Larry Page unweaves the rainbow his coloured balls
116675
Dodgeballs AAAS Larry Page, the most reclusive of Google's ruling triumvirate gave a rare public speech at the AAAS meeting in San Francisco on Friday. During an hour long session he revealed an instinctive allergy to the firm's political significance.â¦
458508
On PHPied.com, there's a new post about some updates that have been made to the HiLiteMe.com site work even more features to make it more flexible.   Following from here, I'm proud to announce an update to HiLiteMe.com with two custom renderers for Text_Highlighter.   The additions are an option to make the output in a BB Code format (easier for forum pasting) and some simple HTML code integration to make the results more portable. There are also enhancements to the CSS that keep you from having to View Source each time to get the results and a setting letting you specify the tab size. You can test it out here.
42139
In his latest post, Stoyan Stefanov introduces a new project he's working on, the implementation of CSS sprites:   This is a simple technique used for page load performance purposes. Since HTTP requests are the most expensive thing you can do in regards to front-end performance, you strive for making as little requests as possible. So instead of having the browser download 4 rounded corner images for example, you create one image that has all four. Then you use CSS' background-position to only show the part of the image you want.   He explains briefly how the system works and includes a simple example in PHP (showing how to use the imagemagik utility to create the custom image).
383157
Tycho: Some of you have probably already heard it, since I put it up yesterday - but we're trying new hosting for the podcast, and I wanted to make sure everything made sense before I dropped it on the front page. The podcast is for Wednesday's strip, "The Ungift, Part Two." You can download it here, or subscribe to the feed here. The levels are a little crazy in a couple spots, for which I apologize. I think we've got those ironed out, now. (CW)TB
685152
Joshua Eichorn has posted some slides that he presented at a local PHP User Group meeting just passed that serve as an introduction to PEAR.   I'm hoping to improve the slides a bit and give this presentation at lots of other places. If any PHP User groups on the west coast would like me to do a presentation about PEAR drop my a line.   To help further the cause of PEAR, he's also offering the slides in an archived file for presentation anywhere.
291793
"Charlatan" (Crown Publishing Group, 336 pages, $24.95), by Pope Brock: Goat testicles to restore virility. An electric hat that grows hair. Healing blue light from a "quartz ray" bulb.
461353
Color-blocking has moved from summer into winter in a bolder, brighter way.
175015
Last week, I had the privilege to address the North Texas Linux Users Group. Ralph Green asked me to present information on my upcoming book called "Linux System Administration" by O'Reilly. I only had the cover and the gallies, since production goes to press in early March. So, I showed those.
611971
Although frankly I really didn't feel the need to read the entire thread, I can tell you that the posting to the PHP 3 mailing list is related to the Smarty Templating Engine back in the day. In fact, I believe this was the original spec Andrei proposed before Smarty even existed. Although I don't remember the exact e-mail, this posting reminded me that there was a point in time I thought exactly this way... quoting myself:
40560
Editors: Shlomo Reifman and Samantha N. Wong Researchers: Joshua Brandt, Fei Mei Chan,  Andrew T. Gillies, Soo Jeong, Edward Knudsen,  Artie Kwok, John Ray and Jody Yen Programmer: Carl Subick
152191
Hasin Hayder has started up a new project that he's documented in a new blog entry - the creation of a new jobs website in PHP.   I was involved in making a job site few days ago. During the development, I have studied how easily anyone can develop a job site using PHP (language independent in true sense) . So I decide to write a blog post about my experience and here it goes. But note that this article is not about scaling or balancing the load on your site during heavy traffic, heh heh.   He comments on the startup process surrounding this type of site and makes suggestions about something to consider for your careers site - pulling job content from other sites in two ways - screen scraping and using the job search APIs out there.
655122
Over the last week, I've been writing about the disconnect between flow and rank. Paradoxically, sites that are ranked high don't always deliver a lot of hits when they link to you. On the flipside, there are some sites that are rarely on Top 100 lists, or talked about very much, that deliver substantial flow. Two of them stand out, one a veteran site, and the other a relative newcomer. 1. Daring Fireball is a thoughtful blog written by John Gruber that focuses on the Macintosh. Since I've returned to the Mac in 2005, and have been writing more about Mac issues, I've started getting links from this site, and when I do, they usually send between 1000 and 2000 readers my way. And they're generally interesting people with useful information and ideas. I follow Gruber on Twitter and have learned that he is a Phillies fan and therefore disappointed this year. His posts are interesting there too, and irreverent, which I like of course.  2. A Digg-like memetracker, news.ycombinator.com is in the same league as TechMeme, about 1000 hits for a highly ranked piece. I don't know much about the site, I'm not a regular reader, and I don't know much about the people who visit from this site.
346137
Alex Auld's recent memory of game action involves a whole lot of red.
144022
A few more of the International PHP Conference slides have surfaced for your enjoyment:  Sandro Zic - A comparison of PEAR Installer, Phing, and ZZ/OSS Installer alan@akbkhome.com - PEAR and PHP 5 (blog entry)
530171
Maybe it was fool&#039;s gold Davis Love III found at the end of that rainbow.
311003
A series of encodings on printouts from color laser printers to discourage counterfeiting? At first, the idea sounds like the urban legend from a couple of decades ago that claimed you could hear Satanic messages when you play vinyl records backwards. Yet the evidence from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is that the encodings are embedded in color printers from all major manufacturers. Moreover, the issues raised by the practice have caused Free Software Foundation director Benjamin Mako Hill and other members of the Computing Culture group at the MIT Media Lab to begin the Seeing Yellow campaign to stop the practice.
456511
Compiled by PAUL MONTELLA Sept. 19