Why is it awesome? Because it allows me to combine the two boring Gnome panels into one slick OS X / Windows 7 like dock.

I placed it on the right side to maximize the available vertical space, which is very scarce on my laptop screen:

After deleting the first Gnome panel, I found out that the second one can’t be removed. So I set it to auto-hide instead and put the AWN panel over it. It works suprisingly well.

I didn’t like the reflections so I set the Panel Offset to 0 in Dock Preferences -> Advanced.

I also set the Notification area background color to gray, so that the icons shipped with Ubuntu Jaunty look alright.

Now it’s just the way I like it.

You can read more about the new version over at OMG! UBUNTU!

Last night I attended my first jazz concert, during the third edition of the Transilvania Jazz Festival.

I had the pleasure of listening to a french band called Pulcinella. It’s composed of four guys playing a mix of genres, collectively labeled “alternative jazz”.

They used to do the ambient music for circus performances, so you can imagine how entertaining the show was. I really hope I’ll get to hear them live again some time.

The problem is that you can replace $this->method() with self::method() anywhere, regardless if method() is declared static or not. So which one should you use?

Consider this code:

class ParentClass {
	function test() {
		self::who();	// will output 'parent'
		$this->who();	// will output 'child'
	}
 
	function who() {
		echo 'parent';
	}
}
 
class ChildClass extends ParentClass {
	function who() {
		echo 'child';
	}
}
 
$obj = new ChildClass();
$obj->test();

In this example, self::who() will always output ‘parent’, while $this->who() will depend on what class the object has.

Now we can see that self refers to the class in which it is called, while $this refers to the class of the current object.

So, you should use self only when $this is not available, or when you don’t want to allow descendant classes to overwrite the current method.

În română

Ceva mărunt

La tanière d’un renard roux

Mîța cu î din i

Smoking Cool Cat

În engleză

Fredo and Pidjin

Question of Size

Mai știți și altele?

It’s familiar

If you have any experience with WordPress 2.7 or older, you will feel right at home using the new bbPress admin. You imediatly get a sense that you already know how to use it, which is great.

It’s fast

Very fast, right out of the box, which is always important for users.

It scales

It has to scale, since it’s used for WordPress Support, which gets thousands of new messages daily.

It integrates with WordPress

Since it’s built on the same backend as WordPress, you won’t find any other forum software that integrates better.

It’s extensible

bbPress doesn’t include many of the features that other forum software have, but it has the same plugin architecture that made WordPress popular. That means you can add exactly the features that your users need.

It’s easy to brand

The theming system is similar to that of WordPress, so it’s pretty easy to tweak the design to make it your own. If not, you can always get a whole new theme from the interwebs.

It’s free

Last but not least, it’s free, as in beer – you don’t pay for it. It’s also open-source, being GPL licensed,  which is very important, at least for me.

So these are the 7 reasons why I’ll stick to bbPress.

Today I found out.

Say you have this code:

foo = 1;
function test() {
	foo = bar;
}
test();
alert(foo);
 
// Result: 'bar'

It turns out that foo will be modified from the test() function.

If you are coming from PHP scripting, like I am, you will find this very unusual.

Now, if you used var:

foo = 1;
function test() {
	var foo = 'bar';
}
test();
alert(foo);
 
// Result: 1

foo would remain unchanged.

It even works with functions declared as variables:

foo = 'something';
function test() {
	var foo = function() {
		alert('bar');
	};
}
test();
alert(foo);
 
// Result: 'something'

So, var affects the variable scope:

Inside a function, all undeclared variables are global. Only those declared with var are local. This becomes very important when you have a lot of scripts running on the same page.

You might say that var is the opposite of the global keyword from PHP.

Am primit, măcar parțial.

Pe scurt, Guvernul Boc, în loc să mărească salariile profesorilor, cum ar fi normal, au mărit salariile preoților și în general au alocat mai mulți bani Bisericii și mai puțini educației și cercetării.

Se pare că e pe bune, după cum am văzut în acest comunicat.

Pentru a înțelege mai bine poate de ce s-ar întâmpla așa ceva, vă recomand această prelegere: The Evolution of Religions.

Tudor Barbu ne-a arătat mai întâi cam cu ce se mănâncă Zend Framework. Apoi Alexandru Novac a ținut o scurtă prelegere despre programare eficientă. Ultima prezentare a fost realizată de Andrei Gheorghe pe tema scalării aplicațiilor web.

Deși s-a chemat PHP Geek Meet, a fost mai degrabă un meeting pentru dezvoltatori web și toate tehnologiile aferente. E și normal, deoarece orice aplicație web scrisă în PHP are nevoie și de un server, de un limbaj de marcare etc.

Toate prezentările mi s-au părut interesante și relativ bine puse la punct, deși nu prea se vedea ce era scris pe slide-uri.

Întrebările și intervențiile din public au fost pertinente și s-a discutat în mod civilizat și la obiect.

În concluzie, abia aștept să merg la următorul.