I just finished giving a talk at MKEPUG about 8 PHP Command Line Tips and Tricks. Normally I try to export my talks / slides into PDF. This time, my presentation was a little different - I used embedded video in KeyNote. So, I’ll provide the KeyNote file for download - sorry to those who don’t have KeyNote or a mac. :-/ (more…)

Are all American CEO’s psychopaths? It is a very interesting question - one that I tackled in 2012 when I was finishing my capstone at Cardinal Stritch University. Considering I write a lot about business in this blog - and a few years has passed now since I used this paper for credit - I thought I’d “open source” it for those who might have an extra few minutes in their day! Hah! (more…)

I’m going to say something that I never thought I’d say in my life. In fact, I’m not sure that a single programmer has ever said this! Ready? (more…)

I find it very difficult to find out information about my local elected officials. Even the federal website for congress mentions that there is no central database of email addresses and contact information for their members - which is just crazy to me. (more…)

In the last decade or two, the US proliferation of low quality reality television shows has been unstoppable. “Big Brother” would be ashamed by some of his siblings. There are shows that follow famous people (although, I’m not entirely certain why some of them are famous), shows that involve the audience, shows that support nerds; basically anything you can imagine! I pretend I’m above this, I surely don’t fall into the category of people who... (more…)

Fair warning - I normally don’t write too personally in this blog - but this one is something different. Something I think people need to read. (more…)

Every leader has a particular methodology or key point they focus on. Whether it be a small detail, a general philosophy or a repeated phrase, you know that if you are near that leader, you will become very familiar with their demand. In my team, my demand is to pay attention to detail. (more…)

In an earlier column, I discussed the advantage of using longer and more verbose variable and method names. When you program using this more descriptive style, the code is easier to understand and more maintainable. However, a short and concise method with a revealing name may not always be sufficient when it comes to complex processes. To fill this gap, PHP has comments. (more…)

Bugs in code suck. It’s bad enough when you misspell a function or forget a semi-colon. That’s embarrassing and annoying. But what’s worse is when you write code that seems to work fine, is syntactically correct, yet still has a bug. You know you did it right, but somehow it’s also wrong. That’s not good. That makes me paranoid and second guess the rest of my work. That doesn’t help me be a Confident Coder... (more…)

There are two reactions to reading a new section of code for the first time. Sadly, one of the most common seems to be of confusion, dismay, followed possibly by some sort of expletive (or many, depending on the length of the code). The other is one of the most beautiful reactions, the most flattering, the most sought after reaction: “Oh, that makes sense” or “That’s cool.” (more…)