Category Archives: Programming

Wordle: Creative Word Clouds

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Wordle of Guahan Web home page
A friend has recently posted about Wordle on his blog, and after reading the post and trying out the site for myself, I thought I would be remiss not to make a small post about this amazing tool myself.

This creative idea uses a Java applet to read any word grouping you care to type, or you can simply point the tool to a website which offers an RSS or ATOM feed. From there, the app takes over: creating a stylistic word cloud that is quite aesthetically pleasing. With multiple color schemes, layout options, fonts and other details to allow for personal manipulation of the cloud, you can find the balance that is right for you. The image posted above was the first random creation that was generated by Wordle when pointed at this site.

Enjoy!

On Internet and Gaming

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Well, those of you who know me in the least are aware of my passion for video games. I have, quite literally, been a fan of console and PC gaming for as long as I can remember. My parents will vouch for the fact that, on my fifth birthday — before I could read — I was situated in front of our living room TV set with our TI-99/4A on my lap, an open code book next to me, pecking character by character until I had basic animations appearing on the screen. I vaguely remember those details, although I can remember playing games like Parsec and Hunt the Wumpus, but the passion for gaming is still there to this day.

My focus, however, has shifted from simply being a placid gamer to wanting to delve more into the inner workings of the game development process and the gaming industry in general. Choosing web development as a career path has given me more of an insight into the principles that make games work, and I greatly admire those with the knowledge and fortitude to stick with it during the grueling development process, but I still have that burning desire to be more actively involved in the industry in some way.
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Command Line Scripts with PHP

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Well, it never ceases to amaze me how much I don’t know about the technologies I use every day as part of my job. No, I’m not saying that I don’t know how to do my job, but I’m rather saying that there are realms of possibilities the likes of which I’ve never imagined could be accomplished with such ease. I have always enjoyed learning bits and pieces of *NIX command line, shell scripting and other functionality that lies beneath – or rather, behind – my everyday web work, but I have never really looked into writing command line scripts.
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Reasons not to upgrade to PHP5

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Some of you may not immediately catch the sarcasm intended to be portrayed by the title of this post, but anyone who knows my coding preferences or has heard me complain (in a good way, of course) about the server structure with which we are currently stuck with at work, you will have no issue with understanding the tongue in cheek nature of this post. I have actually been amazed at how many times in the last week I have run into servers that have yet to offer PHP5 in their configuration settings, even as an option.

I have had the privilege to make the aquaintence of a few new friends and work with them on a project, which I will cover in depth in another post, and through some web work I’ve done for the project, I’ve been made aware of three separate hosting companies (which shall remain nameless) that still do not have PHP5 installed on their servers. What’s more, after some checking, some of them apparently do not even offer it as an option. This has made me appreciate my current hosting company that much more, for they not only offer a choice between stable versions of PHP on my account, but they go to the extreme of allowing me to declare a PHP version for each individual domain or sub-domain that I wish to set up. As a developer, this sort of flexibility is invaluable. Continue reading →