jakob's web studio - My Blog

Five perhaps not-so-known PHP tricks for leaner and cleaner code

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:21:05 -0500

In this article I'll give a few examples of powerful ways to program PHP that aren't obvious to many. The tricks I mention here are in themselves nothing new and experienced programmers probably know about them all but budding and intermediate PHP programmers can probably pick up a thing or two.

PHPEclipse and PDT

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:32:07 -0600

Eclipse has been my primary web development environment for over a year now. With plugins for version control, JavaScript/AJAX and PHP development, it's a perfect integrated environment for building Drupal websites and writing modules and themes. Eclipse has worked mostly fine apart from recently when I've been having some problems with system crashes (virtually unheard of on a Mac) seeming related to Eclipse or Apache. In an attempt to fix that problem I reinstalled Apache, MySQL and PHP as well as Eclipse and also took the opportunity to try the PHP Development Tools from Zend.

The future of my phpBB templates

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:33:48 -0600

Many of you have asked me about the future of my templates for phpBB and when they will be ported to phpBB 3, the next version of the popular forum system. After much thinking and considering of my own priorities, I have found two ways to go ahead but I need your feedback. Please read this post and post your own thoughts as comments.

Checking in

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:58:36 -0500

So I've been very busy the past few months. Barely time to do anything but seeing clients, working and lapping a little sunshine now and then. The farthest from Sweden I got was to Oslo (Norway) to spend a week there hanging out with friends and trying not to think about how expensive it was.

Web Design or the Art and Science of Solving Problems (Part 1)

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 04:57:41 -0500

I sometimes refer to myself as a web designer, a term that to many people I meet means "someone who makes websites pretty". This is a rather narrow definition and one I'd like to extend and widen and put in context with what us web professionals actually do. This blog post, the first in a series about building websites (or solving problems the way I look at it), covers some of my own thoughts regarding the trade of building websites and how a web professional or web designer thinks compared to print designers.

Lost in thought

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:36:31 -0500

I watched Lost in Translation tonight with my younger brother. It wasn't the first time. It was more like the third, and well, just like millions of people I still like it as much as I did the first time I saw it.

An easy way to display a customized menu in your Drupal theme

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:07:48 -0600

I've been working on a theme where I needed to display a menu in Drupal given its menu id (mid), which is the unique identifier of the parent element of the menu's items. Usually, you can assign menus to different regions in your theme but the problem with that approach is that the menu will be rendered as a multi-level list (nested ULs). In this case, I wanted a flat list, and had written my own theme function to display the links on one line with delimiters, taking an array of menu items as argument. I ended up writing a function for this purpose using parts of the code from Drupal core, a function that others might find useful.

Back on the blog with a CSS rant

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:46:59 -0600

My blogging behavior took a hiatus on me, the main reason being a long stay abroad and a lack of time. I still lack time, but blogging is way easier when your Internet connection has a real will to live and work. I'll probably write more about my time in the Middle East later on, but right now the reason I am writing is a recent article I read in A List Apart written by Molly E. Holzschlag titled "Thinking Outside the Grid" (link at the end of text).

Eternal* fame on the red planet for free

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:35:03 -0600

In August 2007 NASA will launch the next Mars lander, called Phoenix. Its mission is to probe the soil in Mars's polar regions in an attempt to find the frozen water expected to exist there. Sent along with the Phoenix is a DVD designed to last for thousands of years. On the DVD, Mars SF literature and a list of names will be printed, including yours if you so choose!

Two useful applications for mobile people

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 22:08:30 -0600

I've been a happy owner of an Apple MacBook for about two weeks now (something I'll write more about soon). Having both a desktop computer and a laptop means you need to make sure a lot of things stay synced. For me, the most important things are files, email and browser bookmarks. I use IMAP* for email so that's already taken care of but syncing files and bookmarks requires extra software, and I found just the right applications for the job. Best of all, they're both free!

When John Doe became an expert

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 08:00:24 -0600

User submitted content is one of the defining features of our new "2.0" world wide web. Sites that depend entirely on content produced by its visitors are being acquired every day and no frequent user of the Internet could have failed to hear about sites such as MySpace, Digg and YouTube. But user submitted content is of varying quality, especially when it expresses an evaluation of something, such as a review or a blog entry. It has become more important than ever to be able to tell quacks from the real doctors.

The new super-improved KogVet website is launched!

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:09:51 -0500

The new website for the student association at the Cognitive Science program here at Linköping University was launched two weeks ago but I haven't gotten around to posting about it until now. It's with a great feeling of accomplishment that we finally launched this site and we're thrilled at the thought of all its new features and what it will bring to the association and the students at the program. Continue reading in my portfolio...

"The Legend of Kyrandia I" in terms of flow and pleasure

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 08:42:59 -0500

I occasionally indulge in computer games. It is not something I do regularly, but I'm always on the lookout for new titles that seem promising and spend my money on those instead of buying what's popular. I love the games that do not get as much attention as they deserve, but are brilliant and in many ways better than the big selling titles. Sometimes I play old games, often adventure games, just to marvel at the graphics or at what the game creators achieved with the limited hardware they had in those days. One of my all time favorite classic titles is the first of the Kyrandia games from Westwood Studios.

According to popular opinion in Sweden, some bad will actually do good

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 18:50:01 -0500

Tonight something rare happened, a conservative coalition won the parliamentary election in Sweden but it was close, and almost even. While the result doesn't surprise me, what amazes me is how easy it was to redefine the image of conservative party as an alternative similar to the social democrats, with policies not so different, and convince a large portion of the population of that. Perhaps people are so desperate, and so eager to forget recent history, that they're prepared to vote their political enemies into power as a manifestation of the disappointment in the now former social democratic government. Regardless of the success of said strategy it's not a recipe for a lasting solution and long-term political success. After all four years can pass rather quickly...

Drupal for Solid Lifeforms

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 13:32:28 -0500

A beginner’s FAQ and guide to one of the most formidable content management systems on planet Earth

Some of you who frequent my site may have noticed that I work a lot with Drupal and now offer Drupal-related services such as customization and design. If you’re curious about what Drupal is and what it can do for you, how you can build a better site - a site that’s easier to maintain using a state of the art CMS, this guide is for you.