Month: May 2011

PHP tip of the day

If you’re running an array through json_encode(), and part of that array is a reference to another array, do _not_ json_encode() *that* array first. JSON-encoding something that’s already JSON results in… confusion. This is one of those things that I would have figured out a lot faster if I had any kind of debugging set up for PHP. Maybe I should look at FirePHP. I don’t do a lot of PHP work, but I’m using PHP right now to test some REST web services that I’m writing in .Net/C#. (Debugging the .Net code, of course, is a piece of cake.)

kicking and screaming

OK, I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into 2011. I finally upgraded my home desktop machine to Firefox 4 and IE 9. (The work machine, of course, has had both installed for quite a while.)
I didn’t want to upgrade either until I was sure at least one of them would work with LogMeIn. It does seem to work OK in both Firefox 4 and IE 9 now, so there’s no reason for me to not upgrade now.
On a related issue, I was testing HTML 5 video in IE 9 last week, and ran into a really annoying problem.  For some crazy reason, my work machine has Windows 7 N on it, the version without Media Player. Well, it turns out that IE 9 won’t play HTML 5 video if Media Player isn’t installed. And it won’t show you a useful error message either.  It just won’t play. I eventually figured this out, and installed the Media Feature Pack for Windows 7 N. Now, all is well.

many things

Lots of things going on right now, and I just feel like I should dump them all into a blog post. This isn’t necessarily going to be an interesting or useful post for anyone but me, but I feel like I need to write it.

  • My brother Mike is in the hospital with pneumonia.  I haven’t been able to talk to him yet, so I’m not sure how bad it is.  (I’m in NJ and he’s in GA, and I haven’t been able to reach him on the phone.)
  • My brother Pat’s widow, who remarried a couple of years ago, just had a baby girl.
  • I met with someone today to organize an estate sale, so I can finally empty out my parents’ old home.  It looks like we’ll be doing it in about a month, so I really need to finish sorting through everything down there and make some final decisions about what I want to keep and what I want to get rid of.
  • My allergies have been pretty bad over the last week or two.  I went to the doctor yesterday, because I was starting to worry that it might be more than just allergies, but there’s no sign that there’s anything else wrong with me.  So, now I’ve got a prescription for Nasonex, to go along with the over-the-counter Zyrtec that I’ve been taking.  Hopefully, the combination of the two will help me out.

The next few blog posts will be about computer programming or comic books, I hope.