PHP isn’t always easy

I used to think PHP was just for half-arsed programmers who didn’t know how to use a strongly typed language. However I’ve been using PHP to write one of Europe’s busiest web sites for a year now. PHP is simple but effective in a lot of ways. I still find things that are really tough though.

My current dilly of a pickle is trying to issue the user a response and then carrying on doing stuff. There just isn’t a sane way to do it. The obvious thing would be to construct some output using say header() and then set ignore_user_abort(). When the user leaves the page should carry on processing. I tried calling ob_flush() and flush() to send out the response, but it doesn’t wanna. Weird.

Currently I’m restructuring my classes to have ‘with user’ and ‘without user’ classes. It just seems inelegant to me and I don’t like it. If anyone has a better way please let me know.

Technorati Tags:
php, webdevelopment, ignoreuserabort, obflush, flush

Everyone is engaged; Only 1% are engaged to you though

Bubble Generation Strategy Lab have an interesting piece on The Death of 1%. While they credit this to Yahoo’s Bradley Horowitz, they explain the idea that the 1% contributor rule will die off. Their suggestion is not that 1% of people contribute it’s that people contribute to the few things they really care about.

This is a interesting idea. As the internet and the web suck in more interest groups it’s natural that their is a higher level of engagement. I think the more involved nature of Web 2.0 is good thing, but it won’t see it’s full power until it has exceed the triviality of movie reviews, etc.

This is actually a classic problem in search engine design. I learned about this stuff in college. However low you set the barrier if people come to achieve a goal you can’t get them to feed back afterwards. Some early cash machines (ATMs) gave you the money first and then your card. They quick swapped the order because people forget their cards once they have the money (their real objective).

In this case it is simple assumption that enabling a web site for ease of contribution will generate UGC, however if people have reached their goal it just won’t happen. When the Web 2.0 style finds a broader reach across web sites the level of engagement will be greater, as each person contributes to their active niche.

This won’t of course stop your web site from showing that lower engagement (let’s say 1% for the sake of argument). It’s not because users are engaged it’s because you’ve saturated the level of users that give a crap about your topic.

Technorati Tags:
engagement, ucg, user generated content, bradley horowitz, bubble generation strategy lab, web20

British Computer Society; Internet Specialist Group

The BCS‘s Internet Specialist Group are looking for people to contribute. I like the BCS and I think they do good work, but there aren’t too many people from the web community there.

It seems like the kinds of people who go to SXSW and FOWA are not the same people who are BCS members. This is an opportunity missed.

I’ve been voted onto the committee of the Internet Specialist Group as events co-ordinator. I’m looking for speakers (please contact me tom_croucher@yahoo.com with suggestions or offers) that will help to bring these two groups together. I think it’s essential that the new media crowd start talking to old business.

Update: I forgot to mention, you may not know but you can get your BCS written off against your tax. If you work in a Computing field it’s essentially free to be a member and you get some letters after your name.

Technorati Tags:
new media, british computing society, bcs, internet specialist group, london events, events

What do I read?

I use Netnewswire to read my feeds and it has an interesting feature that lets me see what I spend most time reading. These results are from a period of about a year.

What I find interesting is that the Accessibility categories feature so highly. While I do read a lot of stuff on Accessibility I was surprised it featured so much in the top 10 things I read and by such a large margin.

Some really big blogs are amongst my top reads. Lifehacker, and Treehugger are both great reads. Next are the excellent link blogs from Scoble and Simon Willison. Then a smattering of Apple stuff, some more productivity in the form of 43 folders. The blogs of some of my friends and colleagues feature as well as my Flickr friends photostream.

All in all I’m not upset, but I feel like I could do better at reading some less mainstream content.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, feedreader, feedreading, netnewswire

N95 Niggle; I’m not a Chav; I don’t really need the speakers

One of the things that really really bugs me about my N95 is that when I’m listening to music on the tube and the wire gets tugged and the connection between the headphones and the phone is lost for a second the phone switch straight to the speakers at 100% volume.

Since Nokia is trying to look after my ears I listen to all my music at 100% to get it vaguely loud enough. However the volume is a system setting used for both the speakers and the headphones. It’s very loud when it comes out. I think the only way I can stop it is by putting the phone on silent. I don’t want my phone on silent though, that just means I forget when I pull my buds out. If I needed the speakers I’d be very happy to explicitly press a button to turn them on (like switching to speakerphone).

My Mac laptop does this perfectly, one volume for speakers one volume for headphones. It switches back and forth as I plug-in and remove the headphones. I can’t imagine it’s that hard a task. I could make a profile explicitly for my headphones which doesn’t ring but that doesn’t help me either.

What my N95 needs is an “I’m not a chav” option so I can let Nokia know that I don’t need what has become the post millennium ghetto blaster.

Technorati Tags:
n95, nokia

How I became a Vegan and stayed that way and other lessons in self control

I’ve been a Vegan around two and a half years now. A lot of people ask me how I do it. The main secret also works with a lot of other things. Being a Vegan takes 30 seconds. 30 seconds when you buy your food, 30 seconds when you hold on to the will power to walk past that bacon sandwich (the vegetarian killer).

The reason I became Vegan in the first place was my wife asked me to do it with her for a week. That was because Tony Robins challenged her to. We failed for a couple of days, and then started again. But, I did indeed do it for one week. I figured if I could do one week I could do another week, and another, and so on. It took me a while to realise that a week was a long time, and that it’s actually a lot simpler; Thirty seconds is a lot simpler.

This of course works for most things. If something is difficult just break it down into smaller timeframes and aim at those. My recent blogging failures only serve to highlight what happens when you loose the chain. It feels like training, writing is now more of a chore again because I stopped for so long.

I would note this doesn’t mean that you have to always continue everything you ever decide to do. I’ve stepped down from my no alcohol stance. Now I only drink in situations that don’t give me the opportunity to have more than one drink. The easiest way to defend my moderation is to avoid temptation, but total abstinence isn’t always the way.

Technorati Tags:
vegan, willpower, the30secondrule, selfhelp, lifehack

Blogging honesty

So, I have to be honest. I fucked up. I had some server trouble, and I did keep blogging. For a while. Then I stopped. And in my shame I didn’t want to admit I’d stopped. And the gap between posts got larger, and larger.

Lifehacker had a great post about how Jerry Seinfeld motivates himself. I realised this is exactly what I do. I blog every day, without fail. Missing one day, then another, and another because of the server issues caused a snow ball of guilt and avoidance.

Well, no more. The stuff in my brain is demanding to get out. The posts will commence as of today.