PHP contest: Texas Holdem

I thought this sounded interesting considering how popular poker is these days (you know who you are): PHP Editors is holding a PHP programming contest for a Texas Holdem game. I might try it out. It wouldn’t be anything like most commercial poker sites out there, but it would be an interesting programming project. …Not… Continue reading PHP contest: Texas Holdem

Interactive fiction

Every once in awhile, I duck into the world of interactive fiction (IF; also known as the world of “text adventures,” for those of you who are appropriately old-school), one of my all-time favorite computer game genres, to get an idea of what’s new in the field and what’s been happening. (If you don’t know… Continue reading Interactive fiction

Geekiest. Music. Ever.

Okay, this will permanently brand me as the geekiest dork ever (I fully expect a “geek” comment from Shannon), but perusing WinAmp’s SHOUTcast Radio list today, I found the ultimate station: …wait for it… Commodore 64 remixes. From SLAY Radio. Yes, you read that correctly. Commodore 64 remixes. I’ve been letting it play in the… Continue reading Geekiest. Music. Ever.

Intuit Master Builder

Being a construction company, we use Intuit Master Builder pretty extensively at work. It’s basically an all-in-one accounting/construction management package and while it does the job reasonably well—for the average user—I thought I’d relay some of the problems with it from an IT/computer programming standpoint. (Kind of an anti-review.) Which is sure to be amusing… Continue reading Intuit Master Builder

Quantum Link

This is indescribably cool if you’re an old-time geek who cut his/her teeth on the Commodore 64: Quantum Link Reloaded. Basically, someone has reverse-engineered the original Quantum Link online system that was for the Commodore 64, and made it available online (for free), and you can actually connect to it via a Commodore 64 computer—or… Continue reading Quantum Link

Maybe it’s a good time to learn COBOL

Two interesting factoids from ADTmag’s 2005 Salary Survey: [Application Programmers] Programmers in mainframe and Unix shops make the most, topping $59,000 a year in base salary. By development language environment, programmers in CICS and COBOL shops fare best, drawing average salaries of almost $62,000 for CICS-based development and $59,000 for COBOL. [System Programmers] Mainframe skills… Continue reading Maybe it’s a good time to learn COBOL

BittyWiki

Just for grins, and to flex my PHP chops, I decided to write a simple wiki system. The catch, though, is to see how short I can make the actual program; I was inspired by this Shortest Wiki Contest, though I can’t profess to be quite as fanatic as those guys (I prefer readable code—squishing… Continue reading BittyWiki

10 years of PHP

The PHP programming language is 10 years old today. A large part of what I do these days is PHP development—I’ve got it running web sites, parsing web server log files, running command-line batch processes, and more. Thanks to Rasmus and the PHP community for making it all possible! For a good roundup of the… Continue reading 10 years of PHP