{ Chris.Blackwell }

Earth Temperature Timeline

in Opinion

The earth is always in a constant state of temperature change. This has been true since long before humans were here, and will continue long after we are gone. The question of the last couple generations has been; Are Humans causing an above average temperature shift?

XKCD, one of my favourite online comics, has done an excellent graphic detailing the comparative shift of temperature in the planet. This graph clearly outlines how the planet has gone through minor temperature fluctuations in years past, but is accelerating exponentially now.

I would like to note that I have NOT verified any of the data that XKCD has used to make their graph, so I can not confirm it’s accuracy. Given the scientific depth that XKCD usually uses to make their comics, I tend to lean on the side of believing their interpretation of the data. Of course, I invite you to verify the data yourself.

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Design Better Forms

in Design/UX

There are some great tips in here. My favourite is about displaying select lists, with less then six items, all inline. I’ll have to look at some of my own forms to do this. I would love to see someone make a Gravity Forms plugin for this!

What Every Startup Needs to Know About ReactJS

in Programming

The title is a bit misleading. This is good knowledge for anyone looking to build applications or websites using ReactJS. I’m been wanting to build a new ReactJS powered SPA, but I was worried about the discoverability consequences. This article really helped clarify what I can do to help with that.

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If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look how he treats his inferiors, not his equals

– Sirius Black, Harry Potter

Use PHP to Retrieve All Links on a Page

in Programming

I was developing a project recently, where I had the need to get all the links on a certain page. I first turned to a JavaScript library, like Jasmine.

I really wanted to do this within my PHP code, so I ended up going with this solution:


$html = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com');

$dom = new DOMDocument();
@$dom->loadHTML($html);

// grab all the on the page
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$hrefs = $xpath->evaluate("/html/body//a");

for ($i = 0; $i < $hrefs->length; $i++) {
    $href = $hrefs->item($i);
    $url = $href->getAttribute('href');
    echo $url;
}

When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar; you are only telling the world you fear what he might say

– Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones

Test Driven API Development

in Programming

DotDev has posted a great tutorial on Test Driven API Development. Even though I already develop test driven APIs, I still love reading articles like this to see how others are solving problems.

I have rolled my own Transformers in the past, and I am very excited about the Fractal package they reference in this article. I’m also excited about the API documentation generator, and I think I’m going to give that a try this weekend.

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