had to boot from the install CD and use the automated recovery tool, but then when I started Vista, my drive letters were all wrong. Now I could see which partitions matched which drive letters, but windows wouldn’t let me change them because they were for the system drive. After a good two hours of trawling through technet, I eventually found a solution:

1. Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
2. Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
3. Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:".
This frees up drive letter C.
4. Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
5. Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
6. Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".

MS KB article

Each bug is a real bug, with it's carbon guts removed, and metal/silicon guts put in their place by artist Mike Libby. “He spent his youth developing a keen understanding of the material world looking under rocks, dismantling appliances and practicing alchemy with ingredients found under the kitchen sink.”

Insect Labs [Via: HackedGadgets]