Category: Technology

March 31, 2012

Project: Facebook Data Liberation — Part 4 — Reading Feeds

Back in Part 1, I explained why I’m making this HTML5 application. The condensed version of the story so far is that I’m making is a web/mobile app that can read a running/fitness Facebook group feed. Now we are up to Part 4 where…
March 30, 2012

Embracing the Tag Pattern on Social Sites

I’ve conditioned myself to use keyboard shortcuts whenever possible.  I think it’s a lot faster to keep your hands on the keys whenever possible.  When I’m trying to help someone with a computer problem, though, I stay quiet about how this or that keyboard…
March 27, 2012

How To Build an Online Community

One key to the success of the NITRC web site is the strong community support we have from it’s target audience: neuroscience researchers.  This didn’t happen overnight.  There were a lot of steps that led up to where we are now, and…

Project: Facebook Data Liberation — Part 1

One year ago my wife, Elizabeth, started a facebook group to help encourage people with their personal exercise programs.  She didn’t know if her friends would be at all interested in participating.  It turns out that not only were they interested…
March 22, 2012

Lightweight ORM for PHP

My family hosts an event called the Chili Bowl once a year.  All our friends bring over chili, we play football, then eat the chili.…and most importantly vote to see who brought the best chili and who brought the most original…
March 21, 2012

How to Choose a Network Attached Storage (NAS) Device

So, you want to get a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device for your home office or small business. I think that is a great idea and have one myself.  There are a lot of possible options though. You can get a dedicated network appliance that…
March 20, 2012

Upgrading to MySQL 5.5 on Ubuntu 10.10

I was recently asked to upgrade the MySQL install on a Ubuntu 10.10 system.  Normally these kinds of upgrades are simple affairs using built in tools like apt or yum, but in this case I was trying to go from MySQL 5.1…
March 18, 2012

Too Clever?

In many weakly-typed languages, such as Javascript and PHP, you might find code that takes some ambiguous value and coerces it into a straightforward boolean like so: $boolean = (boolean) $mixed; But what about this radically shorter alternative? $boolean = !!$mixed;…

The Beautiful Ternary

I am a fan of the ternary operator. Yes, it’s alien the first time you meet it, but wow, talk about getting things done! In a single line you can succinctly express a test and two options, making for truly compact yet clear…