I only use Pastie for work, and so rarely have reason to share snippets publicly. During a design discussion, it’s easy to forget to tick the ‘private’ feature – hence this GM script, which does it completely automatically. I forget my head sometimes… Updated 15 Mar 2011: added second URL without ‘www’ alias.

I am currently working on a PHP class to manipulate SVG documents, using PHP’s SimpleXML to handle the XML structure. I found myself needing to reset the namespaced attribute “xlink:href” in the following XML block: Finding the necessary info proved somewhat difficult, so I’m recording it here for posterity. Firstly, note that obtaining namespaced attributes […]

I’ve reviewed my new electric bike, a Juicy Sport, for the benefit of anyone interested in sustainable transport. The pics are in this post, and the review is here.

I’ve been meaning for some time to review my new electric bicycle, to aid anyone in the UK market. I purchased a Juicy Bike from Eco Republic in Buxton, with the intention of transitioning away from car ownership. I thought I’d bought an Original Sport, but mine has a rear rack and light; however, it […]

This week I started a new job, which came with a nice shiny new MacBook Pro – running OS X. I’m brand new to this platform, and whilst I prefer the openness of Linux, the Mac appears to just work. It’s flawless with wifi, mobile internet, secondary monitors – everything I’ve thrown at it. Meanwhile […]

Following my musings on the quality of PHP roles in the Midlands, I thought I’d record some of the problems of looking for IT work, and offer some notes on how I’m tackling the search. If you’re a techie with itchy feet, and would be interested in a fresh set of ideas, read on! To […]

I’ve been setting aside some time to jump all the way from symfony 1.0, which I still use in my full-time work, to 1.4. I’m in particular interested in the Forms system, which links form element attributes (such as an integer or string length validator) to database columns automatically. Since I’m fond of advising new […]

For the past few months, I’ve been looking at the market for PHP roles, and thought I’d offer some thoughts on what I’m interested in. I’m based in the England’s great second city, Birmingham, and am trying to resist the lure of intriguing development roles in London. This post is primarily for recruiters and potential […]

I work on a large web application using symfony 1.0, and we add new subsystems frequently, each having its own set of authorisation/security requirements. When we started writing the application, it was clear that we needed a unified permissions system that would be both simple to use, and highly flexible. I’ve talked about our solution […]

A popular forum question from symfony beginners is how to install the software on a server that hosts a number of symfony projects. The original core team advice, dating back to before the 1.0 version, was to install via PEAR. However, anyone who has fought with PEAR in a Microsoft corporate network environment knows that […]