Drawn as a birthday card for the nephew

SELECT
    REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(name, '2006', ''), '2007', ''), '2008', ''), ' ', ''), '/', ''), '.', ''), '\'', ''), '!', ''), '&', '') AS name,
    description
FROM courses;

(Of course I forget to not look a gift horse in the mouth ; )

The Alternative Vote has its problems too, but I see it as a ‘gateway’ voting system that might lead to proportional representation in the future.

The F12 development tools didn’t throw much light, suggesting that the element was correctly inheriting Arial. Turned out to be some empty style rules tripping up Trident, the likes of:

font-family: ; font-size: ;

Removed, and all was back to normal.

Ingredients:

• XDebug latest (new version out I notice, must try that soon)
• PHP 5.2 or 5.3
• Netbeans 7.1
• Local install of Apache HTTPD server
• CakePHP 1.3
• Windows 7

Cooking time:

5 – 15 mins according to taste.

Preparation:

1. Add XDebug extension to your php.ini file. Note with PHP 5.2 you must use zend_extension_ts and with PHP 5.3 you must use zend_extension. Restart Apache.
2. Set the run configuration for your Netbeans project so that index file is webroot/index.php (or webroot/test.php works, I think webroot/ is the key). Open the Advanced dialog and tell it not to open the web browser, “Do Not Open Web Browser”!
3. Open Netbeans / Options / PHP / General / Debugging and check “Stop at first line”. Haven’t had much success otherwise. Check “Watches and Balloon Evaluations” if you want but this sometimes causes problems.
4. Select Debug / Debug Project. Netbeans will start listening for the debugger.
5. Use Firefox. Install easy XDebug plugin.
6. Click the green bug icon at the bottom-right of Firefox. XDebug will turn on.
7. Refresh the page on your site and you should be able to step through your scripts and set breakpoints as necessary.

You might find in some situations Netbeans loses the connection to XDebug. Closing and reopening Netbeans is usually necessary to get it working again, but nevertheless, this is the best experience I’ve had debugging PHP so far. Comments and suggestions welcome.

In a CakePHP MVC structure it’s fun to throw Exceptions from your models, but including a try/catch in every single controller method starts to get unwieldy. Instead you can create an exception handler in your AppController, something like this:

    public function beforeFilter()
    {
        set_exception_handler(array($this, 'handleException'));
        parent::beforeFilter();
    }

    public function handleException(Exception $exception)
    {
        try
        {
            throw $exception;
        }
        catch (ResourceNotFoundException $ex)
        {
            $this->cakeError('error404', array('message' => $ex->getMessage()));
        }
        catch (Exception $ex)
        {
            $this->cakeError('error500', array('message' => $ex->getMessage()));
        }
    }

Notice that we can rethrow the exception in the handler to avoid using an if or switch construct. Now in our controller method we can write code like this:

         $bagpuss = $this->Bagpuss->read(null, $id);
         if (!$bagpuss)
         {
             throw new ResourceNotFoundException('Could not find bagpuss');
         }

We could even go as far as to override read() in AppModel to throw a ResourceNotFoundException to simplify our controllers further, though I worry this will (a) break existing tools (change of contract), and (b) create too much dependency between model and controller.

Comments or suggestions welcome.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ contrebis/5365855692/in/set-72157625848311844/

To the right of the image you can see the entrance to the Forbidden City. Zoom in to see Chairman Mao’s portrait hanging above the gateway.

In the centre of the image there is the Great Hall of the People; to the left of that, the Monument to the People’s Heroes; and further left, the Chairman Mao Zedong Memorial Hall.

It was tempting to stand in front of one of the police buggies, but after entering the Square you have already been intimidated by the security checks and bag scans.

Excuses

It’s very difficult to avoid visual artefacts when people are moving around so much. Even with this picture, with the orphaned shadows and noticeable seams, I spent several hours trying to improve the joins and matches between images. A good half-hour was taken up with trying to identify the same fence post between two images, taking into account the parallax shift. I don’t think it made any difference in the end.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/contrebis/ 5365247405/in/set-72157625848311844/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/contrebis/5365225193/in/set-72157625848311844/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/contrebis/5365854816/in/set-72157625848311844/