Awesome new features coming in PHP 5.4

by Ryan Parman • November 11, 2011 • Code, Software • No comments

The next version of PHP, which saw its first release candidate today, has some really awesome new features. You can see a complete list of changes in the README, but here are the ones that caught my eye. Classes Support for Traits (i.e., mix-ins; addresses the multiple-inheritance problem). Support for chaining from the constructor: (new [...]

Comparing the HP TouchPad to the iPad 2

by Ryan Parman • August 21, 2011 • Apple, Software, Technology • 3 comments

I currently own and love my iPad 2, but with HP slashing the prices on the new TouchPads this weekend, I decided to pick one up after calling around and finding some at my local Best Buy. Preface I feel that I should start by saying that I’m an Apple guy; or more specifically that [...]

Import Delicious/Pinboard Bookmarks Into Spotlight for Mac OS X

by Ryan Parman • January 1, 2011 • Software • 1 comments

I’ve been heavily invested in Delicious as a bookmarking service for many years. However, after learning about Delicious’ sunsetting, I’ve decided to join the ranks of the Great Delicious Exodus and sign up for an account with Pinboard. One tool that has been an important part of my workflow is a tool called delimport, which [...]

WebKit 3D CSS Transforms

by Ryan Parman • July 14, 2009 • Apple, Browsers, Software • 1 comments

I came across the following demos of the new 3D CSS Transform functionality in the latest WebKit builds. These will be making their way into Safari, Google Chrome, iPhone, and Android sometime soon. Snow Stacks (Can’t see the video? Watch it directly.) Image Fly (Can’t see the video? Watch it directly.)

Installing PHP 5.3 with mysqlnd on Mac OS X with MacPorts

by Ryan Parman • July 11, 2009 • Code, Software, Tutorials • 11 comments

Historically, I’ve always preferred to use Apple’s built-in Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.x that comes with Leopard. However, after trying to compile PHP 5.3 from scratch and connect it with Apache, I decided to just use the MacPorts installer instead. That did mean giving up control of a finely-tuned Apache installation, but in the end, I think I’ve ended up with a better localhost system.

Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VirtualBox on Mac OS X

by Ryan Parman • June 30, 2009 • Software, Tutorials • 1 comments

These days I’m looking to save money anywhere I can. How about you? Whereas VMWare Fusion (as awesome as it is) runs around $80 USD per copy, Sun’s VirtualBox is a free, open-source product for virtualization that runs on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows.

If you’ve not yet read the related post, “Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMWare Fusion on Mac OS X,” you should. This is a follow up on how to take those virtual machines (which we’ve already done a lot of work on), and convert them for use VirtualBox.

Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMware Fusion on Mac OS X

by Ryan Parman • January 7, 2009 • Browsers, Software, Tutorials • 23 comments

By now, most front-end web developers have heard of the Standalone Internet Explorers (Wikipedia article). Although these are incredibly useful, they’ve always been hacky at best.

Because of that, we need to go the long way. We’ll download the “officially sanctioned” VirtualPC images containing a time-limited version of Windows XP SP3 and Internet Explorer 6.0, and then we’ll convert these images to the kind that work with VMware Fusion (which works on Mac OS X). This should only need to be done every 3 or 4 months when the images expire.

Installing FFMPEG and FFMPEG-PHP in Fedora 8 running on Amazon EC2

by Ryan Parman • June 28, 2008 • Code, Software, Tutorials • 4 comments

I’ve spent a bit of time working with Amazon EC2 recently. One of the things I’ve been working on is getting a stable build of FFMPEG and FFMPEG-PHP running on a Fedora 8 image in Amazon EC2. This is essentially going to be a tutorial to get things up and running. Of course, your milage [...]