I finally decided to get around to doing something about my site, so I've made a front page for it which is better than a straight redirect onto the blog. Hopefully it's reasonable.
I've been learning a bit more recently about the internals of PHP, and how to write extensions for it. I've been practicing by doing a bit of work on a Cairo wrapper that was started in the Google Summer of Code last year and until now has been mainly looked after by Elizabeth Marie Smith. She's put up with many, many newbie questions from me and so I've learned a lot while doing it. It's now at the stage where it'll run the eZ Components Graph component without too much complaining. It has a dual procedural and object-oriented API, so it should manage to run most things that use the existing cairo_wrapper extension. Thanks to all the regulars on #php.pecl and #php.doc on EFNet, and #php-gtk on Freenode for putting up with me while doing this. I've also written a quick wrapper for Tokyo Cabinet for the DBA extension in PHP which with a bit of luck will get committed to PHP6 some time soon.
In other news, I've been occasionally helping in the maintenance of Jubilee and An Sulaire, the two Sgoth Niseach boats I go sailing on occasionally. Hopefully they'll be going back in the water soon and we can get some sailing done. I'm looking forward to it.
2009-05-08 20:57:18 linux, open source and php
PHP 5.3.0RC2 has been released, which means that the next version of PHP is just around the corner. It comes right in the middle of the annual PHP Testfest. I rambled on a bit on the Freenode podcast a couple of weeks ago about this - it's an annual project where PHP usergroups and individuals around the world get together to improve the unit testing of PHP. This has benefits for everyone involved - PHP is improved, and more likely to maintain backward compatibility, and the people involved in writing the tests get to contribute in a meaningful way to the project, and hopefully learn something on the way. Several usergroups have events scheduled, and a couple have already taken place to great success. If you're a serious PHP user, and interested in getting involved, it's well worth checking out.
Even just grabbing the latest PHP release, compiling it on your platform, and running "make test" helps the project. It doesn't take much to do, and you can run it in the background while doing something else. Go for it!
2008-10-19 17:09:00 GNOME, linux and ubuntu
I saw this on TheDailyWTF recently, and decided I had to try it for myself, and it works!
You get it if you go to "Clear History" in the "Go" menu in Nautilus.
2008-09-28 23:05:00 photography
This is a camera-geek post, so if you're not one of those, feel free to skip. I've just been having a bit more of a play with the custom functions available to change how the 400D operates. There are a couple of things that I've found that I can't believe I didn't know about - they look like they'll make things a lot easier. I'm making a note here so that if I lose them, I can find them again.
I now have set:
Now I just need to get out and do some more shooting. Not done very much of late that hasn't been with my N95, which is disappointing.
| Setting name | Value | Effect |
| CF01 - Set button/cross keys function | 4: Cross keys - AF Frame select | Makes the arrow keys choose the autofocus point when shooting, rather than selecting the picture "style", which is something I've never used beyond setting it on "neutral" |
| CF04 - Shutter/AE lock button | 1: AE Lock/AF | This makes the "*" button cause the camera to autofocus, and have pressing the shutter button half way set the exposure (in non-manual modes). This might well drive me nuts, but I like the idea, in theory. |
| CF05 - AF-assist beam | 2: Only external flash emits | This should stop it flashing like mad when trying to focus in low light, when I'm not using my 430EX. I don't use the on-camera flash that much anyway, so it won't make a lot of difference, but it is an irritating feature when I am using it. |
| CF09 - Shutter curtain sync | 1: Second curtain sync | This makes the flash fire just before the shutter closes, rather than when the shutter opens. This might not seem to make a lot of sense at first glance, but it means that if I take a photo with a relatively long exposure with the intention of getting some motion blur, the shutter will fire at the end of the exposure, so that the object is "frozen" with the trail behind it, rather than seeming to go ahead of it. |
| CF11 - LCD display when power ON | 1: Retain power OFF status | This stops the display coming on when I switch the camera on. I don't use the display much so I have it turned off most of the time to save battery power. |