Jan 12 10

Classes for PHP

by Jonathan Discipulo

PHP is currently the most trusted web programming language. PHP is recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. Aside for being fast when it comes to execution, it is a perfect match for the most widely used database which is MySQL. Together, these open-source technologies can create power applications. PHP scripts can be written using procedural or object-oriented programming style.

During my free time, I am writing scripts for PHP Classes that I can use for my projects and sharing it back to the open source community. Here’s a list of my published classes:

EBM2BMP Class
Entitize Class
Entitize Class for PHP 5
Google Chart for PHP 5
MySQL for PHP 5

Please check back as I will be updating this post as soon as I publish more PHP classes. I hope you find these classes useful.

Apr 11 07

Google Code Search

by Jonathan Discipulo

There are lots of  experiments on-going that you can find in Google Labs. One I find interesting and useful at the same time is the Google Code Search. This Google feature is still in its experimentation stage but is available for public usage. I am very much impressed they have thought of this developer-friendly search.

The feature, unlike the usual web search, returns pages that includes individual files, mostly source codes of different programming languages. This doesn’t only search for the page that contains codes but do search the source codes itself. You have to try it to see it for yourself.

By searching again and again, I have observed that Google Code bot is crawling codes available for public viewing, mostly open source programs, zipped applications, compressed libraries of files and public SVN/CVS repositories.

I like this since it will help developers like me to search for specific classes or functions in a particular application. I can even search using the author’s name or email as the keyword and get the results I wanted. You can also use the version numbers as keywords to filter the versions of the source codes you are searching for.

Here are some screen shots querying Google Code Search for the keyword papervision. Screen 1 is the first page of Google Code Search. Screen 2 is the result page after submission. Screen 3 is the actual source code you did choose from the result page.

If you are a developer or programmer that constantly checks for open source codes, you will definitely love and find this tool useful.

Mar 4 07

I got hooked into Tribal Wars

by Jonathan Discipulo

Tribal Wars is a free web-based strategy game that is comprised of individual players in different tribes. Every individual is entitled of a single and small village at the start of the game. Here is the actual image of a fully upgraded Tribal Wars village as well as the map of one  sector in a single continent:

Tribal Wars Full Village Tribal Wars Map

The player must grow that village until he is able to defend his own village and conquer another. He must balance the resources, train defensive and offensive troops, form his own tribe or join another, find allies and conquer other tribes.

During the period of MMORPG, browser-based games started to pop out. At first, I thought I won’t be playing Tribal Wars for long due to its poor GUI and not being real-time. But guess what, this is my fifth month playing Tribal Wars and I’m still enjoying it.

The images are good as well as the interface. They have a Premium Account program which a player could purchase that gives more advanced and easy-to-use buttons and links. I haven’t purchased a premium account since I’m already satisfied with the standard interface.

You might want to try it and see if you will also get hooked to it.