Life in a Bourne Again Shell(-)

unsigned numbers so large your brain will explode! w/Doctrine 2

ORMs have an inherent problem. How do you take a datatype only some RDBMSs support and allow you to use it anyways. Well when it comes to Doctrine 2 and unsigned numbers they got a little lazy.

All I want to do is store my 64bit facebook IDs. How hard is that? Well my RDBMS is mySQL so all I really need is an unsigned bigint.

<?php
/**
 * @Column(type="bigint", nullable=false, unique=true, columnDefinition="unsigned")
 */
Protected $facebookId;

This seems find and dandy until you read this: 

columnDefinition: DDL SQL snippet that starts after the column name and specifies the complete (non-portable!) column definition. This attribute allows to make use of advanced RMDBS features. However you should make careful use of this feature and the consequences. SchemaTool will not detect changes on the column correctly anymore if you use “columnDefinition”.

Basically this feature let’s you free form unsupported things into the column definition. Making unsigned numbers technically UN-SUPPORTED! Not to mention my dev and QA deployment systems rely heavily on the SchemaTool. We can thank a combination of lazy developers at Doctrine and sqlite3 for this little nugget of crazy town.

This immediately prompted a google search. I don’t like thinking if I don’t have to. What did I find? Everybody’s using varchars. VARCHARS!?!? I about had a heart attack. That was just unacceptable.

Thus enters decimal. It’s perfect. The storage size is variable and it’s stored in binary so indexing is super fast. We just set the decimal precision to zero and viola. The ORM can port this to any RDBMS, it’s big enough for us not to care about the unsupported signed/unsigned issue and it’s lightning fast. decimal(20,0) should handle our facebook size of eighteen quintillion four hundred and forty six quadrillion seven hundred and forty four trillion seventy three billion seven hundred and nine million five hundred and fifty one thousand six hundred and fifteen quite nicely.

<?php
/**
 * @Column(type="decimal", scale=20, precision=0, nullable=false, unique=true)
 */
Protected $facebookId;

My new GIT warning message detached HEAD states :)

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Local Branch:

* (no branch)                     93e20e4 random comment’s and stuff and things

Geek to chic in two clicks!

For my fellow man that grew up in the nerd/geek world and, like me, have made it far enough in the corporate chain to have need of a wardrobe worthy of meetings, lunches, dinners and after-hour hangouts with CEO’s and Military Generals.

Here are some links in my google reader list you should check out.

Dappered: http://dappered.com/

A great place to start learning about style. How to select matching cloths, especially when it comes to patterns. What type of shoes to where with what. Even where to find the best online deals for your look.

Put This On: http://putthison.com/

This site is even more underground, with there ebay roundups and super cheap sale finds.

If in case you also want to make a head first dive, you should checkout out the $1500 dollar wardrobe. It is a quick way to replace the the cargo pants, baggy button downs and calculator watches.

http://dappered.com/tag/1500-wardrobe/

Bill s.978

There is an electronic copyright amendment being sent through called s.978

This would basically make it illegal to post youtube videos of your awesome party with music copyrighted music in the background or you and your friends singing to your favorite song.

It will also make it illegal to post video walkthroughs of your favorite games or do any Ganimations like make popular by RoosterTeeth Productions.

Read the bill here:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s978/text

you can click on right hand side where it says “Oppose” or “Support” to email your congressman. After you login you can also vote just above there.

Sign the partition here:
http://freebieber.org/

See RoosterTeeth videos :)
http://roosterteeth.com

What Noch has to say:
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/7152523035/bill-s-978

Prototype this!

I have used and thought I understood Javascript prototypes and I was right. However a wise man once said that you don’t know anything until you think it’s obvious. Yehuda Katz, member of the core Ruby on Rails team, released a very easy to read and extremely complete article on Javascript Prototypes called Understanding “Prototypes” in JavaScript. This article details every little thing you could ever want to know and should know about using javascript Prototypes.

spoiler alert: It’s like inheritance ;)

Web browsers, stripped, naked and exposed.

This is a very long and recommended read for any web developer called How Browsers Work. Don’t be confused by the plain and general name. This document is compiled research from all major open source browsers via there source code directly. This is not you mom’s browser diagram. This my friends is what real browsers are made of. Written and researched by Tali Garsiel.

This I have to say, is the ultimate knowledge-base for client side performance you can find. Read the article here.