Year of Code – The Road to Rachmaninoff

As many people know, I'm a musician as well as developer. I love playing and writing music just as I love creating code. As well as a developer I also work in higher education where I teach programming. First of all, I want to say I fully support initiatives which encourages people to learn to … Continue reading →

Custom Linux Shutdown Scripts

Everyone knows one of the beauties of Linux (and FOSS in general) is the ability to delve in and change functionality for your own requirements. I was having an issue where a standard "poweroff" or "halt" was not shutting the computer down properly, so I needed to write my own scripts to replace … Continue reading →

PHP 5.4 – The Highlights

I haven't blogged for ages, so here's one about the impending release (ie. today) of PHP 5.4! I am just giving a brief introduction to a few features which I think make it a rather interesting release. Speed There is going to be a significant speed increase in PHP 5.4 (apparently more so than … Continue reading →

When Objects Act Like Arrays

I'm a big advocate of object-oriented programming, even though only a few years ago I hated it and thought it was "over engineering". I don't believe, however, that object orientation is suitable for every circumstance. Anyway, that's for another blog post. Objects are great, but not always the … Continue reading →

Installation of Memcache in PHP on Ubuntu/Debian

Happy new year all! Just a quick post about how to install Memcache in PHP on an Ubuntu or Debian server (I think it will apply to Redhat based servers, just substitute the apt-get for yum). Log on to your server as root (either directly or using sudo su), then install the Memcache daemon … Continue reading →