Useful Twitter Hashtags

Here are a few useful #hashtags that I use.

#goodtimesnoodlesalad

"Good Times, Noodle Salad"

#gtns

Short version of #goodtimesnoodlesalad.

#ltj

Lord Tunderin' Jesus

#harumph

"An expression of disdain, disbelief, protest, or dismissal; a huff, grunt, or snort; To dislike, protest, or dismiss; An expression of disdain..." (Google Definitions)

#egads

"A minced oath (also pseudo-profanity or expletive-deletive) is an expression based on a profanity that has been altered to reduce the objectionable characteristics of the original expression, for example, darn or dang instead of damn, heck instead of hell, or frig or frick instead of fuck..." (Google Definitions)

Check out the Oldman's twitter page, @oldmanpants.

I have some goals that I would like to achieve in the next six months or so. Perhaps it will help to write 'em down.

• Get another [good] tenant
• Buy a Jeep
• Become a permanent employee at my job (I'm currently under contract for six months)
• Pay off my property taxes
• Buy a fishing kayak
• Build yet another amazing Halloween costume. Also - get absolutely shit-faced in said costume.
• Buy a giant fucking flat panel television
• Finish the "pool room"

That's enough for now. Now back to playing video games and drinkin' beer...

PHP Heredoc Syntax

When writing large blocks of content into a PHP variable, try using the heredoc syntax. Rather than putting your content between double quotes and having to escape the double quotes within the content string.

Check out the following example:

$string = <<<EOT
	Example of string
	spanning multiple lines
	using heredoc syntax.
EOT;

In the Example, "EOT" is the identifier. It is declared after the <<< operator. The string follows, then the closing identifier. Note that the closing identifier cannot have whitespace before or after it on the line.

Variables can be used within the string, as normal. It's ideal for blocks of HTML that contain double quotes and even javascript with characters such as ; in it. The example below uses HTML, javascript, and a different closing identifier.

$name = "JB";
$string = <<<NOODLESALAD
	<div id="message">
		Hello, $name.
	</div>
	<script type="text/javascript">
		document.write("Hello, $name!");
	</script>
NOODLESALAD;

Cheers!

Battlefield 1943

Oldman Approved: Battlefield 1943, the latest from EA and DICE for the PS3. BF1943 is an online multiplayer game set in the Pacific. You'll recognize the maps if you ever played Battlefield 1942 for the PC - they're the maps from the Pacific campaign. Only now the maps - just like in BF: Bad Company - feature environmental damage. What does that mean? It means you can blow the shit out of anything. Trees. Buildings. Other players. Hooo ahh!

PHP Image Stenciling

This is a script I made back in January 2007 for my personal portfolio site, jb.oldman.ca. The site is very minimalist, designed purely with text. One thing I wanted to play with was changing the main color of the site with each visit.

This was easy enough to do by creating my CSS using PHP. My CSS file itself is actually a PHP file so that i output only the CSS necessary, rather than having to build a different CSS file for each color. At the top of my style sheet file, I define the main color in hexadecimal. Then I just echo that hex number each time I use the custom color in the style sheet.

That was easy enough - just pre-processing a CSS document rather than an HTML document. On my site though, I had custom bullets for my lists on the Skills, Work, and Education pages. Nice little arrows. I wanted these little arrows to change color too, so I had to come up with a way to take the hexadecimal color value used in the style sheet and use it to create my arrow images. Again, I didn't want to have to make a new file for each color I used.

I had used PHP's GD library for creating and layering images many times before, so I knew I could easily solve this problem using GD. Sure you can draw lines and shapes on an image canvas using only code with the GD library, but that isn't something I've ever spent much time with because it would take a lot of time and a hell of a lot of code. Besides, I wanted more flexibility. I wanted to be able to use complex shapes with smooth gradient edges.

The solution is quite simple really. Basically what I do is take a transparent PNG and overlay it on a color defined in PHP.